Percussionist Michael Jones performs works by Matt Sargent and Peter Garland. This captivating release features Sargent's Between Time, a solo work incorporating fourteen layers of bowed vibraphone and glockenspiel, and Garland's nine-movement work The Basketweave Elegies for solo vibraphone.
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As Before: The Solo Percussion Music of David Macbride is a wonderful survey of David Macbride's percussion music. As quoted by Alex Ross of the New York Times, "Macbride achieves a remarkable balance of technical rigor and free spirited invention" while acknowledging that Macbride contributes "a distinctive voice in American music." The CD can be purchased here!
"This beautifully produced, annotated, and recorded set challenges, pacifies, and excites in equal measure. A major release." - Colin Clarke, Fanfare, March/April, 2021.
This incredible retrospective of Stuart Smith's percussion music can be purchased here.
At Seventy: The Percussion Music of Stuart Saunders Smith, a six disc retrospective disc set, is a comprehensive look at the vast percussion repertoire composed by Stuart Saunders Smith. This exciting release features performances by Ron Coulter, Justin DeHart, Rob Falvo, Lee Hinkle, Paul Hoffman, Brian Johnson, Ayano Kataoka, Payton MacDonald, Mark Menzies, Thomas Moore, James Ostryniec, Stuart Saunders Smith, Sylvia Smith, Barbara Thompson, Berndt Thurner, Jude Traxler, Joseph Van Hassel, Thad Wheeler, Julia Whybrow, Aurora Borealis, Blue Ridge Percussion Trio, The Hartt Graduate Percussion Group, McCormick Percussion Group and Rrrr... Percussive Theater.
Shine, a two disc set, is a unique multimedia collaboration between flautist Lisa Cella and video artist Stephen Bradley. All these brand new compositions were commissioned for this release. Included in the physical release is the CD audio of the performances as well as the DVD of the video collaboration.
The works showcase the expressive qualities of the flute family, spanning Bass to Piccolo. They are varied in style ranging from the relentless layering of rhythms (010 machine states), much like the seemingly chaotic activity of modern life, to an homage of courage and dignity in the face of disaster (Ripples), to a musical representation of mathematical processes (Knot Theory). These collaborations celebrate the beauty of light in the natural world (Shine, Light in Each One) and end with an exuberant recollection of early technology (Flute Code). The composers who are represented on this release are Christopher Adler, Adam Greene, Nicolas Tzortzis, Stuart Saunders Smith, Christopher Burns and Matthew Burtner.
The video portion for Shine and Light In Each One becomes a critical aesthetic and reference point for the rest of the visuals throughout the music performances. Though each piece is unique, the common thread connects the subtle content and treatment of the video creating a filmic synthesis of image and sound. The content staggers between the conceptual and the actual. Bradley's goal is to create a compelling relationship with the music that does not distract from the power and subtlety of the sound compositions. The listener/viewer of these works may experience a synesthetic immersion in these visual and sonic spaces by perceiving a multidimensional aesthetic.
Pluralities is an exciting new release showcasing composers that have developed their own unique voices in the realm of progressive music. Composers Nomi Epstein, Ljiljana Jovanović, Brian Kershner, Drew Krause, Mischa Salkind-Pearl, Stuart Saunders Smith and Stephen Yip demonstrate a wide variety of intriguing techniques, including data sonification, algorithmic formulations, subtle timbral shifts and musique concrète.
A collection of saxophone works by Stuart Saunders Smith, Hawk: The Saxophone Music of Stuart Saunders Smith proves that the composer is at the forefront of progressive yet highly expressive musical expression. Susan Fancher's consummate skills as a saxophonist are highlighted in these virtuosic works for the saxophone. Other featured performers include saxophonist Mark Engebretson, percussionists Sylvia Smith and Ayano Kataoka and organist John Alexander. "In nearly fifty years of composing music, Stuart Saunders Smith has amassed a body of well over 200 works that have consistently defied the status quo. His compositional aesthetics are broad and somewhat different in every piece - many compositions feature wholly unique notational systems that the composer himself has invented." - Matthew Burke (from the liner notes)
Check out the recent review of Hawk from the Jan/Feb 2016 issue of Saxophone Today!
Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) has created a diverse and unusual body of musical and literary compositions. His music is usually chromatic, atonal, and rhythmically complex, with his pitch material selected in an intuitive manner rather than via the twelve-tone technique. Approximately half of his more than 130 works involve percussion, and his works are particularly popular among percussionists.
This collection of iconic works by composer Stuart Saunders Smith includes the pieces Notebook, Family Portraits: Sylvia, Ivy, Earle, Here and There and Strays. This remastered edition of the original 1992 album features performances by Bertram Turetzky, John Fonville, Paul Hoffman, Edwin Hawkins, Thomas Moore, David Savage, David Yoken, Andreas B�hlen and Tobias Guttmann.
Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) has created a diverse and unusual body of musical and literary compositions. His music is usually chromatic, atonal, and rhythmically complex, with his pitch material selected in an intuitive manner rather than via the twelve-tone technique. Approximately half of his more than 130 works involve percussion, and his works are particularly popular among percussionists.
After Keith Kramer's two groundbreaking releases on the Navona label, Emerge and Causal Dualism, the film Beyond Sonic Boundaries Live! 2010 chronicles a New York performance of the composer's most innovative works, featuring riveting and powerful performances by some of today's best musicians, including David LaVorgna, flute, Jessica Hanel Satava, soprano, Joseph Satava, piano, Gottfried Stoger, soprano saxophone, Sebastian Stoger-DeMayo, violoncello, David Taylor, bass trombone and the Azimuth String Quartet. Bonus features on this DVD include a performance by the harp and saxophone duo Pictures on Silence, as well as complete biographies and exclusive behind the scenes rehearsal photos.
Here is what the critics are saying about Keith Kramer's music:
"The titles of Kramer's music imply a fundamentally existential component. Hearing it underscores that fact. This is music of states of being, of living in the moment and savoring it. Despite its sometimes rapidly moving notes, it is, in the end, music of great tranquility, and its generally non-tonal underpinning gives it a sense of having neither beginning nor end." - William Zagorski, Fanfare, Mar/Apr 2012
"Kramer achieves originality through his personal harmonic and rhythmic language, and not because he is seeking it as an end in itself. Kramer proves that, even in this more 'difficult' style, he can write music that sounds like that of no one else. The composer gravitates in the work between conflict and agreement between his protagonists, a device that helps sustain interest in a work that defies easy formal analysis." - David DeBoor Canfield, Fanfare, Jul/Aug, 2013
