Catalog

In HEARING VOICES, his third album of electronic music with Ravello Records, Jeff Morris captivates the psyche with music that is equal parts space age and primeval. With Morris’s characteristic sensitivity, the collection harnesses the expressive power of digital glitches, sonic manipulation, and underneath it all, the human voice.

Poet and musician Aidan Andrew Dun offers extremely unique works of spoken word poetry recitation, with keyboard accompaniment, in his Ravello Records release HONEYLAND. The album’s offerings can be seen to have roots in a number of Western musical and literary practices. Dun’s geographically specific epic poetry recalls the writings of James Joyce, and his interest in reciting poems to music suggests the influence of English poet and painter William Blake.

Exciting new Ravello Records release I DREAM AWAKE consists of chamber music composed by new PARMA composer Bill Whitley. Whitley’s music is characterized by meditative and trance-like qualities inspired by various forms of meditation practice, and, above all, the artistic installations of Alexander Calder. Indeed, Whitley’s music seems to be primarily concerned with depicting and embodying experiences, whether they be sensory, natural, spiritual, or human experiences.

If glaciers could speak, what would they tell us? On ICEFIELD, veteran composer Matthew Burtner answers that very question with an eclectic series of works that explore the intersection between the environment and controlled sound. Combining specialized field recordings of glaciers and Arctic storms, electroacoustics, and traditional instruments, Burtner creates surreal soundscapes that blur the line between audio and physical experience—from the opera Auksalaq to the audio synthesization of data on Sonification of an Arctic Lagoon, each piece on the album channels the whip-crack chill of the air, the blinding snow, and the awe-inspiring sight of glacial fields breaking apart and bringing sea levels higher and higher.

What can one expect from a musician who spent his youth getting into trouble by furtively composing in chemistry class? Apparently a lot, provided they are cut from the same cloth as multi-faceted composer Phil Salathé, the brains behind IMAGINARY BIRDS: MUSIC FOR OBOE AND ENGLISH HORN.

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.

On his debut Ravello Records release IMMERSION, ABSORPTION, CONNECTION., composer Edgar Barroso presents a retrospective collection of works that explore his interest with modern science and technologies, social customs, spirituality, and more, using a variety of ensemble combinations and extended techniques for an array of textures and tonal colors.

Few events happen that shock all living generations, causing them to never forget their memories. For many, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. is such an event. In 1970, composer Mary Ann Joyce-Walter wrote a piece in honor of King, Immortal Diamond – the title track on her release single on Ravello Records.

10 emerging composers assemble and offer insight into our societal world through music on IN TANDEM from violinist Lucia Lin. Each work featured on this album represents a social cause close to its composer’s heart, commenting on inequality and breaking down barriers by building social awareness. Orchestrated in intimate duo settings, Lin’s virtuosic violin playing is complemented by a variety of selected string, percussion, piano, and vocal performers, each offering a fresh ingredient to a diverse and conversation-igniting program.

INTERFACES explores the different ways a computer can fit in a modern jazz ensemble and still be true to itself. Technology performer Jeff Morris is joined by free jazz icon Karl Berger on vibes and piano as well as innovative New York percussionist Joe Hertenstein. Morris takes sounds from his partners live in the moment and transforms them into his own musical voice with the DNA of acoustic sounds and the fingerprints of digital processing. This live sampling improvisation results in expressively shifting quasi-loops and glitchy melodic gestures, drawn from music that just happened and influencing what the performers will do next.

INTERSECTIONS from the dynamic chamber group Khemia Ensemble invites listeners to meditate on the confluence of beginnings, endings, and the hope and grief that can accompany those events. With intersections of acoustic chamber music, electronics, and multi-genre influences, the album features a stinging commentary on microagressions (Sink’s Bite!), a tumultuous mother/daughter relationship (Freund’s Song of Persephone), a tender lullaby dedicated to his newborn son, rooted in a family ritual of planting a cottonwood tree (Benavides’ Little Cloud), an exploration of memory inspired by Yayoi Kusama’s infinity rooms (Biedenbender’s in a field of stars), and an assertion of identity through Bollywood melodies and American pop sensibilities (Shekhar’s Don’t Beat a Word). By showcasing commissioned music by five living composers, Khemia Ensemble demonstrates their commitment to reflecting broader perspectives in contemporary classical chamber music.

On INTO THE GREEN, clarinetist Wesley Ferreira takes listeners on an aural journey through a world of musical possibilities where digital and analog become one. Works for solo clarinet place it in the midst of sprawling electronic soundscapes, providing ethereal backdrops for its earthy timbre. With technical flair and blistering speeds, Ferreira perfectly blends the instrument with industrial beats, atmospheric arpeggios, and reverberating effects, creating a seamless juxtaposition of computer-based composition and classical, folk, and world music. In doing so, Ferreira and the composers create a sense of old meeting the new, where the lushness and abundance of nature live in harmony with the exciting possibilities of technology.

Work metamorphosis through various media — INTROSPECTION’s subtitle says it best. The Zagreb Academy of Music returns to Ravello Records with their characteristic forward thinking. Music professors from the Academy come together to not only release piano pieces from the Academy, but to use these pieces as the source material for new electronic compositions. The result is INTROSPECTION.

"I had inquired with a few friends a few months earlier to attempt to take advantage of the stop by setting up a performance opportunity for myself. I learned that there was a great house-concert situation at "Tom's Place" in Berkeley, and was able to secure a date. I was also very lucky to be able to contact and enlist the wonderful keyboardist Eric Glick Rieman, who works often with prepared keyboards. I had some familiarity with his work through my years of hosting the weekly radio program of "creative instrumental music" called The New Edge, on WMBR in Cambridge, MA. A few musicians were suggested to round out the trio, and we were fortunate to end up with fantastically creative percussionist and gong player Karen Stackpole."

Ed Martin's Ravello Records debut JOURNEYS could not be more aptly titled. This album of highly original piano compositions invites the listener on a voyage through mysterious realms where the limits of the sensual and the intuitive dissolve – a journey that is at times epic, and at other times epically quiet. The album commences with Three Pieces for Piano (2006), a modernist melange whose gamut ranges from dissonant serenity to rhythmic agitation. They're perfectly, intimately rendered by pianist Jeri-Mae G. Astolfi, who performs the entirety of JOURNEYS with great clarity, structural insight and precision, never losing touch with the primal, emotional appeal of the compositions.

Ravello Records is pleased to announce the release of JUBILUS & PANTOMIME, a full-length DVD performance of the works by internationally acclaimed composer Gheorghe Costinescu. Performed by The Ensemble Sospeso at New York City's Miller Theatre, this live recording presents two of Constinescu's celebrated works: Jubilus for soprano, trumpet, and percussive body sounds, an expression of physical and spiritual rejoicing hailed as "a work of enormous vitality and originality" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette); and Pantomime for chamber orchestra, a choreographic work for fifteen musicians featuring movement dictated by musical patterns called "a ballet of gestures sustained by lively and deeply felt music" (Le Monde).

First released in 2010, JUPITER DUO showcases music for cello/piano duo, solo piano, and for solo cello by Alla Elana Cohen. She and cellist Sebastian Baverstam make up Jupiter Duo, and have performed together for many years since Baverstam was 12 years old. They perform Cohen’s highly expressive music with an unbridled intensity, and have a reputation for having a close musical connection.

On his debt release on Ravello Records, JUST MUSIC: MUSIC FOR PIANO IN FIVE LIMIT JUST INTONATION, Croatian composer Zoran Šćekić presents an open series of compositions aiming to explore the harmony of a non-tempered microtonal system based on integer harmonics, or just intonation. Performed by Croatian pianist Ana Žgur, the pieces on this album explore the use of intervals in five limit just intonation, a method in which intervals are built on the prime numbers 2, 3, and 5. Šćekić’s economical use of notes emphasizes the contrast between consonant and dissonant intervals in harmony and melody, chord inversions, and use of the syntonic comma.

KEEP GOING: THE MUSIC OF ELIAS TANENBAUM features the chamber and solo works of the late Elias Tanenbaum performed by Ensemble Pi. The pieces demonstrate Tanenbaum's ability to turn his emotional reactions to world events into music that illustrates both the life-changing grief and need for change that those events cause. As Tanenbaum himself said, "What is there left in any of us but to keep going?" Ensemble Pi is a new music ensemble dedicated to performing the music of both living composers and undiscovered composers of the past. Keep Going is the ensemble's tribute to Tanenbaum, whose beautiful and thought-provoking music has never received the widespread recognition it deserves.

Juxtaposing the loud and abrasive with the soft and subtle, the McCormick Percussion Group balances tumult and tender in KID STUFF. Led by director Robert McCormick, Professor of Music at the University of South Florida in Tampa, the percussion orchestra re-imagines original compositions from five key contemporary classical composers.