Recommended Avant Garde music (#1 - #10)
Avant Garde
- Atonal
- Avant-Americana
- Classical Avant-Garde
- Computer Music
- Electro-Acoustic
- Electronic Avant-Garde
- Experimental
- Free Improvisation
- Lower-case Music
- Microsound
- Microtonal
- Mixed Media
- Modern Composition
- Musique Concrète
- Noise
- Process-Generated
- Psychedelia
- Sound Art
- Sound Collage
- Sound Sculpture
- Structured Improvisation
- Tape Music
GUSTAVO AGUILAR: Unsettled On An Old Sense Of Place
The trend in avant garde, improvised music these days is often guided by a sense of a “busting apart,” of pieces being flung outward from a dissolved or imperceptible center, of small shards of ideas with no home or center to come back to; like thoughts without the mind to think them, like a mind without a body: an overall, disconnected impression. This is not the case with Gustavo Aguilar. As conveyed by his title, “Unsettled On an Old Sense of Place,” while these shards of sound explore daring and limitless territory, there is an overwhelming yearning in these gestures for their center. While that center is felt to varying degrees, the paths that these shards travel to the core, like faint trails of smoke, are not tangible, but are perceptible. Without being horizontal enough to touch on the “soundscape” description, Aguilar’s sense of musical development is not lost on one who is listening for form and who is hoping to be taken some place, rather than simply bombarded with random noise munchies. Despite the lack of meter or a bar line. Inspired by experiences from his childhood, these pieces are experienced like moving collages, not unlike a kaleidoscope of definitive, vivid fragments, playfully intertwining, rising, falling and transforming.
Recommended if you like Milford Graves.CD price: $12.97 / MP3 price: $11.00
OLA HERASYMENKO OLIYNYK: Three Concertos for Bandura
A CD of historic significance, it is the first ever to feature original music for the concert bandura and symphony orchestra. Highlighting the work of contemporary Ukrainian composer, Yuriy Oliynyk, with bandura soloist, Herasymenko Oliynyk, this disc features remarkably inventive and expressive writing for this folk instrument. Bridging traditional applications with a defnitive, "American" contemporary tone, these three memorable works, named the "American," "Romantic," and "Trypillian" concertos, are a brave and fascinating cross-cultural musical accomplishment. With nuanced and colorful orchestration, delivered with outstanding musicianship by the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra and the Lviv Virtuosos Orchestra, the efforts of both the soloist and the composer were recently awarded with honorable citations by the Ukrainian government in Kyiv for special contribution to Ukrainian culture abroad. This important release is a very notable project that will certainly awaken more musical ideas and conversation in the hearts and minds of academics, composers, performers and audiences.
CD price: $12.97 / MP3 price: $12.97
CORNELIUS: Sensuous
Remember when you were driving to your lame part-time college job when over the college radio station they announced that they loved Cornelius’ new release “Fantastma” so much that they were playing from start to finish and you fell ass over tea kettle in love with the record and even showed up late to work because you sat in your car listening to it? No? I guess it was just me… and I can't believe it was 10 years ago. Unique even in his competitively multifaceted home base of Tokyo, this “Japanese Beck” has released a string albums in the US that have been well-received by critics, and built up a cult-like American following. He’s remixed everyone from Bloc Party to James Brown, but his own music is incredibly textural and unpredictable. This latest record is a little more sophisticated than the one I fell in love with in 1997, and it features intensely deep explorations of rhythm, buffed by occasional sparse melodies or crazy sounds, and marked by his trademark patchwork of samples. Between the songs out of left field and pretty songs, it’s clear that Keigo Oyamada is a genius and his music is nothing if not visionary.
CD price: $12.97
JOSHUA PIERCE, WITH JOHNNY REINHARD & MIKE ELLIS: play John Cage, Charles Ives, Ivan Wyshnegradsky Live at the DOM / Alternativa Festival
Featuring the music of John Cage, Charles Ives and Ivan Wyshnegradsky, critically acclaimed pianist, Joshua Pierce, joined by Johnny Reinhard on bassoon (tracks 23, 24) and Mike Ellis on saxophone (track 24), brilliantly communicate these sharp and brittle pieces which fully engage the senses with striking instrumental color and stupefying imagination. The Cage sonatas for prepared piano are especially mesmerizing, often turning the sound of the instrument into something more of a strangled gamelan ensemble, a broken, metallic wind-up music box or steel pan duo gone awry. The voice and musicality that Pierce milks from these works is astonishing and while he is greatly respected and admired for his skill and artistry, even more telling is his ability to "stay out of the way of the music" and let the original inspiration shine through. For contemporary classical collectors, this is a disc that belongs in every library.
CD price: $12.97
CLARINETIST MICHELE ZUKOVSKY: Brahms - Mozart Clarinet Quintets
Principal clarinetist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Michele Zukovsky performs these favorite clarinet works of Brahms and Mozart with dazzling conviction and artistry. With a remarkable balance between power and subtlety, passion and elegance, her playing not only mesmerizes with its incredible agility and ease but with a command that perfectly captures these works in their full dynamic and emotional range. Backed by string quartet and orchestra, these quintets are sure to delight and inspire.
CD price: $15.97 / MP3 price: $9.99
JOHN WILLIAMS - MICHELE ZUKOVSKY: Clarinet Concerto - John Williams Conducting
While we don't normally feature albums of artists who have already "made it" and who don't necessarily need any more exposure, this album is such a gem that it can't be resisted. This disc features the personal, classical and non-film music of Hollywood's soundtrack guru, John Williams. It is quite a treat to peer into the creative life of this man and his genius in such a way; with no need for the music to serve some other art form, this work allows us to get a glimpse into the "other" sound world of this truly brilliant, historic composer. And if that wasn't enough incentive to encourage a listen, the concerto is followed by Bartok and Corigliano (also highlighting the clarinet), making this disc one of the highest profile classical treasures here.
Recommended if you like John Williams, Data CD.MP3 price: $9.99
RUSTY BURGE: Contrast
Highlighting and celebrating the distinct, nimble and crisp voice of mallet percussion, University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music faculty member, Rusty Burge, assembles a first-class collection contemporary classical chamber works as well as a wide-ranging palette of jazz that dances from clever, frolicking, light-footed numbers to explorative, resonant and reflective pieces, revealing the exceptionally dynamic possibilities of marimba and vibraphone. An album with a long-arcing vision, "Contrast" exceeds its name with remarkable color and variance delivered with palpable conviction and precision. But Burge's expression and artistry only begin at his technical mastery and are carried forward with his insightful feeling for and presence with the music. Burge does not simply deliver these vivid pieces, he inhabits them and, like the best of the best, he is inseparable from the performance, instilling the emotion and soul into these works as living, breathing entities. One gets the sense of these pieces being cradled and cared for then cast like a stone that draws perfect concentric circles in the water. Nevertheless, however one perceives it, "Contrast" is a must for classical and jazz percussion enthusiasts.
CD price: $12.00 / MP3 price: $12.00
THE KATIA LABEQUE BAND: Unspoken
Breathtaking from note one, this gorgeous and compelling album intertwines classical sophistication, development and neo-romantic depth with the tug and pull of modern, worldly jazz fusion and the otherworldly appeal of electronic manipulation. Purely imaginative through and through, it is an album that seems to respond to the senses as well as stimulate them- the album noticeably inhales and exhales, ebbs and flows, blurring the line between the music and your experience of it. Truly a masterpiece in atmospheric, programmatic, and epic sound landscape.
ERIK FRIEDLANDER: Maldoror
Everybody loves the cello. But how many really know the capacity of its voice? In a stunning collection of contemporary classical pieces, inspired by the surrealist poems of Lautreamont, Erik Friendlander dives into the depths of possibilites, employing 20th century compositional techniques and then some, in a directed, clearly-envisioned whole. A technical study within itself of the less-known territories of this complex and multi-voiced instrument, this album takes the listener through creaking, windblown, eerie, landscapes to a sphere of neuroses and driving dimentia to rapid, cross-string bowing and breathless, urgent prophesy. Diverse, engaging and bold.
Recommended if you like John Coltrane, John Zorn.CD price: $13.00
ERICH KORY: Sentient Cello
The unconventional album pick of the week: spooky, otherworldly, singing electric cello soundscapes, piercing through ambient expanses of echoes, textures and intangible atmospheres. While it might exceed the ears of the mainstream, those who have a more conceptual and abstract attraction for obscure sound worlds will delight in this.
CD price: $14.00 / MP3 price: $7.99