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.
A quick one today, as I’ve been spending my spare time [sic] doing my homework for this year’s MATA Festival at Issue Project Room. The festivities got underway Wednesday night with a stellar splash featuring the Sun Ra Arkestra, which I was sorry to miss.
Last night, it was a privilege and a pleasure to see, hear, and speak with composers Inga Chinilina, Ledah Finck, Kylan Hillman, Brian Mark, and Anna Meadors, and to listen to performances by FLUX Quartet (fabulous in works by Roscoe Mitchell and Wadada Leo Smith), RE:duo, and Tropos (whose new album, Switches, due June 27, is a must). One more composer, Jee Seo, couldn’t attend, but his solo violin piece On Fever II made his presence felt.
The show goes on tonight, when we’ll hear FLUX play a world premiere by Reza Vali, alongside recent works by Anuj Bhutani, Rodrigo Espino, Negar Soleymanifar, and Petra Strahovnik. The festival concludes on Saturday with a program built around FLUX playing String Quartet 1.5 (“Experiments in Living”) by George E. Lewis, along with a further cadre of worthy, exciting early-career composers. For complete details, look here.
Some things about Mary.
About Ghosts, the new Nonesuch release by Mary Halvorson, is sensational: brilliant work by an octet of excellent players, allied to sophisticated yet instantly appealing compositions. You’ll be seeing this album mentioned a lot at year’s end; beat the rush and listen now.
I work really, really hard to stay organized so that big releases don’t slip past unmentioned—but last Friday Clone Row, the exhilarating new album by Ches Smith, somehow eluded me. Here, too, is fantastic playing and fresh, original writing—and here, again, is Halvorson, playing alongside fellow guitarist Liberty Ellman, with Nick Dunston on bass.
Trombonist, composer, and bandleader Jacob Garchik, who plays in Halvorson’s band and appears on About Ghosts, is finally releasing a sequel to Ye Olde, his heady 2015 prog-rock fantasia… and as on that record, Halvorson is featured on Ye Olde 2: At the End of Time, playing again alongside fellow guitarists Brandon Seabrook and Jonathan Goldberger—and on one track sparring with Ava Mendoza, Sean Moran, and Miles Okazaki. It’s coming on August 29, and to steal a phase from Devin Townsend, it’s Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing.
Finally, in you’re in New York, here’s a reminder that you can catch Halvorson live in the first concert of this year’s New York Guitar Festival at First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn tonight. She’ll be playing with regular percussion partner Tomas Fujiwara, on a bill shared with Bill Frisell and Skúli Sverrisson; more details here.
Bonus track(s).
As you most likely know already, yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives passed a rescission bill meant to pull back two years of funding reserved for public media, to the tune of more than $1 billion. The bill is headed to the Senate, which has resisted previous attempts to defund public broadcasting in 2011… but times have changed drastically since then.
Obviously no single fund raiser can possibly close the gap. But many, many grassroots initiatives might begin to address the potential for serious loss, which is what prompted Save The Waves: People for Public Media. Assembled by Seawind of Battery – NYC ambient-country purveyor Mike Horn – and posted this morning, the set is a generous collection of 19 unreleased tracks from fellow travelers like Bill McKay, Golden Brown, Joseph Allred, Nick Millevoi, Prairiewolf, Elkhorn, and more. The collection is available on limited-edition cassette and in digital formats, with proceeds earmarked for PBS.
New this week.
June 13.
Gabriel Brady - Day-blind (Tonal Union)
Robert Capanna - Piccolo Concertante - PRISM Quartet, Network for New Music/Jan Krzywicki (XAS)
Giovanni Di Domenico & Rutger Zuydervelt - Painting A Picture/Picture A Painting (Moving Furniture)
Philip Glass - Violin Concerto No. 1 - Anne Akiko Meyers, Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel (Platoon)
Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts (Nonesuch)
Anthony Joseph Lanman - Hommages - Holly Roadfeldt (Meyer Media)
Fredrik Rasten - Murmuration and Stasis (Moving Furniture)
PER-SON-ELL (Martin Klapper, Sture Ericson, Rex Casswell) - Volume 2 (scatterArchive)
Juri Seo - Obsolete Music - Latitude 49 (New Amsterdam)
Various artists/Paula Prestini & Andrew Ousley - Live from National Sawdust: HEALING (VIA)
Various artists/Seawind of Battery - Save The Waves: People for Public Media (self-released)
Stefan Wesołowski - Song of the Night Mists (Unheard of Hope)
The Westerlies - Paradise (Westerlies Music)
Upcoming releases.
June 20.
Chamber Winds of South Dakota - Moxie - compositions by Alyssa Morris, Marie A. Douglas, Nicole Chamberlain, Kimberly Osberg, and Jonathan Newman (Aerocade Music; Bandcamp listening party June 13 at 8pm EDT)
June 27.
Philip Glass - Music with Changing Parts - Dedalus Ensemble (Sub Rosa)
Alec Goldfarb - Shadows (Long Echo)
July 1.
Transcendence (Bob Gluck, Christopher Dean Sullivan, Karl Latham) - Music of Pat Metheny (FMR)
July 25.
Pat Thomas - Sufi Women (scatterArchive)
August 8.
Concepción Huerta & Jiyoung Wi - Concepción Huerta & Jiyoung Wi (Aurora Central)
August 29.
Jacob Garchik - Ye Olde 2: At the End of Time (Yestereve)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.