For the Record: April 18, 2025.
An appealing concert I left out of Tuesday's listings, plus the usual plethora of new recordings and future releases of interest.
For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.
This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Amazon, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social-media posts, and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change. (Links to Amazon, used when all else fails, do not imply endorsement.)
These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)
All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.
Topspin.
I had meant to include the following listing for a Saturday matinee event in Brooklyn in the newsletter I sent out on Tuesday, but got distracted and accidentally left it out. I shared it on various social-media platforms immediately afterward, but since direct e-mail has exponentially more reach than Facebook or Bluesky, here’s the one that got away:
Aaron Larget-Caplan
Bargemusic at the Brooklyn Bridge Park Boathouse
10 Montague St. at Pier 5; Brooklyn
Saturday, Apr. 19 at 2 & 4pm; free admission
bargemusic.org
The last time I visited Bargemusic in that storied venue’s original floating location, Boston-based guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan rocked the boat with an impressively rangy program encompassing Bach, Spanish music, a wide span of contemporary fare, and his own original compositions. The same holds true of this newest visit: at 2pm Larget-Caplan chiefly focuses on Johann Sebastian Bach and Spaniards, as well as a new piece of his own, and at 4pm he’ll present a New York premiere by Ian Wiese alongside works by John Cage, Tōru Takemitsu, David Liptak, Daniel Felsenfeld, and Nikita Koshkin. This stage will stay put this time around, but you can count on Larget-Caplan to provide the sway.
I’m out of town this week sans computer, so this For the Record update is short and sweet by necessity. Of course, by now you all know me well enough to predict that I would deem the new batch of releases from Another Timbre a must. I mean, come on… Apartment House playing some of John Cage’s most appealing chamber music? The same ensemble in a feature-length string quartet by Kory Reeder? The superb violinist Marco Fusi taking up the viola d’amore for an arresting study in flickers and glints by Evan Johnson? A ruminative piano soliloquy by Timothy McCormack, eloquently played by Jack Yarbrough and stunningly recorded by Ryan Streber? Yes, please! to all of the above—plus one further release from a name new to me, Ferdinand Schwarz, whose worth I take as a given when this label provides the imprimatur.
All of which said, if you can only buy one new recording today, make it Voiceless Mass, which includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning composition of that title by Raven Chacon, recorded by the group that commissioned the work, Present Music, plus two further Chacon compositions. It’s out this week on New World—and it’s essential.
Another strong recommendation goes to Il Teatro Rosso, a rollicking slab of surrealism composed by Steven Kazuo Takasugi for the Montréal organization No Hay Banda. The audio recording is out today on No Hay Discos, but I also recommend watching this trailer for a related film by Huei Lin to get a sense of this wild project’s true dimensions:
The more time I spend with this recording, the more convinced I am that Il Teatro Rosso is going to be a highlight of the summer when Time:Spans presents No Hay Banda at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music on Aug. 23. (Tickets for the festival go on sale June 2.)
One more item this week, tied to a worthy cause and a clock that’s ticking: Sunview Luncheonette (or “Lunchnet,” if you like), the Greenpoint multi-arts laboratory where David First hosted his popular Dave’s Waves series, among other varied offerings, is losing its space in on Nassau Ave. Happily, that’s not the end of the intrepid community of artists and activists who established it, who are seeking donations to fund storage, a move to a new location, and associated costs. There’s a crowdfunding campaign page on chuffed.org, or you can donate discreetly with Venmo or PayPal via the Sunview website.
New this week.
April 18.
Ludovica Burtone - Migration Tales (endectomorph music)
John Cage - Chamber Works 1943–1951 - Apartment House (Another Timbre)
Raven Chacon - Voiceless Mass - Present Music (New World)
FEN (Otomo Yoshihide, Ryu Hankil, Yuen Chee Wai, Yan Jun) - 4 x 4 (Meenna)
Richard Festinger - Then and Now: Chamber Music of Richard Festinger - performances by Calefax, Cygnus & John Ferrari, Collage New Music, Windscape, Alan R. Kay, and Michael Nicolas (New Focus)
Joel Harrison - Guitar Talk, Vol. 2: Music for Two Guitars (AGS Recordings)
Evan Johnson - dust book - Marco Fusi (Another Timbre)
Ed Jones/Emil Karlsen - Liminal Spaces (Confront)
Kneebody - Reach (GroundUP Music)
Rindert Lammers - Thank You Kirin Kiki (Western Vinyl)
Timothy McCormack - mine but for its sublimation - Jack Yarbrough (Another Timbre)
Tobias Meinhart - Sonic River (Sonic River)
David Mitchell - Turiyans (self-released)
Lance Austin Olsen - Death in the Urban Ocean (Confront)
Lucy Railton - Blue Veil (Ideologic Organ)
Kory Reeder - Homestead - Apartment House (Another Timbre)
Gryphon Rue - I Keep My Diamond Necklace in a Pond of Sparkling Water (self-released)
Ferdinand Schwarz - Listening Time - AREPO Ensemble (Another Timbre)
David Shea - An Eastern Western: Collected Works (Room40)
Steven Kazuo Takasugi - Il Teatro Rosso - No Hay Banda (No Hay Discos)
Dave Tucker - A Brief History of Depraved Indifference (scatterArchive)
Zosha Warpeha & Mariel Terán - Orbweaver (Outside Time)
Upcoming releases.
April 25.
Dalit Hadass Warshaw - Sirens - Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose (BMOP/sound)
April 29.
Unfiled (Atli Bollason & Guðmundur Úlfarsson) - Unfiled (self-released)
May 2.
Melia Watras - The almond tree duos - Melia Watras, Tekla Cunningham, Rachel Lee Priday, Michael Jinsoo Lim (Planet M)
May 16.
Joy Guidry - Five Prayers (Jaid)
May 23.
Brooklyn Rider - The Four Elements - compositions by Colin Jacobsen, Dan Trueman, Andreia Pinto Correia, Henri Dutilleux, Akshaya Tucker, Dmitri Shostakovich, Conrad Tao, and Osvaldo Golijov (In a Circle)
June 13.
Juri Seo - Obsolete Music - Latitude 49 (New Amsterdam)
July 11.
Alan Niblock, John Butcher, Mark Sanders - Tectonic Plates (577 Records)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
Yes! Raven's album is essential. And I'm all over the new 'Cage Chamber Works,' which includes his 'String Quartet in Four Parts,' a desert-island piece forever