Instrumentation: Electroacoustic

Innovative New Music trumpeter Stephen Ruppenthal commands attention right out the gate. Or perhaps, more specifically, he commands it right out the “NGate” – the subtitle of the opening track on FLAMETHROWER, his Ravello Records debut. The album contains world premieres of five pieces for trumpet, flugelhorn, voice, and crotale, composed specifically for Ruppenthal by Allen Strange, Bruno Liberda, Elainie Lillios, and Brian Belet.

Steven Kemper makes his debut on Ravello Records with his electroacoustic album MYTHICAL SPACES. Kemper combines acoustic instruments and electronics to create meditative compositions that explore the connections between real and imaginary worlds. Kemper writes that “myths represent traces of our collective imagination, and similarities between myths from different cultures point to a shared human experience.”

Ravello Records is proud to present RIPPLING, a new album by composer Robert Morris. Morris recorded the album live at a “Summer at Eastman Concert” in Hatch Recital Hall, in Rochester, NY. Consisting of only two tracks, “Mountain Streams” and “Mysterious Landscape,” these dramatic compositions turn ordinary sounds of nature in extraordinary pursuits of sonic ambience. Like a drop in a pond, both tracks start small and simple only to evolve into an all-encompassing, full sound that excites curiosity while evoking relaxation.

David Taddie’s new album FANCY COLORS blurs the spectrum between acoustic and electronic music into an unorthodox wave of sound. In contrast to the primary characteristics of each type of music, Taddie creates sophisticated, complex compositions by blending the sounds of string and woodwind instruments with the influence of computer-generated effects. Written and recorded over two decades, FANCY COLORS is the result of Taddie’s exploration of timbre and space using the electronic medium. The eight tracks on the album expand the boundaries of the otherwise conventional sounds of instruments like the flute and piano to a grandiose level.

WAKING THE SPARROW, the premiere recording on PARMA RECORDINGS from classical and baroque guitarist Robert Nathanson and soprano Nancy King, performing as Duo Sureño, is the result of a twenty-year long journey exploring the grandeur of the human voice blended with the vibrancy of the guitar. Interpreting the work of five notable modern composers who were, in turn, inspired by the words of poets throughout the ages, Nathanson and King deliver a stunning performance that is rich in its variety and impressive in scope.

MIND & MACHINE is the first of two electro-acoustic compilations to be released on RAVELLO RECORDS. Featuring the work of seven composers on six tracks, MIND & MACHINE explores the incredible range of works that can be categorized as electro-acoustic, a music in which styles are dictated by the technology that is at the heart of its performance. As far-ranging as are the works themselves are the composers of these pieces.

MIND & MACHINE VOL. 2 is the second electro-acoustic compilation to be released on Ravello Records. Each of the seven composers featured on MIND & MACHINE VOL. 2 offers his or her own striking exploration into the means by which technology can be used to alter time and form to create entirely new musical experiences. This diverse assortment of composers have all taken different paths to reach that goal. The sounds of nature are manipulated or integrated into pieces such as Tom Prescott’s The Singing Forest and Jennifer Bernard Merkowitz’s Les Crapauds de la Fontaine, while Joshua Tomlinson’s Convergences utilizes the natural elements of metal and wood.

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.

Jeff Morris's second album, WITH STRINGS, explores the possibilities of 21st-century counterpoint. He builds up rich musical textures by sampling violin and cello live and folding them back into the mix, influencing the performers in turn.

Matthew Burtner returns to Ravello Records with the haunting beauty of GLACIER MUSIC, an electroacoustic collection featuring the Alaskan natural landscape as the central instrument. Most of the natural sounds were recorded on Alaskan glaciers, featuring the sounds of snow, trickling streams, and the cracks, pops, and thundering as glaciers break apart and fall. Burtner, who was born in Alaska and grew up among the glaciers, also sculpts scientific measurements of glacial melt into the music through a technique known as sonification.

Using the sounds of handmade paper, electronics, and surf guitar among others, Ted Coffey composes a sometimes fragile, sometimes brutal order that swings from texturalism to song. Written for dance, both fixed media and live computer-mediated performance, Coffey’s music feels spontaneous without sacrificing finely calculated craft.

Clarinetist Andrea Cheeseman infuses every note of her performances with a sense of passion and purpose. It is with this intentionality that she approaches Ravello Records’ SOMEWHERE, an album of electroacoustic works that expand the clarinet repertoire to new heights while also showcasing Cheeseman in the genre where she feels most at home.

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.

Jeff Morris presents his fourth Ravello Records release, this one focusing on woodwinds and employing his characteristic live sampling and electronics. CLOSE REEDING is the latest since HEARING VOICES, an album which set its sights on the most fundamentally-human musical instrument: the human voice. Now, Morris turns his attention to woodwind instruments, which he terms the “next most human” family of instruments. By way of digital manipulation and live improvisation, Morris gives this thesis a convincing exposition.

James Dashow’s double album SONGS FROM A SPIRAL TREE—new from Ravello Records—collects many of Dashow’s vocal works into an abundant two-disk set. The album presents his compositions for voice, with instruments and electronic sounds, setting poems by Theodore Roethke, John Ashbery, John Berryman and Gian Giacomo Menon.

MIND & MACHINE VOL THREE offers a new look into the Ravello Records series of electro-acoustic and electronic music lauded by critics as “interesting and captivating” (Cinemusical). This latest edition features an array of composers and sound-artists who offer his or her own striking exploration into the means by which technology can be used to alter time and form to create entirely new musical experiences.

SYNCHRONIES, James Dashow's second double album on Ravello Records, offers a selection of the composer's work for traditional instruments with and without electronic sounds. His approach to these two musical resources combines the intimacy and flexibility of beautifully designed chamber music with full scale sonorous constructions: some achieved by finely textured orchestrations of the classical instrumental ensemble, others by the symphonic use of rich electronic timbres that are characteristic of the composer's music. Dashow's unique sound is immediately recognizable, enhanced by his ground-breaking ideas on the spatialization of sound, where the location and movement of musical events in space are now fundamental elements of his compositional practice. The performers in these pieces are true virtuosi of contemporary art music; their artistry and subtle understanding of these works yield deeply expressive interpretations that resonate with both listeners and performers alike.