For the Record: March 1, 2024.
Bandcamp Friday shopping frenzy, violinist Sarah Saviet profiled, and 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 Bandcamp Friday, and if you’re anything like me, new release notices have been flooding your inbox since late last night, or even earlier. A new Bloodmist album! Blissful sounds from Lea Bertucci! The complete music for cello and piano by Morton Feldman! A split vinyl EP from Christian Wolff and Wendy Eisenberg! A fiery archival release by Science Friction, Tim Berne’s beloved quartet with Marc Ducret, Craig Taborn, and Tom Rainey! Sublime new music from Kelly Moran! And Gelsey Bell! And Michaël Attias! And so much more.
As my current fixation Sohla El-Waylly would say, “What’s not to love?”
Bandcamp Friday is also a brilliant time to check out something you’ve never heard of. Before this morning, I’d not come across the Norwegian-Swedish improvising trio Muddersten. But the Sofa label reliably delivers interesting music, so I clicked a link in my email for their new album, Triple Music, and am completely riveted by what guitarist Håvard Reite Volden, turntablist Henrik Olsson, and tuba player Martin Taxt have made of locked-groove stasis.
It’s also a great day to consider pre-ordering future releases, like the handsome new hardcover folio the greyfade label has invented for an April release by Kenneth Kirschner. If that’s still not enough, there are endless catalog treasures well worth investigating: I personally started my day off right with Quatuor Bozzini’s fantastic 2021 recording of three quartets by Christian Wolff, and deem it essential to Wolff devotees and curiosity seekers alike.
So, what are you listening to and buying today? Comments are open.
One more Bandcamp Friday plug relates to a newly published article. Most of the work I’ve done for Musical America since I resumed writing there in September is behind a paywall, which makes it difficult to share. (If you act right now, though, for a few days you can read free of charge my just-posted review of the wonderful recital Timo Andres played last Friday at Zankel Hall.)
But I recently had the pleasure and privilege of speaking with Sarah Saviet, a brilliant American violinist based in Berlin, for a New Artist of the Month profile on the site—and, happily, that feature is always freely accessible. The article follows Saviet’s Chicago engagements in February, and sets the stage for a more extensive California residency coming in May.
I didn’t learn about it in time for the article, but a new release featuring Saviet has just been made available for pre-order—and it’s sensational.
Girl is a collection of four works by British-Iranian composer Soosan Lolavar, performed by the London-based Austalasian activist chamber orchestra Ruthless Jabiru and its conductor, Kelly Lovelady. Saviet, who previously recorded Lolavar’s marvelous detuned-violin solo work Every Strand of Thread and Rope for the English label All That Dust, is featured on Undone—which just happens to be the preview track for the Lolavar album on Bandcamp. The other pieces on the album, including one showcasing the santoor and another featuring cello, are warmly commended as well. Girl is due March 15; don’t miss it.
Further Saviet essentials on Bandcamp include SPUN, her sensational debut solo recital album on Coviello Contemporary, featuring compositions by Liza Lim, Lisa Streich, Evan Johnson, Arne Gieshoff, and Lawrence Dunn; and her superhuman account of Bryn Harrison’s A Coiled Form on Another Timbre, sold out on CD but still available in multiple download formats. Saviet plays memorably on Evan Johnson’s L’art de toucher, also on Another Timbre. (Her vital account of Lim’s Speak, Be Silent, with Riot Ensemble, isn’t on Bandcamp yet, but you can stream it in all the usual places.)
I’m grateful to Musical America for the opportunity, to Saviet for the enjoyable conversation, and to Liza Lim and Bryn Harrison for sharing thoughts via email. For more about Saviet, read her brilliant chat with ty bouque on VAN.
New this week.
Michaël Attias - Quartet Music Vol. I: LuMiSong (Out of Your Head)
Marco Baldini - Maniera - Apartment House (Another Timbre)
Gelsey Bell - Heads Together (Gold Bolus)
Lea Bertucci - Hold Music (Cibachrome Editions)
Bloodmist (Jeremiah Cymerman, Mario Diaz de Leon, Toby Driver) - Trace (5049 Records)
Thomas Buckner, Andrew Drury, & James Ilgenfritz - Dérive (Infrequent Seams)
Mike Bullock - Live at Goethe-Institut Boston (self-released)
Jessica Ekomane/Laurel Halo - Manifolds/Octavia (Portraits GRM)
Nomi Epstein - shades - Christian Kesten, Michiko Ogawa, Mieko Klein, Joseph Houston, Apartment House (Another Timbre)
Morton Feldman - Feldman Edition 14: Complete Music for Cello & Piano - Stephen Marotto, Marilyn Nonken (Mode)
Morton Feldman/Christian Wolff - The Possibility of A New Work for Electric Guitar - performances by Christian Wolff and Wendy Eisenberg (Other Minds)
Florida Lucid Dreaming (Jeff Tobias & Dave Ruder) - Pleasure of the Present (Gold Bolus)
Ben Frost - Scope Neglect (Mute)
Forbes Graham - You Can’t Time Travel… Yet (self-released)
Gabriel Kahane - “Poem for Vows” (self-released)
Julian Lage - Speak to Me (Blue Note)
Sean Ono Lennon - Asterisms (Tzadik)
Muddersten (Håvard Reite Volden, Henrik Olsson, Martin Taxt) - Triple Music (Sofa Music)
Michael A. Muller - Mirror Music (Deutsche Grammophon; vinyl LP available March 15 on Bandcamp)
Paul Newland - things that happen again - Apartment House (Another Timbre)
NRG Ensemble - Hold That Thought (Corbett vs. Dempsey; recorded 1996)
Paul Paccione - Distant Musics - Apartment House (Another Timbre)
Ivo Perelman/Mark Helias/Tom Rainey - Truth Seeker (Fundacja Słuchaj)
Rasmussen/Sakata/O’Rourke/Corsano - Live at SuperDeluxe, Vol. 1 (Trost)
Joel Roston - We’re Able (Forty Dialogic Valences) (self-released)
Tamarisk - House of the People, Property is Theft (Editions Glomar)
Vera Weber & Vicki Ray - A Soft Lunacy (Orenda)
Mars Williams, Darin Gray, Chris Corsano - Elastic (Corbett vs. Dempsey; recorded 2012)
Mars Williams & Hamid Drake - I Know You Are But What Am I? (Corbett vs. Dempsey; recorded 1996)
Upcoming releases.
March 8
Natalie Cappa - Una - compositions by Jorge Sad Levi, Jorge Diego Vázques Salvagno, Diego Tedesco, Agustina Crespo, José Halac, and Ramiro Mansilla Pons (New Focus)
March 15
Kyle Bruckmann - of rivers - compositions by Kyle Bruckmann, Jessie Cox, Hannah A. Barnes, Helen Grime, Linda Bouchard, and Christopher Burns (New Focus)
Simone Keller - Hidden Heartache (Intakt)
Soosan Lolavar - Girl - Faraz Eshghi Sahraei, Sarah Saviet, Roxanna Albayati, Ruthless Jabiru/Kelly Lovelady (Nonclassical)
Angelica Sanchez/Chad Taylor - A Monster Is Just an Animal You Haven’t Met Yet (Intakt)
Space (Lisa Ullén, Elsa Bergman, Anna Lund) - Embrace the Space (Relative Pitch)
March 22
Rodney Sharman - Known and UnKnown - Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa (Redshift Music)
March 29
Kelly Moran - Moves in the Field (Warp)
April 5
Jamie Baum Septet+ - What Times Are These (Sunnyside)
loscil/Lawrence English - Chroma (Room40)
Ivo Perelman Quartet - Water Music (RogueArt)
Fay Victor/Herbie Nichols SUNG - The World Is Still the Same (TAO Forms)
Adam Wiltzie - Eleven Fugues for Sodium Pentothal (Kranky)
April 19
Márta Sanchez - Perpetual Void (Intakt)
April 26
John Adams/Peter Sellars - Girls of the Golden West - Julia Bullock, Davóne Tines, Paul Appleby, Hye Jung Lee, Elliot Madore, Daniela Mack, Ryan McKinny, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Philharmonic/John Adams (Nonesuch)
Kenneth Kirschner - Three Cellos - Christopher Gross (greyfade)
May 10
House of Gold - House of Gold - compositions by Isaiah Ceccarelli (Sofa Music)
Shane Parish - Repertoire (Palilalia)
May 17
Christopher Cerrone - Beaufort Scales - Lorelei Ensemble (Cold Blue)
May 23
Han-earl Park, Yorgos Dimitriadis, and Camila Nebbia - Gonggong 225088 (Waveform Alphabet)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
I loved Spun so thanks for the tips on more from Saviet. Among other things, I did dig into Embrace the Space as well as Bertucci’s Hold Music - both great. One nice surprise today was the new track from Laurel Halo, 21 minutes of silky smooth ambience…