For the Record: July 12, 2024.
For the Record: July 12, 2024.
Wallowing in beauty with Christopher Rountree, Kory Reeder, Ellen Reid, and more, plus dozens of listings for new and upcoming releases.
For the Record 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! To submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, email information to nightafternight@icloud.com.
All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not express the views of any employer.
The lead-in.
It’s been a long, hard, hot week, I’m coming down now from the buzzy intensity of the key interview for my next New York Times story, and my nearly nightly headache has made a matinee appearance. Critical rigor is not on the dance card today, friends. Instead, let’s wallow in beauty—because we deserve to.
Top of my personal list this week is 3 BPM, a weightless collaborative piece designed by California composer Christopher Rountree, more widely known as an ace conductor and the founder of bicoastal new-music ensemble Wild Up.
A compact version of that band is featured on Rountree’s new album – really more of an EP – joined by HOCKET, the L.A. duo of composing pianists Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff, and viola muse, burgeoning conductor, and New-Music Personality Nadia Sirota. Together, they deliver 28 uninterrupted minutes of transcendent Eno-esque drift and bliss.
Rountree calls the piece “a musical framework for being together” and “a conversational game, for any number of musicians, led by two leaders.” It’s gorgeous if you listen closely, and also if you let it wash over you. Try both.
I can’t tell you that I’ve absorbed the whole of Texas: Vol. XII - Vespers, the latest in an always edifying series of self-released archival recordings by composer and multi-instrumentalist Kory Reeder—mainly because it’s literally impossible that I could have done so, since the album, released online this morning, contains just one piece: Vespers, an audacious open-ensemble work 24 hours in duration. The small fraction I’ve heard so far is mysterious and haunting in a manner I hadn’t quite anticipated, whetting my appetite for more; I likely will never experience Vespers as Reeder intended it, but I’m glad to be able to dip in at my own pace.
Talk about giving an album the right name: Stream the title track of Big Majestic, the new album by composer Ellen Reid coming on the New Amsterdam label in late August, and try to imagine a better way to describe how the music sounds and feels. You can’t! The music comes from Reid’s GPS-driven public art piece SOUNDWALK, but holds up beautifully on its own; among the guest artists to contribute their sounds are Kronos Quartet, saxophonist/wind player Shabaka, electroacoustic vocal artist Lisel… oh, and hey, look, here’s Nadia Sirota, again.
Yes, you can only hear just that one track right now—but I’m telling you, this is magic. Preorder with confidence.
Want more right now? One Was Gleaming, the new album from the multi-talented singer, songwriter, composer, and recent Illinoise debutante Tanner Porter, is out today. I’ve admired Porter’s breadth and versatility in the past, and that also goes what I’ve heard here. But I’ve not yet spent sufficient quality time with the album to say any more – blame my recent/current fixations with Bob Dylan, Krallice, and Phish – so I recommend that you consult the lovely review by Lauren Ishida at I Care If You Listen, which will tell you everything you ought to know.
New this week.
Lina Bahn - Axolotl - compositions by Pamela Z, John Drumheller, Morton Subotnick, Ken Ueno, Steve Antosca, and Daniel Wohl (Neuma)
Ted Byrnes & Michael Foster - Solfège (Torn Light)
Peni Candra Rini - Wulansih (New Amsterdam)
Anastasia Clarke - SELF/WORK (Soap Library)
Tomás Gueglio - Madrigales del Rio - Quince Ensemble (self-released)
Mark Guiliana - MARK (Edition)
Rolando Hernández - Topializ - Andrea Neumann, Lucio Capece (Sacred Realism)
David Kaplan - New Dances of the League of David - compositions by Robert Schumann, Augusta Read Thomas, Martin Bresnick, Michael Brown, Marcos Balter, Gabriel Kahane, Timo Andres, Andrew Norman, Han Lash, Michael James Gandolfi, Ted Hearne, Samuel Carl Adams, Mark Carlson, Ryan Francis, Caroline Shaw, and Caleb Burhans (New Focus)
Rebecca Lloyd-Jones - Between Structures (Populist)
Eyal Maoz and Eugene Chadbourne - The Coincidence Masters (Infrequent Seams)
Object Collection - HOUSECONCERT (A Wave Press)
Tanner Porter - One Was Gleaming (self-released)
Karen Power - …we return to ground… - Quiet Music Ensemble (Other Minds)
Christopher Rountree - 3 BPM - Nadia Sirota, Hocket, Wild Up (Brassland)
Carl Schimmel - The Alphabet Turn'd Posture Master, or The Comical Hotch-Potch - Flexible Music (New Focus)
Natsuki Tamura & Satoko Fujii - Aloft (Libra)
Juanma Trujillo - Howl (Endectomorph Music)
“Blue” Gene Tyranny - Real Life and The Movies: Volume 1 (Unseen Worlds; originally issued 1981)
Various artists - Music from SEAMUS, Vol. 33 - compositions by John Gibson, Timothy Roy, Qiujiang Levi Lu, Chi Wang, Sam Pluta, and Scott L. Miller (New Focus)
Andrew Weathers - AW Walks to the West Bank of the French Broad Every Day (Editions Glomar)
Upcoming releases.
July 19
RAHA Duo - Swirl - compositions by Evan Ziporyn, Emily Koh, Matthew Aucoin, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Marti Epstein, and Curtis Hughes (New Focus)
July 26
Tina Davidson - Barefoot - Jasper String Quartet, Natalie Zhu (New Focus)
James Ilgenfritz - Proprioceptions III: Inasmuch and Insofar (Infrequent Seams)
August 2
ayrtbh - Synthetic Weather Reporter (Aloe)
Evan Lindorff-Ellery - Cymbals and Night (Aloe)
August 13
Alex Cunningham, Sandy Ewen, Damon Smith, Lisa Cameron - Meshes of Light (Infrequent Seams)
August 27
Philip Ellis Foster - The Cosmos Project (Infrequent Seams)
August 30
Barker/Parker/Irabagon - Bakunawa (Out of Your Head)
Lia Kohl - Normal Sounds (Moon Glyph)
Ellen Reid - Big Majestic (New Amsterdam)
September 6
BASIC (Chris Forsyth, Nick Millevoi, Mikel Patrick Avery) - This Is BASIC (No Quarter)
Patricia Brennan - Breaking Stretch (Pyroclastic)
Jeff Snyder - Loom (Carrier)
September 15
Jason Kao Hwang - Soliloquies: Unaccompanied Pizzicato Violin Improvisations (True Sound Recordings)
September 27
Kris Davis - Run the Gauntlet (Pyroclastic)
Travis LaPlante - The Golden Lock - Travis LaPlante, Erika Dohi, Charles Overton, Lizzie Burns, Eduardo Leandro (New Focus)
October 18
Brandon Seabrook - Object of Unknown Function (Pyroclastic)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.