Classical Music 148 Items

Transversales Disques proudly presents Alain Goraguer Rare Soundtracks & Lost Tapes. French composer Alain Goraguer who first made a name for himself as a sideman and arranger for Serge Gainsbourg wrote very few soundtracks, but amongst them, the legendary La Planète Sauvage (1973) is an absolute staple of France’s essential music. During that same period of time, Goraguer wrote two rare and beautiful scores using the same masterclass arrangements. On L’Affaire Dominici (1975), Alain Goraguer creates a theme of great melodic clarity from a palette of breathy flutes, clavinet D6 baroque textures, wah-wah guitars and slow-paced drums that clearly reminds La Planete Sauvage’s atmosphere. The same can be said about the score of Au delà de la peur (1975) with its descending clavinet melody, twanging bass riff, funky drums and flashes of bended electric guitars. This record also includes never before released tracks found in the vaults of French national radio: beautiful and timeless orchestral compositions recorded at Studio 105, Maison de la radio.

Explore the sonic landscapes of Trobollowitsch's latest vinyl release, where trumpet strains intertwine with resonant energies, able to fold, deform, and compress time and space so deftly that one has the impression of hearing echoes of distant worlds and times - 'everything everywhere all at once.'

Ben Glas (b. 1992) is an experiential composer based in Berlin. Through ephemeral compositions Glas' work questions preconceived notions between the acts of passive hearing and active listening. In seeking to discover open ended forms of music and pragmatic listening perspectives, Glas' compositions focus on the realms of subjective perception and cognition, via the use of acoustics, psychoacoustics and space as tools for sonic composition. His work has been exhibited and performed internationally, including the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (pica), Glasgow's Radiophrenia Festival, the Soundwave Biennial (sf) and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (cica). He is currently receiving his M.A. in Sonic Studies at the UdK.
Ben Glas writes… "Anonymous Sextet for Perverted Piano is a conceptual performance piece that combines a traditional grand piano, six long-distance remote controlled vaginal/anal vibrators and the prolonged use of the piano's sustainer pedal.
The six vibrators were strategically (and preparedly) placed atop of the strings of a various grand pianos (and one harpsichord), while random strangers around the globe connected to and operated the sex toys remotely. After the random and unwitting performers had befriended and synced-up with a catfishing account linked to the six individual vibrators and controlled by three different smartphones, they then sent vibrational patterns and pulses to stimulate their assumed target. The then-kinetic vibrators bounced, slid and bopped aleatorically through the tonal possibilities that the piano and piano's soundboard itself permits. The piano's sustain pedal was held down throughout the performance, elongating the triggered notes and the good vibrations.
All tracks on side A are performed by those unwitting performers, while side B's single track was performed with (more than) a little help from my friends (Anonymous (1), Genesis Victoria, Harry Hudson-Taylor and Hayden Dean)." – Ben Glas, Berlin, 16 February 2023.

Fantas is the epic opening track on Caterina Barbieri’s acclaimed 2019 release Ecstatic Computation. The original Fantas laid out a magical path of patterns leading the listener on a journey into the sound itself. Fantas Variations maps out eight new potentials sprung from this initial path as constructed by a diverse mix of artists lending to a wide spectrum of new works extrapolated from the original work. For this project Barbieri invited friends and long time collaborators from a variety of musical backgrounds to create a more sustainable and inclusive landscape in terms of stylistic, geographical, gender and generational balance. The results are a diverse array of approaches and instrumentation which blur the boundaries between the acoustic and electronic.

Fantas Variations embraces a platform for mutual exchange and support between like-minded artists, where active and collective re-imagination is prioritised over the traditional model of remixes, which is often strategic, functional and more passive.

Longtime friend and collaborator Kali Malone rearranged Fantas to a slowed-down, austere and eerie version for two Organs. Evelyn Saylor created a piece for a vocal ensemble consisting of her, Lyra Pramuk, Stine Janvin and Annie Garlid, joining forces to express the choral, psychedelic and vitalistic nature of the piece. Barbieri’s former guitar professor at the Conservatory in Bologna, Walter Zanetti, composes Fantas for electric guitar, by translating every single gesture of the original electronic piece into a personal, nuanced and detailed interpretation. Bendik Giske’s reinterpretation for Saxophone and Voice captures the atmospheric essence of Fantas and its psychic meteorology. Longtime collaborator and along with Barbieri the other half of the outfit Punctum, Carlo Maria, resynthesizes Fantas for Tr808 and Mc202, bringing a more club-oriented dimension of the piece to life whilst unveiling the sonic continuum between rhythm and pitch through a sensitive timbral approach. Jay Mitta’s Singeli reinterpretation of Fantas transpires with pitched-up percussion and turbo-fast polyrhythmic patterns unleashing the frenetic, shifting, transformative matter within the piece to a higher plain of euphoric dance. Baseck’s variation is a rave fantasia, where the prismatic trance of the original is channeled into fierce, uncompromising hardcore, whilst Kara-Lis Coverdale’s take is a phantasmagoria for piano that gently, yet inexorably, captures the relentlessness chimerical qualities of the original, unveiling its spectral backbone.

Wavy grave rave for better tomorrow.

Another first-time-on-vinyl release from Koko, Ballads For Bass Clarinet (previously a Japan-only CD) comprises a couple of waltzes, a blues, a Monk-ish suite-like piece, a free-ish drums and clarinet interlude, and finally an elegy to civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer.

David Murray leads on bass clarinet, managing to go both deep and soaringly high; it sometimes sounds like two different instruments are being played. Backed by John Hicks (piano), Ray Drummond (bass) and Idris Muhammad (drums), Murray’s quartet is tight and the recording superb, with a warm and intimate sound.

Highly recommended.

"We Will Live On" by Deru was made with a Disklavier (an acoustic piano outfitted with solenoids that allowed it to be digitally controlled) and custom made software to sequence it. This made the piano appear to play itself. Technology seemingly embedded with humanity.

"The See Within" connects their past with the present, absorbing the experience of collaboration to feed their own inventive beauty. "We spent the last eight years creating music with amazing people, and learning so much," says Leiter. "And when you write your own music, you can't help but bring those people with you." In only a few years, Brussels-based Echo Collective have forged an enviable reputation in the post-classical world: sought out for their instrumental and arranging expertise by icons such as A Winged Victory For The Sullen and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson, or lending their interpretative intuition to genres as diverse as alt.rock, synth-pop and accomplishments as a springboard to a new, illuminating vision. From brief, singular themes to lengthier, shifting and questing episodes, this masterclass in composition, expression and technique bridges intimacy and grandeur in line with the most rewarding of post-classical works.

Limited Edition Cloudy Clear Vinyl.Combining Processed Recordings Of Wind And Water With Analog Synthesizers And Chamber Orchestra, Elori Kramer's The Blue Of Distance Is An Audio Dissertation On The Role Technology Plays In Our Relationships To Geography And Nature, Unspoolinginto An Examination Of Memory And Longing Across Seven Sections That Layer Filmic Minimalism Over Churning Electronic Soundbeds. Half Of The Suite Was Written In The Adirondack Mountains During Summer Amid Lakes, Rivers, And Moss-Ladenforest Floors, While The Other Half Was Conceived On A Frozen Lake Superior Island In Deep Winter, Creating A Subtextual Dialogue Between The Two Extreme Settings. Kramer, Who Was Born In 1990 And Grew Up Alongside The Internet, Uses Her Musicto Explore Nature In The Actual And The Virtual World, Through Direct Experience And Facsimile Alike, Focussing And Blurring The Line Between The Two. "Looking Back At My Videos Of That Summer-- Which Is Where The Processed Audio Came From-- I Triedto Remember What It Had Felt Like To Be There," She Recalls, "Thinking About Questions Of Reality Versus Imagination; Physical Versus Digital; And The Ways In Which Memory Shifts Through Our Minds And Technology." The Title The Blue Ofdistance Was Derived From Rebecca Solnit's Book A Field Guide To Getting Lost, Referring To The Phenomenon Of Faraway Mountains Appearing Blue Due To Light Particles Getting Lost Over Distance. "If We Were To Go Up To The Mountains Thatappear Blue From Far Away, We Would See That They Weren't Actually That Color." She Says. "This Beauty Is Made Possible Because Of Their Distance," Much In The Same Way That The Splendor Of A Lush Season Is Only Fully Realized In The Throes Of A Bleak One, And The Joy Of An Event Can Only Be Felt When It Has Long Since Been Consigned To Remembrance.R.I.Y.L Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Josiah Steinbrick, Emily Sprague

"This album is written and recorded on a reed organ with two manuals and pedals. The instrument was built by Alfred Cedergren who was a reed organ builder 1870–1925 in Vänge on the island Gotland, Sweden. During this period of time Hulda Veström lived in the same village. When Hulda was 14 years old she left her mother and sisters to travel to her father in Los Angeles. In spring 1912 she boarded the Titanic together with her aunt, who was also named Hulda. There is a picture of the two Huldas in the wooden chapel in Vänge where the Cedergren instruments today are gathered. In 2019 Felicia Sjögren moved to Vänge and the chapel with reed organs became her closest neighbor. Over time she got to know the instruments and stories of the village. When she decided to write music on one of the organs she knew she was going to dedicate it to Hulda, a teenage girl 100 years into space and time of this very place. Hulda is also the name of one of the few women prophets in the Bible, appearing in the Old Testament with warnings of the doomsday. The album is written and recorded in the chapel by Felicia Sjögren."

Rediscover the world of Verdi, one of the most influential Opera composers of the 19th century.The vinyl includs some of the most popular songs composed by the Italian Maesto like "La donna è mobile" from "Rigoletto" or "Va, pensiero" from "Nabucco" and parts of the famous "La Traviata"

Henrik Schwarz and !K7 are proud to announce a collaboration that will bare many different musical fruits. The first of these is a brand new label called Between Buttons, curated by Henrik and focused on acoustic sounds and contemporary compositions. Between Buttons will be in partnership with !K7’s own neo-classical hub 7K!, and will kick off with a new mini LP by Schwarz entitled Works Piano, followed by an EP entitled Aphorisms by Syrian artists Khaled Kurbeh & Raman Khalaf Ensemble. Mixing up old and new technologies, experimental and more classical approaches, the label will see Schwarz forge new paths in his own work, as well as curating material from the peers he has worked with over the last 15 years. Mainly made up of acoustic sounds, piano, string quartets, self-built instruments, percussion and intriguing classicist elements with a modern twist, there will be EPs from piano virtuoso Bugge Wesseltoft, as well as other electronic producers wanting to show themselves in a different, more 'unplugged' light. “In these times of constant turbo mode, likes and thumbs-up, we need to go back to basics,” says Henrik. “We want to move away from the idea that relentless hasty productivity is a must, and instead take time to create space, to let ideas mature and to focus the mind on subtler sounds.”
Works Piano will be a four track mini album that uses a Yamaha Disklavier as the starting point and reimagines it, reworks it and alters it with various digital and recording technologies. One track is a created with a reactive algorithm and one is composed purely from altered and processed piano sounds.

Beving has been one with the piano from an early age. He was forced to end his musical studies at the conservatory and instead continued at university to get a degree in social sciences. However, his love for his instrument never perished.

Where once his goal was to hit as many notes per minute as physically possible, his style of playing has changed over the years, searching for a particular aesthetic essence. His path was illuminated by a piano that Beving inherited from his grandmother when she passed away in 2009. This German instrument insisted on a more gentle touch and a gracious pace, which eventually led Beving to adapt to a more classical vocabulary to tell his story.

Joep Beving is a composer and musician, but to the international advertising community he is mostly known as the face of music agency MassiveMusic.

Behold! I Make All Things New is all instrumental and consists of sparse works for lute and electronics. There are no vocals this time. It is more a return to the minimal neo classical style of his early work. It was written and recorded in lockdown in Warsaw and Rotterdam between 2019 and 2021. Jozef van Wissem is an avant garde composer and lutenist playing his all black, one of a kind custom made baroque lute all around the world.Jozef van Wissem is an avant garde composer and lutenist playing his all black, one of a kind custom made baroque lute all around the world.According to the New York Times "Van Wissem is both an avant-garde composer and a baroque lutenist, and thus no stranger to dichotomy". His completely unique musical world can be easily verified by his collaborations, especially that these relationships are also strengthening his own musical character. He worked together with Zola Jesus, Tilda Swinton, Jarboe as well as with his long-time collaborative partner, also his friend, Jim Jarmusch. The timeless value of his work can be described by one of his previous interviews: "_the lute goes against all technology and against all computers and against all the shit you don't need."

Jozef Van Wissem- Lute, Electronics, Beats, Electric Guitar, Found Bird Sounds. In 2013 van Wissem won the Cannes Soundtrack Award at the Cannes Film Festival for Jim Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive ". In December 2017 Jozef van Wissem was invited to perform the madrigal depicted in Caravaggio's painting The Lute Player (1596) at the Hermitage museum of Saint Petersburg. In 2022 three of his works were used for in the soundtrack and trailer of Irma Vep (HBO). His completely unique musical world can be easily verified by his collaborations, especially that these relationships are also strengthening his own musical character. He worked together with Zola Jesus, Tilda Swinton, Jarboe as well as with his long-time collaborative partner, also his friend, Jim Jarmusch. "La Cinémathèque Française in Paris commissioned me to write and perform the score at the presentation of the restored version of Nosferatu. I was a bit overwhelmed by its success. It was sold out. I wasn't going to repeat it. But people kept asking. In the beginning the soundtrack was more improvised and reactive to the images but after a few times the audience kind of showed me the way. To start with a few notes and building the score slowly to a dense slow metal ending. I found an old 7-inch single with recordings of extinct birds on a market, I electronically processed and added them to the score . " Manipulating the sounds of electric guitar in alternate tuning he manages to create the feeling of fear, equal to the experience of the victims of Count Orlok. "To me Nosferatu personifies this Death Bird of the Plague. The Black Death depicted in the film offers a timeless parallel with contemporary society. The vampire Count Orlok infests the city with rats and people are infected with the plague. They must quarantaine. This provokes hysteria. Much like nowadays".

Jules Archive is a project founded by Marco Marzuoli and Marco Mazzei in 2016.

By employing various technologies, instruments, and approaches, the duo strives to craft a mysterious and fantastical persona named Jules. Through this persona, they aim to immerse listeners in a dreamlike atmosphere, transcending reality and dwelling in imaginary spatiotemporal dimensions.

Platonic Tales is the second chapter of Jules' journeys, more anthropocentric than the first album Adventures & Explorations (Volume 1), but equally exotic and dreamlike. The musical intention of this record was to rework a set of five (plus one) melodic tape loops, already structured in "song form”, through detailed arrangements. The treatment followed an experimental-pop-oriented production approach.

Recorded entirely at home by the artists, the music on the album features analog cassettes containing loops dating back to around 2016. The remaining arrangements were composed during the 2020 pandemic lockdown.

Several international guests collaborated on the album:

Lino Capra Vaccina, the legendary Italian percussionist/minimalist composer, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma engaged in a musical dialogue on An Ontological Novel.

Andrew Weathers contributed his voice to the tracks A Superior Truth and Exodus.

Christina Vantzou participated in Exodus and concluded the album with a string composition arranged and conducted by Minna Choi, performed by Magik*Magik Orchestra.

Recorded between Città Sant' Angelo (Pescara - Italy, 2016-2020), Francavilla (Chieti - Italy, 2020), and Firenze (2019-2020).

Eight years after its original release in 2015, and sold out upon release, Umor Rex finally presents a vinyl repress of Sirens, by Kara-Lis Coverdale and LXV. This new edition is limited to 500 copies and comes with revised artwork.

Inspired by the link between seduction and violence, Sirens comprises a series of timbrally vast anamorphic pieces that poise the voice as a newly imagined tool of multiplicity. Processes of sample manipulation, signal processing, routing, and source design inform instrumental writing and performance in feedback until intertwined, flickering between states of conflict and consonance. Apparitions of the schizophrenic voice are at one moment fractured and cold and at the next full of warmth and vivaciousness, embodying velvet rituals of romanticism in the digital age.

Ultimately, Sirens is music for ambitious dreamers: surreal sound portraits sound like the warmth of the world laid over an ice cold virtual altar. LXV’s vocal truncations and fleshy sound palettes depict the archivation of the breath and aural fantasies of the flesh which Coverdale sets amongst a vast and unconfined landscape of deeper and unknown force. Harmonically active and dynamic orchestrations underpin post-sacred tonalities while brooding pipe organs, sphinx flutes, and hailstorms of metallic percussion characterize uniquely disjointed discussions between disparate compositional ontologies. At times violent and at others serenely peaceful and seductive, these pieces, at their most powerful moments illuminate a felt space between cybernetic energy and the body.

Composed and recorded by Kara-Lis Coverdale and David Sutton. Mastered by John Tejada. Cover photograph by Cody Cobb. Layout by Daniel Castrejón.

* In Katta's music, ancient and modern worlds come together, the sacred meets the profane, and technological chasms are crossed: you might hear her play on some of the world's most treasured pipe organs in churches and cathedrals, or on her state-of-the-art, custom-built electric touring organ - and whether the ambience is provided by the dreamy acoustics of vaulted sacred spaces, or electronic soundscapes weaving in and out of her organ lines, the spirit of her music is unmistakable: ethereal, experimental, arresting.

* Katta first came to international prominence as a classical organist and harpsichordist, performing with orchestras such as Anima Eterna (with Jos van Immerseel), Zurich Chamber Orchestra (with Sir Roger Norrington), the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, and the Prague Symphony Orchestra - but it was when she started writing and performing her own music that her artistic identity truly asserted itself. 2016's 'Veni Sancte Spiritus' album was the first to showcase her compositions – other-worldly, spiritual works featuring distinctive vocals and tinkling, percussive bells: by turns lyrical and jarring, they seemed to come from a distant and mysterious past, and yet to belong entirely to the present. Katta’s original vocal/instrumental project Vox Organi won a prize at 2018 Classic Prague Awards.

* Katta also finds inspiration in collaborating with other artists, from British violinist Daniel Hope to American organ sensation Cameron Carpenter. This year she performed at Olavsfest in Norway, taking the stage right after a set from Björk. Her new album 'Vox Organi' will be released soon on Berlin label Emika Records, and Katta has been performing material from the album on her recent tour of the same name.

* Unconfined by genre, yet always instantly recognisable as her own, Katta's music is living proof that the organ remains a vital instrument in the 21st century.