For the Record: March 8, 2024.
Celebrating Christian Wolff at 90, in person and on recordings, 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.
Today – Friday, March 8, 2024 – is the 90th anniversary of composer, improviser, and scholar Christian Wolff arriving on planet Earth, and if that’s not cause to celebrate, I don’t know what is. The photograph above was taken by Pauline Kim Harris, a talented violinist, curator, and organizer, as I was interviewing Wolff for a feature story of generous size that appeared in The New York Times Arts & Leisure section on Sunday. (Gift link here.)
A celebration is scheduled for tomorrow night – Saturday, March 9 – at the historic Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village… appropriately, as the article notes, “just blocks away from the site of the Washington Square tenement where Wolff’s family settled after fleeing wartime Europe.” Termed a “mini-marathon” by organizers String Noise – the violin duo of Pauline Kim Harris and Conrad Harris – the event spans the composer’s entire oeuvre, from Duo for Violins (1950), his earliest acknowledged work, to a new piece composed for the occasion, What If? Wolff will improvise with longtime associates David Behrman, John King, and Ikue Mori, and it’s a safe bet he’ll participate in some of the composed works, too. You’ll find more details and ticketing information here.
Issue Project Room, which is producing the birthday concert with String Noise in partnership with Judson Memorial Church, is also hosting a members-only open rehearsal and conversation between Wolff and eminent composer, improviser, and scholar George Lewis, tonight at 8pm, also at the church; details here.
After my story appeared, a number of readers inquired about where one might view Wolff on Composition, the documentary I cited and quoted. In another gesture meant to celebrate Wolff’s birthday, director Ernesto Livon-Grosman has made his film free to view through March 18 on Vimeo; you’ll find it here.
Plenty of Wolff’s music is streaming on all of the usual services, and there’s a good amount available on Bandcamp, too. You can start anywhere, but I’ll recommend in particular A Complete Anthology of Solo and Duo Pieces by String Noise, originally issued in a sold-out edition of 25 LPs – each including an handmade original artwork by Wolff – on the Dutch imprint Astres d’Or, and then subsequently released by Black Truffle on CD and various download formats.
I’ve actually just learned that last summer, Astres d’Or released a recording Wolff made with Ordinary Affects, the sublime chamber group led by violinist-composer Morgan Evans Weiler. (Devotees will want to know that this is the same session previously available on the Ordinary Affects Bandcamp page.)
A handful of further vital recommendations available on Bandcamp:
3 String Quartets - Quatuor Bozzini (New World)
8 Duos - Robyn Schulkowsky et al. (New World)
Pianist: Pieces - Philip Thomas (Sub Rosa)
Preludes, Variations, Studies and Incidental Music - Philip Thomas (Sub Rosa)
Angelica Music - Robyn Schulkowsky, Apartment House (i dischi di angelica)
Sveglia - Robyn Schulkowsky, Joey Baron, Christian Wolff, Angelica orchestrA (i dischi de angelica)
There’s more, of course. Seven volumes in a vital Wolff Edition produced by Mode Records are available through Bandcamp, here. And the inimitable Erstwhile label has made three albums featuring Wolff available for free streaming all day:
ErstLive 010 with Keith Rowe
Looking Around with Michael Pisaro-Liu
Where Are We Going, Today with Antoine Beuger
If you appreciate what you sample, use code “2024” anytime between now and March 17 to save 20% on your Erstwhile purchase. (Details here.)
The birthday concert isn’t your only chance to hear Wolff’s music in New York this season, though certainly there should be more opportunities. Talujon will present the world premiere of Piece for Seven Percussionists at Roulette on Monday, April 15; details here. And on Wednesday, April 24, Petr Kotik and the S.E.M. Ensemble will play Wolff’s Small Orchestra Piece (2019) on a program provocatively titled “2024: The Year of Czech Music in Reverse,” at the Bohemian National Hall on the Upper West Side; details here.
Many happy returns to Christian Wolff, with abundant thanks for his art, his erudition, and his enduring generosity.
Somehow I missed a major arrival last week, one I’ve been obsessing over these last few days. Among all the recordings of Cecil Taylor made available over the years, I’ve always been mystified and enchanted by It Is in the Brewing Luminous, issued on LP by Hat Hut in 1981, and reissued on CD in 2001.
Mystified, because I have a hard time working out how this specific assemblage of old and new colleagues came together as late as 1980 at Fat Tuesday’s, a storied NYC space I visited just once before it closed in 1995. Jimmy Lyons was Taylor’s musical soulmate from 1960 until the alto saxophonist’s untimely death in 1986. Drummer Sunny Murray had played with Taylor and Lyons in the epochal early trio that recorded the pianist’s watershed 1962 work, Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come. (Writing for The New York Times in 1981, Robert Palmer discussed the renewed collaboration of Lyons and Murray, touching on Luminous at the end.)
Bassist Alan Silva had participated in Taylor’s two milestone Blue Note sessions, Unit Stuctures and Conquistador! as well as a 1966 live set, Student Studies. Violinist Ramsey Ameen was in the Cecil Taylor Unit active from 1978 to 1981, featured on epochal releases like 3 Phasis and One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye. Percussionist Jerome Cooper, best known for his work in the Revolutionary Ensemble, had never previously interacted with Taylor, as far as I know.
Enchanted, because somehow this aggregation coheres into a singular expression. There’s plenty of fire and fury, naturally, but also space and variety as the players, variously seasoned as they were in Taylor’s evolving agenda, respond to the leader and to one another. A passage that starts about three minutes into “Part 2,” when Cooper starts playing implacable straight time on a cymbal, is like nothing else in the Taylor canon, save perhaps for Ronald Shannon Jackson turning his sticks around to pummel a heavy backbeat near the boiling point of 3 Phasis.
Part of the Hat Hut catalog sold to Belgian publisher Outhere Music in 2017, It Is in the Brewing Luminous isn’t on Bandcamp, although it’s streaming in all the usual places. But Hat Hut founder Werner X. Uehlinger has kept busy lately with ezz-thetics, extending his customary mix of contemporary concert music and avant-garde jazz. For a time he augmented that output with remastered versions of classic releases from labels like Impulse! and Blue Note, enabled by European copyright law—though that appears to have ended, at least via Bandcamp.
But Live at Fat Tuesday’s, February 9, 1980 – First Visit is something altogether different. Here, on a new Uehlinger imprint called First Visit Archive, we get a previously unreleased entire set from the same February 1980 stint that produced It Is in the Brewing Luminous. It’s consistent with the album we know—Cooper’s celebrated cymbal in full effect! But it’s also filled with serendipitous detours and alternate routes, like the manic drum pulse Cooper uncorks around 16 minutes into the second track.
A $16 download isn’t cheap, certainly by Bandcamp standards, and lovers of physical media might want to hold out for a CD due to arrive in May. Still, more than an hour of unheard Taylor—and Lyons, too? That’s priceless.
Is there more where this came from? More Taylor… Lacy… Braxton… McPhee?
Bring it on.
New this week.
Natalie Cappa - Una - compositions by Jorge Sad Levi, Jorge Diego Vázques Salvagno, Diego Tedesco, Agustina Crespo, José Halac, and Ramiro Mansilla Pons (New Focus)
Taylor Deupree - Aer (Nettwerk)
Andrea Ermke - Walks (Sacred Realism)
Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe, Patrick Shiroishi - Speak, Moment (AKP Recordings)
Eva-Maria Houben + John Hudak - Paloma Wind (Line)
David Leon - Bird’s Eye (Pyroclastic)
Moor Mother - The Great Bailout (Anti-)
Jonah Parzen-Johnson - You’re Never Really Alone (We Jazz)
sugar vendil featuring Aakash Mittal - Live Love Work Play (self-released)
Luc Vitk - Environment (Infrequent Seams)
Mark Wastell - Vibra Trilogy (Confront)
Upcoming releases.
March 13
Adnata Ensemble - Oku (Fallen Moon Recordings)
March 15
Bryan Eubanks - Series (E/A) (Sacred Realism)
John Lurie - Painting with John (Strange & Beautiful)
Wolfgang von Schweinitz - Helmholtz-Funk - Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Jack Dettling, Vicki Ray (Populist)
March 21
Jordan Nobles - The Night Sky - Janelle Nadeau (Redshift Music)
March 22
Prism Quartet - Heritage/Evolution, Vol. 3 - compositions by Melissa Aldana, Matthew Levy, Stephen Sondheim, and Terell Stafford (XAS Recordings)
March 28
Danny Clay - No More Darkness, No More Night (laaps)
March 29
Nova Pon - Symphonies of Mother and Child - Turning Point Ensemble/Owen Underhill (Redshift Music)
Richard Teitelbaum - Asparagus (Black Truffle)
Dan Weiss - Even Odds (Cygnus)
April 4
Choi Joonyong/Devin DiSanto - Strange Skills (Erstwhile)
April 5
Maya Beiser x Terry Riley - In C (Islandia)
April 12
Chantal Michelle - ℎ− 2− ℎ− − 2 ℎ− (Dinzu Artefacts)
April 19
Bill Frisell - Orchestras (Blue Note)
Fred Hersch - Silent, Listening (ECM)
April 26
Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin - Ghosted II (Drag City)
Carlo Giffoni - Dream Walker (Ideologic Organ)
May 2
Sofi Paez - silent stories (OPIA Community)
May 3
Steph Richards - Power Vibe (Northern Spy)
May 5
J. Pavone String Ensemble - Reverse Bloom (Astral Spirits)
May 17
Andy Clausen - Few Ill Words: Solo Trombone at The Tank, Vol. 1 (Westerlies)
May 31
Mikel Rouse - Language Barrier (ExitMusic)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.