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RECENT REVIEWS:

Jason Eckardt
Out of Chaos
Ensemble 21, conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky and Paul Hostetter
Mode 137

JASON ECKARDT clearly rejects the argument, made with increasing frequency, that the mid-20th-century atonalists were working toward a musical dead end. Harmonically and rhythmically his music thrives on complex, constantly changing relationships, but like many composers under 40 (he was born in 1971) he tempers the more prickly, jagged elements of the post-tonal style with humor and eclecticism. What holds your attention in his music is not its ingenuity but its relentless energy and drive.

He also has a knack for defying expectations. Drawn to Minimalist sculpture – Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc" adorns the CD cover, an allusion to the opening work, "After Serra" (2000) - he resists using the Minimalist musical vocabulary to evoke it. That resistance eventually evaporates, at least partly. The final four minutes of the score is an eerie stasis of slow textural shifts and quietly scampering solos over sustained tones. But that comparative serenity is hard won, coming after 10 minutes of vigorous, high-energy counterpoint. The most ambitious work here, the 2-movement, 27-minute "Polarities" (1998), also begins with an eventful, virtuosic opening section that gives way to quiet spareness. But the proportions are reversed; here the slow, introspective writing is the center of gravity.

The musicians of Ensemble 21 play this music sizzlingly. Particularly striking in "Polarities" is Jean Kopperud's fluid, feisty clarinet playing, which bounces between klezmerlike note bending and assertive multiphonics that evoke John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. Taimur Sullivan, on soprano saxophone, makes "Tangled Loops" (1996) into a vivid character piece. And Marilyn Nonken's sharply focused and often athletic pianism, Rolf Schulte's lyrical violin playing, atmospheric percussion by Thomas Kolor and a rich cello line from Christopher Finckel, enliven the involved textures of "A Glimpse Retraced" (1999).
--- Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, Arts & Leisiure, July 28, 2008


Lou Harrison
Por Gitaro: Suites for Tuned Guitars
Serenade; Suites Nos 1 & 2; Suite for National Steel Guitar, etc.
Guitars: John Schneider
Mode 195

Lou Harrison (1917-2003) is well represented by recordings and these two discs range widely amongst his diverse interests, far from the mainstream classical concert world.

It is all easy listening, but not too simple, and conveys a captivating joie de vivre.

The new MODE disc of guitar music explores Harrison's interest in the variety of tuning temperaments, which are of course comonplace for early keyboard music, but impossible with fixed fretted instruments.

John Schneider has explored many alternative guitars, with adjustable frets. He also uses steel strings for one of his instruments. At the least, it will sharpen your ears!

A must for young guitarists keen to widen their horizons.
--- Peter Grahame Woolf, Musical Pointers online magazine, March 2008


Giacinto Scelsi
The Orchestral Works 2
Mode 176
AND
The Works for Double Bass
Mode 188

The quintessential Quattro Pezzi (su una nota sola) lay bare Scelsi's techniques, aims and concerns. While Schoenberg, Boulez and Cage brought to the 20th century new organizational strategies, Scelsi sidestepped their advances through a fundamental reappraisal of pitch and instrumental color. Webern's Klangfarbenmelodie may have arrived there first, however Scelsi went to an extreme by devoting entire movements to a single pitch. A primal force exhorts the Quattro Pezzi's F, B, A-flat and A towards purity as 25 musicians, predominantly winds, snake though gouging harmonic shifts and microtonal distemper. His precisely notated scores explicitly specify quarter-tone inflections, types of vibrato, mutes, dynamics, etc. Crisp unisons materialize but are soon abandoned for eviscerating tremolos and detuned shrieks, thus avoiding the security of harmonic completeness.

Intended or not, this mode orchestral release hangs heavy with the pallor of sickness and death. La nascita del Verbo preceded Scelsi's mental collapse in the late 1940s. He cured himself, so the story goes, by continuously playing the same piano note for days on end. Oriental philosophy filtered in as well. Quattro Pezzi represents his recovery's culmination. The anguished Uaxuctum's subtitle, The Legend of the Mayan City which they themselves destroyed for religious reasons, perpetuates the obsessions.

In their Quattro Pezzi, Rundel and the Vienna Radio Symphony position us cautiously at the abyss' edge. The live recording enshrines coughs and shuffling, the effect of which diminishes choral aspirations in the eruptive Uaxuctum whose five movements careen towards destruction. After Quattro Pezzi Scelsi permitted himself a greater array of pitches, always handled with meticulous care. Uaxuctum writhes in the presence of death, its wailing ondes Martenot a stern sibyl. These DVD-Audio recordings possess the best clarity around, vastly superior to Hans Zender's cautious 1978 Quattro Pezzi on cpo 999 485-2 or even Jürg Wyttenbach's classic yet overly reverberant Quattro Pezzi and Uaxuctum on Accord 200612.

This first recording of La nascita del Verbo suggests truculence. Its intoxicating jumble of expressionism, Wagnerian bluster and complex canons aligns it with similar creation myths by Leifs and Langgaard. Grandiose and colorful passages compare with Scriabin and Messiaen, with strange chorus murmurings suggesting B-movie sound effects. Beyond the work's fervency, it's hard to find the mature Scelsi, suggesting rather that he wasn't quite all there.

Scelsi solo and chamber pieces routinely stretch individual limits by requiring non-standard techniques from tapping to vocalization. On the surface, the works' short lengths suggest miniatures, and yet, because Scelsi abandoned traditional forms and edged closer to improvisation, his works are expansive despite their brevity.

The two-movement Nuits (C'est bien la nuit and Le Réveil profond) emerges as an abstract, somewhat traditional bass solo. Black's riveting performance delivers floor-rattling low notes, the full-throated upper range betraying none of the nasality of Joëlle Léandre's 1993 hat release (hat ART CD 6124).

Ko-Tha requires that the bass be lowered to the ground and treated percussively. Black employs bassist Fernando Grillo's arrangement of these Three Dances of Shiva, originally scored for guitar, to be played across the lap. In 1988, percussionist Maurizio Ben Omar used an amplified guitar on INA Mémoire Vive 262009. Black's realization is darker, less attributable to a stringed instrument. Grillo's 1976 performance on the second disc of col legno's 50 Jahre Neue Musik in Darmstadt (set: WWE 4CD 31893; single disc: WWE 1CD 31895) seems preoccupied with exotic sound production and sits closer to works by Lachenmann, Xenakis and Cage in the same release (it's also a single 7:13 track whereas Black clearly delineates three: 8:14, 2:19 and 3:44).

Two duets receive their first recordings: the cello and bass Dharana and the double-bass duet Kshara. Titled in Sanskrit, both course slowly though quarter- and eighth-tones under precisely specified vibrato. Practically a palindrome, Dharana represents the initial stage in deep meditation. A delicately warped unison occupies Kshara's center. Scelsi cleverly applies scordatura so that some notes resonate while others pass dully. The cello-bass duet Et maintenant c'est à vous de jouer... soars through long double-stops.

Black's gutteral cries in Maknongon will startle. Specified for "any low instrument or voice," some performers take the less satisfying non-vocal route: Michel Tavernier on bassoon (ADDA 581 189), Uli Fussenegger on double bass (Kairos 0012162KAI), Giancarlo Sciaffini on bass tuba and Nicolas Isherwood's bass voice (both on hat ART CD 6124). This latter hat release has a third realization, bassist Joëlle Léandre whose deep groaning unfairly suggests Yoko Ono.

Scored for an odd trio of mistuned and amplified harp, bass and tam-tam, Okanagon clings to indeterminate nether regions recalling Mahler's "Der Abschied"'s lugubrious halting opening. A central tapping episode reinforces Scelsi's "heartbeat of the earth." The set closes with the melodic Mantram which swirls both jazz and oriental languors.
--- Grant Chu Covell, La Folia online review, March 2008


Elliott Carter
Quintets and Voices
Mode 128

This recording was released just after I finished a survey of Elliott Carter's oeuvre in my File Under ? column. Had it been released even a month sooner, it certainly would have made my subjective list of "essential" Carter recordings, as it includes a number of significant works in brilliant performances: two quintets for chamber forces, two large-scale works for solo voice and ensemble, and two miniatures.

The first composition featured here is Fragment II (1999) for string quartet, played by the Arditti String Quartet (who have also recorded hallmark renditions of everything else that Carter has written for quartet). Unlike Fragment I, a work consisting entirely of harmonics, Fragment II features a full complement of playing techniques (arco, pizzicato, etcetera). It is principally comprised of relatively serene music, with sustained notes contrasted by brief solo interjections from each of the players.

In a bit of ingenuous programming, the Quintet for Piano and Strings (1997) follows, and the transition from one work to another is nearly imperceptible. In addition to the obvious timbral relationship, this is perhaps also the byproduct of a similar harmonic field; late Carter is typified by a relatively small selection of chords (mostly all-interval tetrachords and hexachords). For this performance, the Arditti Quartet are joined by pianist Ursula Oppens, who attacks the formidable piano part with an appealing combination of virtuosity and crisp rhythmic articulation. The Arditti match her with lean incisiveness, careful phrasing and a wide gamut of dynamic contrasts.

The two vocal works are sequenced together the middle of the disc. Syringa (1978), for soprano, baritone and ensemble, is the only work included here that was written prior to the 1990s, but in no way does it seem out of place. Vocalists Lucy Shelton and Andre Solomon-Glover are expressive advocates. NY new music mainstay Jeffrey Milarsky conducts the Ensemble Sospesso in a well-coordinated and controlled performance. Shelton and Ensemble Sospesso also perform Tempo e Tempi (1998); this time the group is conducted by Stefan Asbury. Shelton is really the "go-to" soprano for this repertoire, with a flexible, attractive instrument and impressive pitch.

The Quintet for Piano and Winds (1991) is next. Oppens is joined by oboist Steve Taylor, clarinetist Charles Niedich, horn-player William Purvis and bassoonist Frank Morelli. This work calls for fiendishly difficult ensemble coordination, and has a monster of a piano part. In fact, each part could be said to be a "monster"; all require tremendous agility and technical assuredness from their respective interpreters. That said, even within this angular environment there is still a certain jaunty grace, a lightness, that permeates the quintet. Carter demands that his performers make the difficult seem easy, like the tricks performed by circus acrobats, and they never let the audience see them sweat! If I hadn't had the score in front of me, these particular performers would have hidden many pitfalls from my attention, as well as any sense of strain.

The disc ends as it began, with a miniature. Retrouvailles (2000), for solo piano, is performed by Ursula Oppens. Within two minutes and with only two hands, Oppens portrays the myriad gestural characters and sonorous colors woven by Carter into this deliciously enigmatic piece. It whirls past almost before you can grasp it, seeming to promise more music ongoing beyond its double barline. In like fashion, despite being a generous 79 minutes in duration, Quintets and Voices may leave you wanting more Carter after the disc stops spinning.
--- Christian Carey, www.splendidezine.com, 5 February 2004


Steve Lacy and John Heward
Recessional for Oliver Johnson
Mode avant 04

Culmination of a 20-year friendship, Montreal drummer John Heward's and American soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy's first - and last - duo concert is preserved on this CD. A less-than-39-minute bagatelle, Recessional gains added poignancy due to Lacy's death from cancer a year later.

It's fitting that the live show honored Oliver Johnson, long-time drummer in the saxophonist's Paris-based sextet. For Heward, a renowned Canadian painter and sculptor, has recently evolved into an avocational percussionist, proficient enough to play with improv masters like multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee and violinist Malcolm Goldstein.

Sensitive yet sturdy, Heward's duple meter rumbles, cymbal slaps, press rolls and drum-top pitter patter provide the perfect backdrop for Lacy's improvisations, which after all are the main draw here. Unobtrusive, he fluidly marks tempo and timbre changes along with the saxophonist.

Lyrical and polyphonic with a suggestion of both "Taps" and tap dancing, the main theme is the finale of the concert. Repetitive, melancholy and celebratory, it culminates in an emphasized, echoing split tone from Lacy.

Earlier, the saxophonist, who first defined the soprano's role in modern jazz, displays his matchless technique. He produces a wide, almost Dixieland-like vibrato at times, and straight, sharp clipped tones elsewhere. Flutter tonguing, double-tonguing and reverberating his body tube, his collection of quacks, snarls and growls is second to none. Yet never do these narrowed, nasal pitches or spit-encrusted obbligatos fail to communicate. Jittery reed-biting textures plus rubato tongue-stopping surround concise story-telling phrases. Meanwhile, the drummer uses bell ringing, kalimba scrapes and press rolls to underline and extend the multiphonic interface.

Never to be repeated, the CD faithfully captures a moment in time.
--- Ken Waxman, CODA Issue 330, January 1, 2007
      www.jazzword.com


Margaret Leng Tan
Sorceress of the New Piano, The Artistry of Margaret Leng Tan
Two films by Evans Chan
Mode 194

Margaret Leng Tan: Sorceress, Maverick, Dog Whisperer?

The two films collected on this Mode DVD explore the multifaceted career and fascinating life story of new music pianist Margaret Leng Tan. Sorceress of the New Piano is a biography, while The Maverick Piano presents Tan performing some of her signature repertoire by composers John Cage, Erik Satie, Toby Twining, and Ge Gan-ru. Mode tends to favor this double-barreled type of presentation, and for good reason; hearing the works discussed in a bio subsequently performed in their entirety is far more satisfying than having to settle for sound bites.

Tan is best known for her work in two distinct areas: prepared piano and toy piano. Both are given ample coverage here. Tan expounds about the "Three C's" of contemporary piano music: Cowell, Cage, and Crumb; she demonstrates their hallmark techniques and eloquently discusses the aesthetics of each. Ample footage is featured of her rehearsing and conversing with both Cage and Crumb, who are clearly delighted by her dedication and formidable performances. The pianist was particularly close with Cage, who encouraged Tan in her quest to transform herself into someone with unique talents to offer to new music.

Cage's Suite for Toy Piano (1948) inspired Tan to champion the diminutive instrument, expanding its repertoire with commissions and transcriptions. She suggests that the toy piano has far more capacity than the novelty instrument or "gimmick" status to which it has previously been relegated. That said, Tan is not above using the toy piano as an agent provocateur, as one can see in her performance of Raphael Mostel's "Star-Spangled Etude #3." Dressed in a foam "Statue of Liberty" headdress, Tan brings a pistol, whistle, and siren onstage, using Mostel's simple piece incorporating patriotic tunes to craft a performance artwork about post-millennial militarism.

The DVD includes interesting biographical information, detailing Tan's long struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The pianist acknowledges that the perfectionist mindset which has made her such a compelling performer and new music advocate are byproducts of this challenging illness. Another intriguing aspect of Tan's life is her work with animals; she took a hiatus from performing early in her career to prepare helper dogs for the hearing impaired. Sorceress/Maverick is a compelling document; like Tan, it seems capable of winning over even the most conservative listeners to the wonders of the avant-garde.
--- Christian Carey, sequenza21, 29 June 2008


Margaret Leng Tan
Sorceress of the New Piano, The Artistry of Margaret Leng Tan
Two films by Evans Chan
Mode 194

The Singaporean-born pianist Margaret Leng Tan lives in a sound world like no other - a world entirely of her own choosing, and which she inhabits to the near-exclusion of all others. When at 16 she was awarded a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York, she was headed for a traditional career as a concert pianist. No-one can have dreamt of the career she has had instead. The first woman ever to be awarded a doctorate by Juilliard, she has now long enjoyed a worldwide reputation as the foremost pianistic champion of the (mostly) American avant-garde, being particularly associated the music of what she calls 'The Three Cs', Henry Cowell, John Cage and George Crumb, the last two among her closest associates. In this consistently interesting, engaging and artfully constructed film, we hear much from her about her life, perspectives, ethics and instruments (including a fleet of toy pianos), and much informative and insightful commentary from composers, critics and colleagues. Not the least of her gifts his her capacity to win over sceptics - critics and otherwise. We see much of her in performance, both in and out of the piano, as it were, we learn a good deal about the music, including why not to dismiss it, and glimpse a distinct but not extravagant theatricality which may prove off-putting to some. The composers represented include, in addition to three Cs, Philip Glass, Tan Dun, Stephen Montague, Ge Gan-Ru and Raphael Mostel, as well as Beethoven and Satie (on toy piano). Tan's seriousness (untainted by solemnity and leavened with gentle humour) is self-evidently genuine. Her significance - and more importantly, perhaps, the significance of the music she champions - is likely to remain controversial.
--- Barrie Staines, Piano magazine, July-August 2008


Margaret Leng Tan
Sorceress of the New Piano, The Artistry of Margaret Leng Tan
Two films by Evans Chan
Mode 194

'Sorceress of the New Piano' (2004), 90 min., is a fascinating documentary by Evans Chan about new music specialist Margaret Leng Tan. Margaret is well known for her toy piano performances of music by John Cage and others, but also for pieces that use extended techniques such as prepared, plucked, bowed and/or strumming the piano. I always find it fascinating to see what all those mysterious and strange sounds are and how they are made. Not just an overview of Tan's impressive work with the music of modern composers Cage, Henry Cowell, George Crumb, Jed Distler, Ge Gan-ru, Philip Glass, Guy Klucevsek, Stephen Montague, Somei Satoh, Tan Dun, Toby Twining, Lois V Vierk and others, but also a great introduction to modern "new" classical music. Cameo guest commentaries by various composers, critics and performers. Bonus film The Maverick Piano (2006), 50 min., features six full-length performances of pieces by Cage (In a Landscape with Great Small Works, In the Name of the Holocaust, Music for Piano No. 2), Gan-Ru (Gu Yue "Pipa"), Erik Satie (Gymnopédie No. 3 with Great Small Works) and Toby Twining (Satie Blues with Great Small Works). I know there's a lot of music documentary and live performance DVDs out there, but there should be more like this one. (Guest review)
--- David Beardsley, Downtown Music Gallery E-Newsletter Review,
      May 23 2008


Joe McPhee and John Heward
Voices: 10 Improvisations
Mode avant 05

Voices: 10 Improvisations, like Bare Essentials, has a surreal quality. In "Improvisation 1," American saxophonist Joe McPhee, who has performed with Brötzmann on several occasions since 1998 in quartets and the mighty Chicago Tentet, uses the pocket trumpet to create noises that sound like rain on a rooftop or fingers drumming on wood. McPhee then switches to soprano sax in "Improvisation 2" and Canadian drummer John Heward chimes in on the kalimba. The result is enigmatic and beautifully ethereal. These two songs lend versatility to the rest of the album, which manages to sound atmospheric and worldly.
--- Ivana Ng, All About Jazz, 19 July 2008


Joe McPhee and John Heward
Voices: 10 Improvisations
Mode avant 05

Being able to speak a language well implies a command of its syntactical dimensions. A fearless approach to maximizing the expression of ideas within language signifies creativity. Common to both a command of language and creativity is the principle of voice, which distinguishes itself from all similar practice. In music, voice simply, unquestionably, identifies how the musician and instrument mix.

Voices: 10 Improvisations, featuring brass and reedman, Joe McPhee, and percussionist John Heward, opens with the minimal yet profound "Improvisation 1." McPhee's pocket trumpet is extremely close to the microphone, the sound bubbly, full of breath and life-forming - a signifier of Beginning. From there, the musical concepts grow and expand. The pocket trumpet slowly wakes up and sharpens its personality.

Applying himself in the same way, Heward introduces himself on "Improvisation 2" with the kalimba (thumb piano). The dullness of the kalimba contrasts with the resonance that occurs when McPhee blows the pocket trumpet with precision. At the turning point in this track, Heward switches to the drum set, as McPhee leaves the melody, launches into abstraction, and returns to a recapitulation of the theme to close. McPhee engages his pocket trumpet to a point where his breath can push forth no more sound. He then takes up the soprano sax to create the next stirring voice.

A dynamic of difference between the two players prolongs the exploration of how best the two instrumentalists can speak their language. Both musicians take their instruments to their extremes but not in an explosive sense. Peaks are touched briefly and subtly within the limits of the instruments, as each musician meets the needs of the other.

The dry quality of the snare played with hands instead of sticks, the non-resonance of the kalimba, mallets on the tom and the slightest cymbal sibilance is pitted against the way in which the soprano flares with a liquid ring of tremolos, unabashed arpeggios and the squeal that is emitted as the reed meets the tongue for an elegant melody. In "Improvisations 8" and "Improvisations 9," the sax and drums fully unwind and unravel in continuous motion.

Considered as a whole, the recording possesses proportion, with the music moving forth as a discussion. There are very few repetitions of a horn phrase or drum riff. Both players, either singly or in relation to one another, take steps that are unique. The solos are few; neither musician allowing the other to monopolize the musical space. The rhythm circulates within the boldness of statements rather than being exposed outright. Bent pitches, split tones and dissonance on the saxophone creep in only towards the conclusion of the recording.

The purity and range of tone emanating from the pocket trumpet and soprano give this recording presence, notwithstanding the design of Voices, which itself glows with integrity. Integrity that is cultivated from diversity, invested with purpose and substance, and evocative of whatever the next moments offer.
--- Lyn Horton, All About Jazz online, May 18, 2008


Morton Feldman
First Recordings: 1950s
Mode 66

Una manciata di registrazioni del giovane Feldman (che all'inizio degli anni '50 aveva suppergiù 25 anni) donano a questa raccolta un interesse quasi archeologico nei confronti dell'avanguardia americana, un movimento che - assieme ad una non-calcolabile quantità di artefatti culturali piovuta su questo continente da sessant'anni a questa parte - contraddistingue la storia della musica contemporanea anche attuale. Oltre al pianoforte, grande protagonista della vita compositiva di Feldman, affascinano gli esperimenti su nastro magnetico di Intersection (1953), reperiti da vecchie copie su bobine (senza i master dispersi). Se il lavoro di restauro, ben illustrato nelle note - cosa, per inciso, che spesso manca nei ridondanti libretti dall'austero piglio musicologico di molte pubblicazioni contemporanee - ci dice molto sulle disponibilità dei mezzi per produrre e organizzare il suono all'epoca del rock'n'roll e della Guerra di Corea, gli esiti esperibili dall'ascolto diretto non lasciano grandi impressioni su metodologie che, dal canto suo, il bistrattato Pierre Schaeffer è riuscito a sfruttare molto meglio.

Ma il fulcro di questo intenso periodo creativo è rappresentato senz'altro dalle musiche composte per il film su Jackson Pollock (dal titolo eponimo) di Hans Namuth e Paul Falkenberg, una pellicola (della durata di meno di 10 minuti) che ritrae il pittore all'opera in esterno per la totale mancanza di luci e attrezzature varie. Il lavoro di post-produzione prevedeva l'inserimento di musiche gamelan, avversate però da Pollock, il quale, sentendosi un "pittore americano", sentiva una certa distanza con quel tipo di musica "esotica". E' a questo punto che entra in scena il giovane Morton Feldman con una composizione per due violoncelli, registrata da un solo strumento su due differenti piste. La traccia mono di quella banda sonora, che comprende anche una presentazione dalla viva voce di Pollock, viene qui riportata integralmente come "Music for Jackson Pollock (1950-51)" e si può a tutti gli effetti considerare una registrazione di grande valore documentario. Impressiona soprattutto la qualità dell'audio paragonabile a certi manufatti anteriormente registrati in ambiti jazz o blues, qui invece riferita a un contesti legato all'avanguardia.

Ci sono poi i Nature Pieces (1951), una serie di composizioni che originariamente accompagnavano le coreografie di Jean Erdman e che si distinguono dal tipico stile rarefatto del Feldman successivo per un approccio, pur pacato, ad una sorta di espressionismo astratto applicato al pianoforte (con forti influenze da parte del poco più anziano John Cage). Ma già con Variations (1951), sempre per pianoforte, assistiamo alla totale e suggestiva rarefazione dello spazio sonoro che diventa un insieme di corpuscoli in sospensione, un vero e proprio particolato di note che solamente in una prospettiva falsata può essere ricondotto allo strumento che vanta i fasti virtuosistici del passato.
--- © Michele Coralli, altremusiche.it, May 2008


John Cage
The Number Pieces 5
Two²
Mode 193

The latest offering in MODEs expansive The Complete John Cage Edition, this one being volume 39. Two² (1989) for two pianos - yet another of Cage's number pieces, a rock garden of space and sound. In typical Cage fashion, there's little melody here, but there is harmony...chords appear and disappear only to be replaced by silence. The piece is a peaceful quiet affair, performed by Rob Haskins and Laurel Karlik Sheehan. The form of Two² is based on renga, a Japanese poetic design of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables expressed at least thirty-six times.
--- David Beardsley, guest reviewer, DowntownMusicGallery.com


Giacinto Scelsi
The Works for Double Bass
Robert Black, double bass
Mode 188

This CD is the first recording of Scelsi's compositions for double bass, and as such it is a must have for any contemporary music or double bass enthusiast.

I had understandably very high expectations prior to listening, and I am pleased to say that I was not disappointed at all even after several hearings!

Most of these works were composed in Scelsi's "trademark" phase when the composer crafted whole pieces based on single tones. This explains the strong monodic character of these works even when the double bass is joined by other instruments. Consequently, the performer's ability to convey changes of timbre, colour, dynamics and sound quality as well as microtonal fluctuations (that in some cases reach eighths of the tone) is of the utmost necessity when interpreting this music and essential in revealing the composer's true intentions.

Mr Black does a superb job conveying all these aspects; his experience in collaborating with distinctly diverse and contrasting artists, and his strong familiarity with improvised music as well (he is a regular member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars) must have come handy in helping him realise and project the pure essence of this music.

Trying to show that "whole universes can exist in these single sounds" is no easy task, but Mr Black does a great job attempting to achieve this end. I was particularly curious to listen to Ko-Tha which I myself had performed in its original version for amplified guitar. I could imagine that a transcription (or adaptation rather) from that version could well be suited for the bass or cello, since in the original the guitar is played resting on its back on the performer's knees, as a resonating "string percussion" instrument. I have subsequently found this version for double bass highly successful as all the percussive effects now acquire a wonderful new resonance, facilitated by the instrument's large body.

In Okanagon June Han on harp and Tom Kolor on tam tam show themselves as sensitive musicians and very experienced chamber music performers too. The overall ensemble in this, the only work on the disc for three instruments, is superb and very well balanced; all three breathe as one and control all their sounds so as to create one new unified artificial timbre. The same is true of course for bassist John Eckhardt and cellist Felix Fan, who interact magnificently in the duos and demonstrate that they too musicians of the highest calibre.
--- Evis Sammoutis, Musical Pointers online review


Earle Brown
Tracer
Ne(x)tworks
Mode 179

Continuing a Celebration of a Composer (and Godfather)

The innovative American composer Earle Brown, who died in 2002, would have celebrated his 80th birthday last year. The new-music ensemble Ne(x)tworks observed the occasion by recording a number of his chamber works for Mode Records, a New York label widely admired for its devotion to modern music. The recording was released on Tuesday, and the group celebrated with a retrospective of Mr. Brown's music at the Chelsea Art Museum.

Ne(x)tworks, whose members also compose and improvise, has especially close links to Mr. Brown. The ensemble's director, the violinist Cornelius Dufallo, is the son of the conductor Richard Dufallo, a champion of new music who appointed Mr. Brown his son's godfather. And one of the earliest public appearances by the members of Ne(x)tworks was a 2002 performance of Mr. Brown's music in the singer Joan La Barbara's Carnegie Hall series When Morty Met John.

Those connections have made Ne(x)tworks a compelling advocate for Mr. Brown's music. "Music for Violin, Cello and Piano," a serialist miniature from 1952, was played twice on Tuesday by Mr. Dufallo, the cellist Yves Dharamraj and the pianist Stephen Gosling. In sharp contrast to that work's chiseled exactitude, the String Quartet (1965) represented the composer's later style of open-score notation, in which a formal structure offered leeway for improvisational flexibility. Opening the work at a whisper, Mr. Dufallo, Mr. Dharamraj, the violinist Ariana Kim and the violist Kenji Bunch proceeded through passages of chirps and pops, robust solo lines, assertive chords and agitated scribbles.

The rest of the program was devoted to "Folio and Four Systems," a collection of inventive graphic scores created between 1952 and 1954. Ms. La Barbara offered whoops, ululations and gargles in a lively account of "December 1952," the score of which resembles a Mondrian painting. The trombonist Chris McIntyre employed growling multiphonics and recorded urban noise in "November 1952," and Mr. Gosling applied fingers, a percussion mallet and a drum brush to piano strings in "1953."

In a mesmerizing rendition of "Four Systems," the harpist Shelley Burgon collaborated with Miguel Frasconi, who rubbed sonorous goblets and produced chiming tones on shards of glass. The concert ended with a reprise of "December 1952" featuring the entire ensemble. That the second version was similar in detail and duration to Ms. La Barbara's earlier solo account, despite the volition of eight additional performers, neatly illustrated Mr. Brown's uncanny knack for focusing the energies of freewheeling performers.
--- Steve Smith, New York Times Music Review, April 19, 2007


James Tenney
Melody, Ergodicity and Indeterminacy
The Barton Workshop
Mode 185


James Tenney was an American experimentalist who died two years ago at the age of 72.

The earliest works on this disc, pieces for solo flute and clarinet written in the 1950s, hark back to the manners of the early 20th century.

Within a few years, in the early 1960s, Tenney was exploring the statistics of ergodicity in pieces written for computer ( Ergodos I & II), which can be played forwards, backwards, wholly, partially, separately, or overlaid - the disc offers the works individually as well as in combination with other instrumental pieces.

It's the purely instrumental works (which include two Seegersongs from 1999 and the Cagean Ergodos III of 1990 for two pianos) that make the strongest impression in this fascinating collection.
--- MICHAEL DERVAN, Irish Times, 15 February 2008


Bernadette Speach
Reflections
Mode 105

Some composers are easy to pigeonhole while others resist simple categorization. Count New York-based composer Bernadette Speach among the latter.

Speach's oeuvre of the last fourteen years or so can best be described as New Tonalist with a penchant for jazzy verticals and a Downtown affinity for patterned material and loose unfolding. Her music also contains experimentalist touches such as extended techniques and indeterminacy. And there's significant influence of the hushed output of her primary teacher, Morton Feldman, and pieces such as John Cage's piano solo Dream.

The best selections here maximize Speach's finely honed ear for sonic beauty -- most all this music can be characterized as languid, winsome, luscious, and fragile -- while downplaying their lack of structure and tendency to stop rather than end. Fortunately, several of these items, including Chosen Voices (1991) for toy piano and prepared guitar as well as the solo piano entities Angels in the Snow (1993) and When It Rains, Lleuve (1995) are short enough to coast by on their lovely exteriors. The longer the opus, the more noticeable the problem, however -- Trio des Trois (1992) for viola, cello, and piano, and especially the sprawling Women Without Adornment (1995) for voice, reciter, and mixed trio would have all benefited greatly from clearer structure and closings that convince. The latest work encountered here, Viola (2000) for that instrument and piano, fortunately shows some attempts to think architecturally, tracing some narrative curve aspects.

The string quartet les ondes pour quatre (1988) seems from an earlier period. Here, patterned material is layered thickly, outlining a spiky harmonic language. Absent the fetching surface of later listens, it pleases least.

Performances are good. From the sizable list of executants, one should single out the Arditti String Quartet, guitarist Jeffrey Schanzer, violist Rozanna, and pianists Speach and Anthony DeMare for their evocative playing. Production is fine and sound quality is exemplary.
--- David Cleary, Living Music Journal, Fall 2006-Spring 2007


Gavin Bryars
The Marvellous Aphorisms of Gavin Bryars: The Early Years
Mode 177

"Gavin Bryars' earlier works - featured on this CD - were created during the years 1969-71. At that time, Bryars was making compositions featuring ideas from John Cage, Fluxus as well as free improvisation. Some of the works had never been recorded before, like Pre-Mediaeval Metrics, or Made in Hong Kong. In 1-2-1234, the six musicians listen to the same music of the Beatles through headphones playing along with what they hear rather than responding to each other. The audience hears the marvellous collective product of the private listening. A must-have CD for your collection!"
--- Abitare magazine (Italy), February 2008


Gavin Bryars
The Marvellous Aphorisms of Gavin Bryars: The Early Years
Mode 177

While Gavin Bryars is best known for his long-form compositions ("The Sinking of the Titanic," Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet), he also played a significant role in the early development of British free improv, playing bass in the trio Joseph Holbrooke with Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. He left the trio, which was far from any level of fame, to focus on composing and on this CD the New York label Mode presents four of those early pieces in updated interpretations.

"The Squirrel and the Ricketty-Racketty Bridge" was written for Bailey, who included it on his 1971 Solo Guitar Volume 1 and also played on a 1978 quartet version with Bryars, Brian Eno and Fred Frith (released on Eno's Obscure label). The piece calls for at least one guitarist and two guitars and here is performed by New York-born Seth Josel, who now lives in Berlin. The primary difference between his and previous versions is in the electronics; where earlier versions were rough and textural, played on hollow-body instruments, Josel's electric version is comparatively pristine. While the clean sustain of his guitars brings out the counterpoint of the composition - an ascending and descending 12-note run with hammered, harmonic interruptions - the same quality robs the piece of its meat. The players' struggles with the instruments and the listeners' struggles to follow the piece's logic are lost - which depending on taste might make it more enjoyable or just dumb it down.

"1, 2, 1-2-3-4" was also released in a previous version on Obscure. The piece calls for a group of musicians playing the same set of music, but following different arrangements on headphones, rather than playing "together." The 1975 version was a sort of slow, plaintive jazz piece, with the differing intervals creating accidental dissonances that may have sounded stranger thirty years ago than they do in the age of sampling and digital music. The growing ambiguity in the work is similar to the hazy approximations of melody Bryars was exploring around the same time with the Portsmouth Sinfonia, a chamber orchestra comprised of people who didn't know how to play their respective instruments.

For the new version, Josel and saxophonist/session leader Ulrich Krieger, along with piano, bass, drums and a second guitar, use a half-hour Beatles medley as the recorded source. The familiarity of the riffs and the tendency to try to sing along mentally make this an entirely different piece of music. On record it's a good bit of jumbled fun, but at the ensemble's Nov. 8, 2007 performance of the same material at New York's Roulette, it proved to be tough going; watching them perform made it harder to suspend the belief that they should be playing "together," which may be truer to Bryars' intentions.

Likewise, watching the performance of "Made in Hong Kong" - a piece scored for mechanical toys - robbed it of the mystery it carries on record. The scattered percussion of hopping toys, paired with electronic beeps and voices, is more successful in the abstract, removed from the visual cues of its sources. The fourth piece of the CD and concert was the most effective: "Pre-Mediaeval Metrics" is a pulse piece based on rhythms in Latin poetry, rendered here by multi-tracked saxophones and guitars. With all the lovely blur and clutter of the other pieces, the fifteen minutes of "Metrics" come off as positively austere.
--- Kurt Gottschalk, www.allaboutjazz.com, December 14, 2007


Gavin Bryars
The Marvellous Aphorisms of Gavin Bryars: The Early Years
Mode 177

When listening to the work of British composer Gavin Bryars, it's tempting to think you've awakened on some mirror earth-planet where time and pitch operate in other dimensions.

The 67-year-old composer, who wrote the odd but transfixing "The Sinking of the Titanic," is well-known for collaborations with the likes of opera director Robert Wilson, choreographer Merce Cunningham and artist Christian Boltanksi. This CD offers Bryars' early works, from 1970 and 1971, and they are some of his most intriguing compositions.

On "The Squirrel and the Ricketty-Racketty Bridge," Bryars has written a series of repeating two note intervals for two electric guitars. The music here comes at the listener as a weaving pattern of notes. At times this work recalls the returning arpeggios of Philip Glass, at others the repetitions form a larger pattern that gives the music its unique shape. But that pattern is one that can only be gleaned if heard all the way through.

By far, the best track on this CD, for the way its sound seems to bend out of a black musical hole, is "Made in Hong Kong." This 10-minute exploration has Bryars calling for the use of sound making toys like rattlers, robots, toy trains and jack-in-the-boxes. Listening to this mesmerizing clockwork arrangement of overlapping sounds is much like sitting in on a petite symphony whose music is filled with a David Lynch-like sense of color, mystery and malevolence.

In "1-2, 1-2-3-4" Bryars takes a medley of Beatles songs, including "Helter Skelter," "A Day in the Life," and "Fixing A Hole" and reconstructs them by varying tempos played on piano, electric guitar, bass, drums, saxophone and other instruments. Here the music recalls the wit and experimentation of John Zorn, except this music owns a strange world-weariness.

Less fetching is "Pre-Mediaeval Metrics," a vapid 15-minute amalgam of struck chords for saxophone, tom-tom, electric bass and 12-string guitar.

It's amazing how cutting-edge this music still sounds now, even after 30 years. Perhaps this is the greatest charm of this CD, which is highly recommended for those with a musical adventurous streak or fans of the experimental.
--- Edward Ortiz, The Sacramento Bee (California), November 2007


Gavin Bryars
The Marvellous Aphorisms of Gavin Bryars: The Early Years
Mode 177

Op de sepiakleurige cd-hoes staat een man in de tuin de lens in te loeren: Willempie-helm op, snorretje, vliegeniersbril, verkreukeld jasje met daaronder half verborgen een tas. De man met de helm is componist. En niet zo maar een, maar Gavin Bryars. De verwantschap die Bryars (1943) voelt met de lijfelijkheid van popmuziek, is duidelijk af te lezen in zijn levensloop. Zo was de Engelse componist in zijn studentenjaren werkzaam als jazzbassist en gold hij als pionier op het gebied van de vrije improvisatie. In het begin van de jaren zeventig speelde hij in het ensemble van Steve Reich en in het Scratch Orchestra van Cornelius Cardew; om ten slotte in de jaren negentig het 'Jesus' Blood' te maken, een smartlap die zelfs door Tom Waits werd gecoverd. Op deze cd niet de zoetgevooisde Bryars, maar de vroege, experimentele componist. In '1,2,1-2-3-4' luisteren de spelers individueel over de koptelefoon naar een cassettebandje (modern!) met popnummers, en proberen daarmee mee te spelen. Gevolg: een meerstemmigheid aan Beatles-liedjes die buitengewoon verfrissend klinkt. Heel actueel klinkt 'Pre-Mediaeval Metrics', een werk waarin de computer (ook modern in 1970) een reeks streepjes en puntjes heeft uitgespuugd op papier, die de spelers ritmisch moeten interpreteren. Alles zeer consciëntieus gespeeld door onder meer Ulrich Krieger (slagwerk) en Seth Josel (elektrisch gitaar).
--- Anthony Fiumara, Trouw, zaterdag 27 oktober 2007


Iannis Xenakis
Xenakis Percussion Works
Steven Schick, Red Fish Blue Fish
Mode 171/173


Iannis Xenakis's music is elemental, antiRomantic, architectural, ritualistic, dispassionate. It is also deeply poetic, its emotional power vast, as the nine works recorded here testify. For ensemble, there's the raw, aggressive drama of Persephassa (1969) and the static, beautiful Pléïades (1978). For solo percussionist, there are the complex, thrillingly technical challenges of Psappha (1975) and Rebonds (1989). Perhaps most impressive of all, there's the ritual drama of Kassandra (1987), where the voice of Philip Larson conveys an increasingly furious frustration. All is driven by the energy and musicianship of Steven Schick, who plays the solo pieces and directs the six percussionists of Red Fish Blue Fish.
--- Stephen Pettitt, The Sunday Times, 11 February 2007


Iannis Xenakis
Xenakis Percussion Works
Mode 171/173

"It is not an exaggeration to say that for many contemporary percussionists, learning how to play has meant learning how to play the music of Iannis Xenakis," declares percussion master Steve Schick in his introduction to this triple CD set of the great Greek composer's complete percussion music. Ever since Xenakis's friend and mentor Edgar Varèse scandalized a New York audience in 1933 with his percussion ensemble work Ionisation, the profile of the onetime subservient percussionist has risen. John Cage and Lou Harrison's 1940s works stepped the percussion project up a gear; Karlheinz Stockhausen's Zyklus (1959) gave percussionists a meaty one-off display piece. But no other composer defined a fresh syntax and potential-fuelled modus operandi for percussion music like Iannis Xenakis.

This set is much needed. In the Xenakis Primer I wrote for The Wire 259, I expressed doubts about his percussion works, but I now see that my quibbles were caused by recorded performances which sometimes haven't made the grade, and which have suffered from dubious fidelity. Mode never deal in anything less than impeccable sound and, alongside Schick himself, the San Diego percussion ensemble Red Fish Blue Fish play with a devotion to detail and inner fire.

Writing for percussion is a daunting challenge for any composer. An authentic engagement with the character and DNA of percussion takes time to accomplish, and too many pieces deal in splashes of decorative colour or register as stiffly notated transcriptions of Buddy Rich solos. Xenakis sidestepped both issues by simply deciding they weren't of significance to him.

The earliest work he wrote for persuccion was Persephassa in 1969 (could there be more perfect Xenakis title?), and already he was writing with certainty about how he wanted percussion to sound. Stretching out over a near 30 minute canvas, Persephassa is written for six percussionists, each of whom sits in what Xenakis defines as their own "sieve". At the start of the work the sieves provide each player with their own rhythmic terrain, and allow Xenakis to create infinitesimal degrees of rhythmic displacement. The opening passage dances in your head with the force of dense polyrhythmic boulders plunging down a mountainside, each part proudly proclaiming its own independence while enigmatically jammed into the whole.

A key intrigue in all Xenakis's percussion music in his strategic doublebacking between rhythm and pitch; here he incorporates swirling sirens and whistles into the flow. If the sirens might sound like they're referencing Varèse, actually their feral microtonal inflections relate more to the trademark string glissandi of an early Xenakis orchestral work like Metastaseis.

Both his later percussion sextets, Pléïades (1978) and Okho (1989), were originally conceived for Les Percussions De Strasbourg and find Xenakis going ever deeper into the percussion zone. Pléïades splits the ensemble up into skins and keyboard percussion, and includes a section for the self-invented 'sixxen', a 19-note microtonal metal keyboard instrument designed to highlight the clashing harmonic overtones between notes. The overtones generate shimmering waves over the ensemble, and never have they been captured with greater clarity on CD, Okho adds the brittle tones of djembes - West African hand drums - to Xenakis's palette.

By the time of Okho Xenakis's contribution to the percussion repertoire was unassailable. The same year he also produced Rebonds, which has been recorded many times previously.

Familiarity makes it easy to take it for granted, but Schick's performance is a reminder of its nuanced subtleties and power. Pitched drums are locked into a dialogue with chattering woodblocks. At the start, Xenakis provokes the two into a testy, dissonant irrational rhythmic relationship that sets up enough tension to power the music onwards through its ten minute duration.

An earlier solo piece, Psappha (1975), is more problematic, as Xenakis tosses percussionists the impossible challenge of playing up to 25 'hits' a second at the climactic point. According to Schick, some players have concocted multiple-headed sticks to help them cope, but Xenakis's aspirations for performers to stretch beyond the possible has historical precedent in Beethoven's cello writing in his Grosse Fuge and the 20-fingered mutant hand presumably required to play some of Ives's block chords on the piano. Schick quotes pianist and Xenakis specialist Aki Takahashi: "If Xenakis's music were truly 'impossible', why (are) so many of us playing it?"

Xenakis continues to be a central figure because, like other 20th century 'outsider' such as Satie, Ives and Varèse, he dealt in material and not with idiom or style. The extraordinary falsetto vocal writing he devised for his voice/percussion duo piece Kassandra (1987) is unheralded and yet rooted in something deeply humane. Similarly, Dmaathen (1977) for oboe and percussion at first sound like curious, snake-charming music. Then mallet percussion and oboe refract their material through each other - gestures become elongated, and instrumental textures are obligated to buckle into obstreperous multiphonic screeching, so that macro meets micro. Two scores for harpsichord and percussion - Komboï (1981) and Oophaa (1989) - are fastidiously worked through so that their rhythmic and pitch qualities fuse to create a 'third' hybrid instrument. It's a fitting analogy - harpsichord, that most ancient of Classical hardware, running up against Xenakis's mind-expanding exploration of the possibilities of percussion.
--- Philip Clark, The Wire, January 2007


Amy Rubin
Hallelujah Games
Hallelujah Games; Whose America?; Trifocals; Cry of the Mothers; Journey; Chant; Obsession; Two Train Toccata; Aftermath; Windows; Mallet Cycles
Amy Rubin (piano); William Trigg (marimba); Christine Schadeberg (soprano); Kathleen Nester (flute)
Musicians Accord
Artistic Quality: 7
Sound Quality: 8
Mode 79

New York composer-pianist Amy Rubin writes chamber music spiked with blues, jazz, African drumming patterns, and Latin dance rhythms. Sometimes she packs too many idioms into one piece. "Cry of the Mothers", for example, vacillates between a plaintive jazz ballad and a Latin dance. "Hallelujah Games" for marimba and piano is inspired by the drumming patterns Rubin learned in Ghana (not surprisingly, it resembles Steve Reich's Ghana-influenced hocketing music), and the "games" involve performer choices. As pianist on this album, Rubin proves herself to be the best advocate of her own music. Her intricate passagework spins out like a nimble improvisation, and her playing sometimes manages to wield more power than the compositions themselves. Soprano Christine Schadeberg, flutist Kathleen Nester, and marimba player William Trigg join her as magnificent partners. Rubin's music is appealing and often playful, and if she occasionally veers toward sentimentality, she's not the first composer to succumb to tonal ardor when expressing political concerns.
--- Sarah Cahill, www.classicstoday.com


Amy Rubin
Hallelujah Games
Christine Schadeberg, Amy Rubin, Musicians Accord
Mode 79

Just how important is stylistic continuity? Not very, when you're Amy Rubin, and you're good at just about everything. Hallelujah Games, the opening work in the identically named release from Mode, is a bang-on post-minimal post-pop essay for marimba and piano. While the piece is meant to address "the ongoing effects of colonialism in Africa," it is no surprise that the sounds bespeak of her familiarity with Reich's muse: the music of Ghana.

Whose America?, on the other hand, has an earlier African/New Yorker melding in mind. These texts "The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to her Daughters Sold into Southern Bondage," "Brother of the Ku Klux Klan," and "Grandma's Song" mine a updated vein of African-American music which inspired George Gershwin.

Trifocals for flute, clarinet, and bassoon, and Journey for flute and piano are new-music marriages with Caribbean and Turkish music respectively, with emphasis on the new-music. Rubin's short piano works tell of soulful jazz, languid Satie, a cetain almost-cinematic romanticism, and classical dignity. In Two-Train Toccata, Rubin leaves us with a nice minimalist neoclassic puzzle:

Train X leaves San Francisco heading east at a speed of 95 miles an hour. Train Y leaves New York going west a s speed of 110 miles an hour. Where and when will they pass each other?

Is this likely, given that speeds tend to be faster in the West? And what about mountains? Assuming no stops, perhaps the next day in Nebraska… would be a long haul of a piece, that. This is a worth journey that can occupy tracks beside Glass, Honegger, Reich and Villa-Lobos.

Rubin winds up close to where she began, with a brief marimba two-player piece entitled Mallet Cycles. Like Reich, here's another composer who finds that marimba and minimalism go hand in hand, hands on sticks, and hands-down handily.
- Elizabeth Agnew, 21st Century Music, April 2000


From The Mode News Archive:

AKI TAKAHASHI plays Iannis Xenakis (mode 80)
Aki Takahashi has garnered tremendous praise for her disc of the complete piano works of Xenakis, including being honored by French music magazine Diapason's prestigious "Diapason d'or" award. Full reviews will be posted on the mode 80 web page.


Composer KAIJA SAARIAHO (mode 91) was awarded the 2000 Stoeger Prize by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Her recent opera, L'amour de Loin received its premiere to acclaimed reviews in Salzburg this August. Saariaho's new disc of chamber music on Mode performed by the superb Belgian ensemble Champ d'Action is available now.


MORTON SUBOTNICK was one of the honorees at this year's ASCAP Concert Music Awards ceremony held at Lincoln Center on May 25th. Mode is currently working with Subotnick on the release of his interactive DVD Gestures, which allows you to compose your own work at your computer, based on the sound materials on the DVD. The DVD will also feature his classic A Sky of Cloudless Sulpher as well as his own, fixed version of Gestures in surround sound.

Subotnick has been getting a great deal of press in the past months, regarding his composing career, and his recent Gestures piece, including features/interviews in The Wire, Tower PULSE!, and even fashion magazines! Subotnick explained how the interactive Gestures works in July's PULSE!: "There are two modes. One is what I call the 'DJ Mode,' where a person can access different moods through different kinds of gestures, change their moods all over the place and access music, which is all over the place. The other mode is the more 'conductorly mode' where you make a first gesture and then that takes you to a piece of music which is most like the gesture you did-like going to the record cabinet and pulling out the record you want to listen to. It'll be a complete piece. If your gesture is a smooth, tender one, maybe 15 percent of the piece will be wild; but the rest of it will be smooth and quiet and tender. All the gestures you make from that initial point on are in the form of conducting it: making it more intense, louder/softer, higher/lower, bringing in voices."


IRVINE ARDITTI plays John Cage
Arditti has now recorded ALL of Cage's works for solo violin as well as violin and piano (with Stephen Drury) for Mode. These will be released on 4 separate discs in fixed periods over the next couple of years. The next release, of both possible versions of TWO4 (with the sho performed by Mayumi Miyata and with piano performed by Drury), will be issued in October on mode 88.


NEW SCELSI SERIES ON MODE
Mode is excited about its new series devoted to the intriguing Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi. Among the first wave will be :

• a disc of piano music by Canadian pianist Louise Bessette (mode 92, due in November). This is the first volume in what is projected to be the complete traversal of Scelsi's piano works. Other performers in the piano series will include Aki Takahashi,
• a disc of orchestral works along with excerpts from the Canti di Capricorn with The Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic conducted by Juan Pablo Izquiredo (their follow-up to the tremendous Xenakis/Varese disc on mode 58), and
• a disc of works of solo clarinet along with duos for flute and oboe, performed by clarinettist Carol Robinson (also on the Nono disc, mode 87) along with oboist Kathy Milliken (also on the Skempton disc, mode 61) and flutist Clara Novakova. Ms. Robinson's performances are authoritative because she had the unique experience to work with Scelsi on these pieces.

• Elliott Carter: Piano Quintet; Quintet for Piano and Winds; Fragment for string quartet (with Ursula Oppens and The Arditti Quartet); and Syringa (with Ensemble Sospeso conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky). The disc will also include a video interview with Carter, Ursula Oppens and Irvine Arditti led by Sospeso's Joshua Cody. (96/24 audio; plus surround sound option for the Piano Quintet)


• Lydia Kavina, Theremin. Follow up to her successful first disc (Music from the Ether, mode 76), the DVD will contain music featured in her recent Lincoln Center debut program. Ms. Kavina is joined on the disc by Ensemble Sospeso conducted by Charles Peltz:
  Percy Grainger: Beatless Music for 6 theremins
  Olga Neuwirth: Suite from "Bahlaams Fest"
  Miklos Rozsa: Suite from "Spellbound"
  Howard Shore: Suite from "Ed Wood"
  Christian Wolff: Exercise 28 for theremin, french horn, violin and double-bass
  The Neuwirth, Shore and Wolff pieces were created especially for this event. (96/24 audio, surround sound option for the Grainger, video interviews with Kavina, Shore and Wolff).


• Morton Subotnick: Gestures; A Sky of Cloudless Sulpher (please see Subotnick article above for more information). (Interactive DVD-ROM plus both works presented in surround-sound, and video interviews).