Catalog

NIGHT VOICED, the new release by San Francisco composer Mark Winges, is a collection of warm sounding and texturally rich works featuring the viola in a lush variety of solo, duo, and trio contexts. The title of the album is based on the individual composition of the same name, which is from a poem by Carolyn Forché, "a viola, night-voiced, calls into its past but nothing comes," and reflects the often nocturnal feeling of the program. Other titles such as wary-gliding, ghostly, "Melted Red, Frozen Black", and "Here (marginally buoyant)," offer a hint of the delightful vignettes and turns the music takes along the way.

WINE DARK SEA is the debut Ravello release from "music's new rare pair", COULOIR (The Georgia Straight). With evocative, emotional music by today's living composers, WINE DARK SEA will take you to "...a full-hearted space, with a sense of deep compassion for and with the world..." Deftly interpreted and expressively performed by Canada's outstanding contemporary music duo, this music by Jocelyn Morlock, Baljinder Sekhon and Glenn Buhr allows a journey into deep listening. "A profoundly beautiful piece of art." (Glenn Sutherland, Composer)

COMPOSITIONAL IMPROVISATIONS: FROM THE MYSTERIA, VOL. 1 is Gregory Hall's debut collection of improvisational classical music based on contemporary music theory, performed by the composer himself. Hall's improvisations feature sprawling-yet-contained passages that weave in and out of harmonic motives, drifting away from centralized themes and seamlessly returning to the source material. The tracks on COMPOSITIONAL IMPROVISATIONS draw from Hall's live concerts of compositional improvisation, which harken back to the days when improvisation was commonplace in classical performance.

MUSIC FROM 3 CONTINENTS presents the choral works of Bruce Mahin and Graham Hair performed by Scottish Voices, harpists Jacqueline Pollauf and Helen Thompson, and clarinetist Alex South. Representing an international collaboration between artists from around the globe, the works on this album draw from various texts and inspirations, uniting to illustrate the connectedness of music and its influence. Included on MUSIC FROM 3 CONTINENTS are Bruce Mahin's Time², three settings of poems by Robert Penn Warren, unified by the nexus of "time passing," and Whitman Psalms, a piece considering the enormity of God and attempting a hypothetical conversation between man and God; and Graham Hair's O Venezia, a progressively accumulating song cycle drawing texts from Venetians and visitors, and Songs from the Turkish, a piece exploring the mysticism of Islam.

Written in the summer of 2011 for David J. Martins and the Boston University Wind Ensemble, Boston-based composer Ketty Nez's thresholds is a piano concerto inspired by music of different eras, including the canonic manipulations of Renaissance vocal music, piquant harmonies of Elizabethan virginal composers, Stravinskian reinterpretations of Baroque idioms, and occasionally, a huge barrel organ. As a kind of musical actor, the piano soloist theatrically leads the ensemble in abrupt changes of style and character so as to create a fractured world with sonic allusions changing rapidly and repeatedly.

Composed in the wake of 9/11, Barry Seroff's Democracy is a multifaceted, genre-spanning examination of the spiritual and philosophical roots of American thought. Calling on texts from Quaker preachers, American poets, Japanese haiku, and Nietzsche, Seroff forms a flowing narrative charting our cultural development from the innocence and purity of infancy through the growing awareness of adolescence and adulthood, to our ultimate peacemaking with the joy of childhood. Seroff draws influences including classicism, jazz, hardcore punk and more and stitches the seemingly disparate elements of inspiration and source materials into an organic, evolving piece that seeks to explain the intricacies and history of American culture.

TRACER, a collection of recent chamber works by composer Richard Cornell, explores the nature of art and the collaboration that occurs naturally among artists and the interaction between creator and influence. Comprised of live recordings, this album highlights the performers' instincts to respond to one another, interpreting the music as individuals and as a group, and exploring the intricacies of the works as they are played. This release includes a visual version of Tracer, the centerpiece of the album, which serves as a computer-rendered survey of art and culture that guides and morphs the music to match the viewer's progress through time and space; as the viewer travels among an imagined world, the music responds to the imagery.

Composed with integrity, mystery, and ambition, the orchestral works of Marga Richter thrive on the emotional and the visceral, conjuring vast and majestic imagery with poetic and dramatic underpinnings. POETIC IMAGES BEYOND POETRY includes three of Richter's works for orchestra, each of which present a tonal and moving representation of their various influences: Out of Shadows and Solitude, inspired by the flight of a condor over clouded mountaintops; Quantum Quirks of a Quick Quaint Quark, based on Richter's early dance music and boogie-woogie; and Spectral Chimes: Enshrouded Hills, permeated with imagery from Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

LEANING TOWARD THE FIDDLER is a recording of original works by Seattle-based violinist and singer Hope Wechkin, which also includes her inventive arrangements of traditional Balkan folk songs. Wechkin's virtuosic and innovative pairing of voice and violin, which she performs simultaneously, fuses folk, classical, and world music into a blend of genres that emerges "full-bore, all-out, utterly unselfconsciously" (Seattle Times). The works on LEANING TOWARD THE FIDDLER range from themes of passionate longing to humorous musical feuds between lovers, highlighting Wechkin's ability to perform in a wide breadth of styles with great ease and skill.

THE ETERNAL TAO, a one-act multimedia opera for voices instruments, video, electronics, dancers, and lighting presents the text of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching translated and re-imagined in the context of modern society. Through this opera, which has parallels with traditional opera, but differs from singer-oriented opera in the sense that the vocalists are a part of the ensemble as a whole, composer, director, and choreographer Kyong Mee Choi seeks to have viewers experience a shared moment of seeing ourselves with open eyes and understand our purpose in the world.

Lifelong guitarist Alex Lubet has created a unique niche, combining his instrumental experience with his traditional studies of composition. On SPECTRAL BLUES, a full album of his works for steel-string acoustic guitar, Lubet combines the characteristics of blues and Eastern styles with classical methods of composition to create remarkably unique pieces that push the boundaries of the instrument. Combining natural harmonies with single-string multiphonics and dyads, Doppler bends, and more, Lubet presents multi-layered guitar music with an edge.

CASINO UMBRO is the debut Ravello release from Israeli composer Amos Elkana, bringing listeners into a sonic world comprised of thoughtful, expressive, and emotional works for chamber ensemble, voice, and orchestra. Ranging from the dreamy, jazz-like Casino Umbro to the linguistic and tumultuous Arabic Lessons to the imaginative and fanfaric Tru'a, CASINO UMBRO conveys the essence of humanity and international relations through communicative and sophisticated musical expression.

CONCERTO FOR PIANO WITH PERCUSSION ORCHESTRA is the fifth Ravello release from the acclaimed McCormick Percussion Group. Living up to their reputation as vanguards of percussion repertoire, the Group uses this album to explore the possibilities of collaboration between piano and percussion wherein neither steals the spotlight. Along with Ji Hyun Kim ("a masterful pianist" - Piano Magazine), the McCormick Percussion Group performs the works of Igor Santos, Mel Mobley, David Gillingham, and David Noon with precision, emotion, and purpose.

The works of Andrew May nearly defy classification, seamlessly blending the personal expressiveness of traditional classical performance with the alien landscape of ambient computer music. On IMAGINARY FRIENDS, his debut release, May invites the listener to experience the drama of people and machines making intimate chamber music together, blurring the lines between human and inhuman, and traditional and experimental.

FROM MOOG TO MAC is a collection of Deutsch's compositions for and performances on the Moog synthesizer spanning the last 30 years, from works written using the original "portable electronic music studio" to those written on the modern variations. This historic release features developmental tracks tracking the genesis and improvements on the synthesizers, in which Deutsch frequently pushes the boundaries of both musical content and technological innovation.

GODS, DEMONS, AND THE EARTH was originally released in 1995 was lauded as "awesome" (ClassicalNet) and "surreal" (Twentieth Century Music).

FANTASIES FOR ADULTS AND OTHER CHILDREN was originally released in 1999 was lauded as "awesome" and "at times Cageian and Crumbian" (ClassicalNet).

THE ELECTRIC PERFORMER was originally released in 1997 was lauded as "awesome" "at times Cageian and Crumbian" (ClassicalNet).

Phillip Schroeder's SONGS OF MY AFFINITIES was originally released in 2003, and was lauded as "gems of the American repertoire" (New Music Connoisseur) and "striking and beautiful" (Sequenza21).

Phillip Schroeder's MUSIC FOR PIANO was originally released in 2004, and was lauded as "resonant music played with exceptional grace" (New Classics) and "viscerally relaxing" (NewMusicBox).