An harmonically rich album of spacious guitar interaction from two Argentinian guitarists and composers--Catriel Nievas and Tomas Cabado--who also work in the trio Merce / Cabado / Nievas, a minimal yet satisfying set of 8 pieces that interact through stereo positioning, harmonic disturbance and long decay, the effect mesmerizing and beautifully peaceful.

Christoph Nicolaus began working with the stone harp around 2007, a block of granite with a slanted top that is deeply notched to create fins that resemble a loaf of bread, played by "bowing" the sides with wet hands causing each to vibrate in unique and beautiful tones; this album collects 13 compositions & improvisations performed between 2008 and 2018, in rich and uniquely evocative sound.

Three solo piano works from three composers--Mark Hannesson, Dante Boon, and Anastassis Philippakopoulos--are performed by Dante Boon in this studio album recorded in Berlin; three extremely compatible works that prove to be quintessential examples of Wandelweiser minimalism finding melody, progression and abstraction in subtle and elusive ways; sublime.

"Undeclared" refers to a 2006 drone attack in Pakistan that struck a school, killing more than 80 civilians including 70 children, which took place on a day that was intended for a peace agreement; Hanneson pays homage to the victims by finding a sound for each of them, rendering the piece 3 times by himself via electronics, by Rene Holtkamp on guitar, and by Antoine Beuger on children's glockenspiel.

Four duets of gracefully moving music that focuses on tone without repeating melodies or rhythms, from composer Kory Reeder in his first release, performed by Erin Cameron & Luke Ellard both on bass clarinet; Jonathan Kierspe (saxophone) & Samuel Anderson (bass trombone); Alaina Clarice & Linda Jenkins, both on flute; and Mia Detwiler (violin) & Kory Reeder (piano).

Five "Soleil Clandestin" soundscapes using abstract voice, guitar, electronics, field recordings & percussion from sound artists Bruno Duplant and Pierre Gerard, on the surface peaceful, minimal and using space and silence, but buried inside are disquieting additions through vocal abstractions placed in unusual position to the sound; curious and captivating.

Three compositions from clarinetist and Wandelweiser peer Jurg Frey, performed by Luke Martin on electric guitar, Laura Cetilia on cello, J.P.A. Falzone on piano & vibraphone, Morgan Evans-Weiler on violin, and Jurg Frey himself on clarinet; beautifully reflective music indicating Frey's working method and his relationship with wide, quiet sound spaces.

A work of silence and intervention from Manhattan-based Chinese composer and sound artist Bin Li presenting two versions of the title track, with Stefan Thut on viol & voice on the 1st version, and voice only on the 2nd, using the locations of Manhattan and Gimmelwald, Switzerland as the background of careful viol and voice placement; intriguing and compelling.

American composer Dean Rosenthal's influential performance piece written in 2012 and performed more than 40 times throughout the world, a site-specific piece for any outside body of water with any number of performers, using stones to create percussive sounds in the water, here in five live performances from Newfoundland to New York to Wilbraham, MA (the composer's hometown).

Three compositions for solo guitar from Canadian composer Mark Hannesson performed in Saint-Petersburg by Russian guitarist Denis Sorokin and recorded by saxophonist and sound artist Ilia Belorukov; "Each Thing" and "If I Appear Comfortable" using space and a subtle development in extended works; "Triste" using progressions of distorted tones and decay.

Two works from German composer Andre O. Moller: 9 Dances for Natalie Bohrer, a visual artist and painter, in a work deriving pitches and durations from a transformation of numbers, using Christoph Schiller's album "spinet" as sources; and "ungerarde" exploring pitch relations from a recording of radio static with durations in a proportional canon structure.

Three detailed and fragile compositions from German minimalist composer Eva-Maria Houben reveal themselves over two CDs, performed by the Boston-based experimental music ensemble, Ensemble Ordinary Affects, with Houben herself on organ recording at Memorial Chapel, in Wesleyan University, CT: three movements from "echo fantasy"; "gesang XI"; and "unter anderen".

When the Zeitkratzer Ensemble was asked to perform a late ensemble work by John Cage, director Reinhold Friedl turned to composer Burkhard Schlothauer, who reworked one of Cage's Number Pieces to create this rich piece using Cage's methods; plus a composition for the dance piece "Bewegte Bauhausbilder"; and an octet commissioned for the Klangzeit-Festival Time Is On My Side.

Several of late Swiss composer Hans-Jurg Meier's works are performed in duo, trio and quartet settings, whose compositions merged baroque forms with translations of architecture, «qEndeavoring to make physically tangible the sensual qualities of the musical material (tones, intervals, texture) while exploring the interaction of nature, form and beauty.

Antoine Beuger's piece merges compositional and improvised approaches, drawing on the text "the memories of RN", as he performs on flute, voice and objects with the electroacoustic improvising ensemble Colectivo maDam, merging long instrumental phrases with words, syllables or letters, using space and detachment to create numerous possibilities to resonate.

A beautiful rendering of French composer Eric Satie's 1918 masterwork "Socrate", originally for four sopranos and chamber orchestra, here stripped to its essence as a duo with Olalla Aleman on soprano and Guy Vandromme on piano, maintaining Satie's characterist reserve and refinement in the 3 parts: "portrait of socrates"; "banks of the ilissus"; and "death of socrates".

Two clarinetists--John McCowen, also the composer, and Madison Greenstone, both on clarinet & bass clarinet--taking the title from Boethius' (427-524 AD) printed work on ancient Greek music: "De institutione musica", as they generate long-form drones using the harmonic interactions and interference patterns of similar tones, overtones, and difference tones; impressively intense.

An adaptation from "Sileen", a composition commissioned by Musica For The Festival Oortreders at Neerpelt, Belgium, 2016 performed with 50 members of a local music school; "Sileen II" was realized with only Gareth Davis on bass clarinet plus sounds from Machinefabriek, recorded in the same pitch and tempo as "Sileen', then slowed to half its speed and one octave lower.

The 2nd part of a trilogy for guitar and sinetones composed between 2015-18, alongside "What Might Occur (Rereadings of Triadic Memories by Morton Feldman for guitar and sinewaves)" (2015-17) and "Un Lloc Entre Dos Records" (2017); this work, originally written in 2016, and revised in 2018, is heard in a recording at GMEA, France, with guitarist Benjamin Maumus.

John Cage wrote his "Number Pieces" in the last years of his life, using his time bracket technique of short fragments allowing the performer flexibility in interpretation; each piece is titled for the number of performers and its ordinal position in the series, and most pieces are dedicated to a musician; here pianist Guy Vandromme performs three of the "One", or solo, series.

Conservatory trained Argentinian saxophonist Sergio Merce uses a prepared tenor sax and a microtonal sax to create rich harmonics and slowly moving tonal works, layering aberrant and alluring tones in restrained configurations that allow each stratum of sound to be distinguished and appreciated, creating mesmerizing compositions of elusive and illusionistic sound.

A sextet of Cyril Bondi (vibraphone), d'Incise (metallic objects), Magnus Granberg (piano), Anna Lindal (Baroque violin), Anna-Kaisa Meklin (viola de gamba) and Christoph Schiller (spinet) perform two works composed by Bondi and d'Incise, recorded by Simon Reynell of Another Timbre, works of repetition with distinct variations that evolve as each piece progresses.

Pianist and composer Dante Boon performs his own work "Years, Numbers", alongside Antoine Beuguer's "Pour Etre Seul(e), Sans Reserve" and Taylan Susam's "Tombeau", and Bueger's "Nov. (piano)", four works of graceful and introspective beauty using minimal approaches to tone, chord, or spaciousness, recorded live at University Of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2014.

Fourteen pieces for solo guitar from Norwegian composer Johan Lindvall, sparse yet warmly spaced pieces that focus on the individual notes or simple chords in intimate ways, meditative yet warmly evocative; two sections are presented in multiple movements, with "five songs for voice and guitar", Rasten singing words written by Marianne Moore; lovely and refined.

Marianne Schuppe continues to reimagine songs and their relation to tone and melody, here in a series of 11 songs realized with voice, lute, and uber bows, creating delicate accompaniment to her lucid movements between pure sound and words, singing and speaking her lyrics of succinct phrases rich in subtle intimation and evocative imagery; beautiful.

Written in 1963 for up to 15 peformers plus a conductor who may also make sound, Japanese composer and Fluxus artist Toshi Ichiyanagi's score has 16 pages marked with combinations of lines, dots and letters indicating duration, number of events, and moments of restraint, each player using a different page, with certain options of switching pages with another player during performance.

Five works for harp and voice from composer Eva-Maria Houben and soprano Tatiana Kuzina, opening with a lovely "Aeolian Harp", and including two works from her "Voice and Piano" album recorded for harp--"Adagio" in 3 movements, and "Songs for the Island" in 5 movements--alongside "Hatid" and "Two Songs with Piano" in two movements.

Three compositions for voice and piano from German composer Eva-Maria Houben, also performing on piano with soprano vocalist Irene Kurka--"Adagio" in three pieces; "Lyri"; and "Lieder Fur Die Insel (Songs for the Island)--with texts from poet Felix Timmermans (adagio) and Hilde Domin (lyrik); beautiful, stark, haunting music that presents at its own pace.

Composer Michael Winter uses the "maximally complex, incomputable number" known as Chaitin's Constant, plus text adapted from Gregory Chaitin's 1994 book "The Limits Of Mathematics", samples from 36 creative musicians, the voice of Muirgen Eleonore Gourgues, plus cello from Judith Hamann and piano from Winters, to create this curious and compelling narrative work.

Composer Eva-Maria Houben in a collaborative work with bass flutist Rebecca Lane and bass clarinetist Samuel Dunscomb, the composer performing on piano and orgran, for two renderings of "Observing Objects", a patient work of long notes and tones interspersed with silence, lower registers in the winds balanced by the piano or organ's upper register.

German pianist Dominik Blum presents his second album for the Wandelweiser label, performing a selection of compositions from Swiss composer Hermann Meier (1906-2002), whose forward-looking work with reduced scores, modern use of time and space, and graphics scores in compositions pre-dating Messiaen, Stockhausen, Boulez, &c. that are only recently being rediscovered.

Swiss composer and percussionist Cyril Bondi, recording with d'incise, renders his piece "euhesma" (a genus within the bee family in Australia), a work performed on indian harmonium, melodica, harmonica, pitch pipes, and electric organ that slowly introduces and overlaps tones, varying the pitch, harmony, and amplitude to create rich aural environments.

London-based composer Emmanuelle Waeckerle in a project of spoken word, flute and melodica with contributors including Antoine Beuger, using minimal and multiple narrations in texts that blend erotic literature, conceptual writing and verbal scores, presented as 2 Scores for voice(s) and instrument(s) based upon Pauline Reage's "Story of O".

Kevin Good organized this composition from four field recordings collected near Avon, CT, isolating sounds that he found interesting and then attempting to recreate them on other instruments, finally adding the human voice sparsely utilized throughout the piece, all to promote the idea of listeners actively paying attention to the sounds of their environment.

Soprano vocalist Irene Kurka performs two works works by Antoine Beuger, and one each by Christopher Fox, Eva-Maria Houben, and Thomas Stiegler, accompanied by Antoine Beuger on flute for his composition "Chants de Passage"; 5 beautiful, unhurried works that bring the delicate beauty of each compositions, and of Kurka's refined voice, to a resonant foreground.

American organist and composer Carson Cooman performs three sontatinas, each in three movements, and the 2014 work "drones", by German contemporary composer Eva Maria Houben, a member of the Wandelweiser group, all slowly evolving works of tone and subtle harmonics.

The duo of Beat Keller and Philipp Bowee on electric guitars perform 6 subtle compositions from Turkish-born sound artists and composer Cem Guney's, including 'a bas relief of a talisman' dedicated to Charles Ives and 'soft kill incubator' dedicated to Sylvia Alexandra Schimag.

Antoine Beuger performs composer Maria De Alvear's 1995 contemplative work "Besando El Tiempo" (Kissing The Time) written using an automatic script and originally composed for the flautist Caren Levine; after hearing Beuger's interpretation she requested that he record it, the result this rendition that takes the composition on an introspective journey.

The MaDam Electroacoustic Improvisation Collective based in Spain performs the first in Pisaro's 34 piece Harmony Series, which attempts to create the conditions for a harmonic situation without giving any actual notes, just numbers, durations of tones, and pauses; this work is based on "swell piece (for alison knowles)" (1967) by James Tenney.

Composer Burkhard Schlothauer, co-founder of Editions Wandelweiser and a member of Zeitkratzer and the Wandwelweiser Composers Ensemble, in a five part work conceived as a single part, combining previous works into various possible versions as "events", working with spatial distribution, slow beats, noise, and pulse, superimposed from their origins.

Two works from two distinctive composers from different periods--Jurg Frey and Luigi Nono--both for two violins, Frey using the two violins in parallel to emphasize their distinction; Nono using powerful gestures of divergence and contrast in a dream-like duo.

A 2003 recording from The Ensemble Daswirdas performing John Cage's 1960 composition "Cartridge Music", described as: "For amplified small sounds; also amplified piano or cymbal; any number of players and loudspeakers; parts to be prepared from score by performers."

Luke Martin began this work with a field recording at Mentryville Park in Southern California, which was transcribed by himself and Amy Golden, Ben Levinson, Davy Sumner, and Ryan Gaston using Martin's system of notating silence, then combined into the final score for this recording.

Pianist Roger Admiral performs Canadian composer Mark Hannesson's "The Angel's Game", and "Memory Sustained", both minimal works for solo piano, the second using a set of instructions giving the performer advice and discretion over pacing and approach.

Christoph Schiller performs on the spinet, often improvising with electronics and objects; here he uses the spinet alone in patiently developing compositions that emphasize the individual tones and harmonics of the instrument played on the keys and inside the instrument.

Swedish composer and pianist Johan Lindvall in a series of 27 works performed solo or in an ensemble with Vilde Sandve Alnaes (violin), Kristine Tjogersen(clarinet), Jan Martin Gismervik(percussion), Henrik Munkeby Norstebo(trombone), Ina Sagstuen(voice), & Fredrik Rasten(guitar).

Developed from the 13th & 14th century concept of a "book of hours", a prayer book for laymen, and particularly the book of the Duke of Berry (1340-1416) which describes relationships between people; performed by Andreas Feilen, Eva-Maria Houben, and Erik Carlson.

Two conceptual compositions from Christoph Korn: the first, "Ich Spreche Diesen" (I appeal to this) where spoken word is placed in a loop and then slowly erased by custom software using aleatory procedures; then "Stille" (Silent), a Cage inspired work.

Pushing the envelope on minimalism, Manfred Werder's 3 scores for "2003" present just 6 tones, the instructions telling 3, 2 or 1 performers to play a pitch or sound for 3-7 seconds twice during the performance; realized by Erik Carlson, Stephanie Richards, and D. Edward Davis.

A superb program of string trios from minimalist composers Beat Keller, Tom Johnson, and Joseph Kudirka, from cinematic to spacious sound work, as realized by the trio of Julia Schwob on violin, David Schnee on viola, and Nicola Romano on cello.