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, 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.
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.
British pianist John Tilbury is one of those performers whose playing you can tell within the space of just a few notes. Whether he’s playing something by a composer with whom he’s closely related – Morton Feldman, John Cage, Christian Wolff, Cornelius Cardew, and Howard Skempton foremost – or improvising with the matchless free-music ensemble AMM, of which he’s been a member since 1980, Tilbury is a player whose every note embraces paradox: at once crystalline and weighty, spontaneous yet inevitable.
I’ve always regretted not seeing Tilbury perform live. Yes, I never had an opportunity to see AMM perform. But since Tilbury broke his principled political boycott of the U.S. to play in Boston’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice not long after I’d moved there in 2014, there’s no one to blame but myself.
Happily, Tilbury has made many fine recordings—not least a staggering 4CD Morton Feldman survey from 1999 that fetches steep prices now. And now, the English label Another Timbre has added to that considerable bounty with At home, a new 4CD selection of private recordings from the pianist’s own archives.
Taped at home between the end of his public performing career in 2016 and his 90th birthday in February 2026, when he declared his recording career also at an end, At home includes fine performances of works by Cardew, Feldman, Skempton, and Wolff. The box also includes performances of works by a wide range of other composers – Guillaume Machaut, Christopher Hobbs, John Lely, Linda Catlin Smith, Michael Parsons, and so on.
The set also includes a handful of collaborations with colleagues like AMM comrade Keith Rowe, artist Morgan O’Hara, and electronics performer Klaus Filip. And Tilbury’s fascination with Samuel Beckett is duly represented. All told, this is a treasure chest for committed Tilbury admirers, who’ll need no urging to pursue it, and a wide-ranging introduction for the newcomer.
The arrival of At home is accompanied by a repressing of Seaside, a quietly intense collaboration among Tilbury, electronic composer-performer John Lely, and oud player Dirar Kalash, recorded at Tilbury’s home in 2016. The set includes compositions by Lely and Christian Wolff, alongside improvisations named after Palestinian villages depopulated or destroyed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Proceeds from the restocked album benefit Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), a humanitarian charity working on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank—not the first time Another Timbre has devoted a fund-raiser to this cause.
More by John Tilbury on Another Timbre:
Terry Jennings & John Cage - Lost Daylight - John Tilbury & Sebastian Lexer (2010)
John Tilbury, Johnny Chang, Angharad Davies, Jamie Drouin, Phil Durrant, Lee Patterson - Variable Formations (2013)
Morton Feldman - Two Pianos and other pieces, 1953-1969 - John Tilbury & Philip Thomas (2014)
John Tilbury, Michael Duch, John Lely, Angharad Davies, Lina Lapelyte, Rhodri Davies - Goldsmiths (2016)
Terry Riley - Keyboard Studies - John Tilbury (2022)
New this week.
Aaron Edgcomb - Sisters Songbook (self-released)
James Emery & Anthony Braxton - Articulations (self-released)
Hypercube - Trace - compositions by Marcel Castro Lima, Seong Ae Kim, Corie Rose Soumah, Farzia Fallah, and Charles Rudig (New Focus)
Brandon Locher - The Shadow Planets (Shared Materials)
Joanna Mattrey, Camila Nebbia, Camilo Ángeles, Violeta García - Heavy Handed (Relative Pitch)
Finola Merivale & Catherine Sikora - Abhaile (Relative Pitch)
Florian Stoffner - bijou (Relative Pitch)
John Tilbury - At home (Another Timbre)
Tres Hongos - More Chips (Relative Pitch)
Tu-Ner - Rendezvous Rodeo (7d Media)
Upcoming releases.
August 7.
Greg Sandow - Three Quartets - Terra String Quartet (Acis)
Linda Catlin Smith - The Complete Piano Solos (1989-2023) Vol. 2 - The Underfolding and Early Works - Cheryl Duvall (Redshift Music)
August 21.
Henry Threadgill, Vijay Iyer, Dafnis Prieto - Fifteen (Nonesuch)
August 28.
Marty Ehrlich - Open Air: The Complete Saxophone Quartet Compositions of Julius Hemphill (Out of Your Head)
Henry Threadgill - Cut You Where You Was (Pi Recordings)
September 11.
Janel Leppin - The Realist (Out of Your Head)
September 18.
John McCowen with Lucy Railton and Weston Olencki - Pressure Chords (Hallow Ground)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
Tilbury should be better known here. A truly empathic pianist...