For the Record: Nov. 10, 2023.
A fresh film score that slipped by last week, capsule takes on this week's choicest arrivals, 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, Â 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.
Almost immediately after I sent out last week’s list of new and upcoming releases, I received word from improvising violinist, violist, and composer Fung Chern Hwei about his score for a new film, Maryam Pagi Ke Malam, which he’d just posted online to take advantage of the latest Bandcamp Friday sale. Fung is a versatile artist whose work I’ve long admired in the groundbreaking Sirius Quartet, and more recently in Seven)Suns, a string quartet that plays metal and hardcore songs.
I regretted missing the chance to list his new record—and more so when I heard the spacious, pensive music Fung had composed, his contemplative, sometimes brooding tone, and the way pianist Hyuna Park, bassist Michael Bates, and percussionist Lesley Mok complement his writing and playing. It’s a special, lovely session; check it out.
Lesley Mok also plays on one of my favorite releases out today, Hear the Light Singing, the sophomore release by pianist, composer, and bandleader Myra Melford with her Fire and Water Quintet. Saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, guitarist Mary Halvorson, and cellist Tomeka Reid all return from the band’s first album, For the Love of Fire and Water; Susie Ibarra played on that one, but Mok makes the role her own here. Larry Blumenfeld wrote a detailed, perceptive review of this album for the Wall Street Journal that’s well worth reading; here’s a gift link.
Ingrid Laubrock plays on another extraordinary album out today: Maromas, a duo project with Argentine composer, improviser, and installation artist Cecilia Lopez. These are two strong, individual artists with distinct, disparate conceptions and sounds, yet here they form a rapport that very seriously begs the question of where one ends and the other begins. I’m always fascinated by projects in which electronics take on an organic, spontaneous quality, and that’s definitely the case here. The music is complex and rigorous, but also unfailingly human.
Elements is a first-time meeting between two iconic sound artists: David Lee Myers, long active under the name Arcane Device, and Toshimaru Nakamura. They’re of different generations – Myers is 74, Nakamura 57 – and represent disparate scenes and practices. But they share a prodigious capacity for yoking feedback to create eerie, spacey, and/or beautiful music; here, they collaborate to spellbinding effect. Some pieces sing like crystals, others judder, itch, and creep like deep-space explorers armed with geiger counters.
Pedal-steel guitarist Susan Alcorn is an artist I’ve followed closely for many years, and I feel safe in saying that she’s never released anything quite like Canto, her new project with a Chilean troupe she calls Septeto del Sur. There’s precedent, perhaps, in Alcorn’s penchant for the nuevo tango of Astor Piazzolla (as on her splendid 2015 release, Soledad), but where that solo project hewed fairly close to compositional structure, on Canto rootsy songs and dances disintegrate into episodes of free improvisation. Her band comprises players of consummate skill, including a potent foil in experimental guitarist Toto Alvarez—whose own new solo album on Elliott Sharp’s Zoar imprint, La Cuerda Floja, also warrants attention.
I was too young to hear silence, the arresting new album by the boundless saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Shiroishi, is the latest in a series of powerful conceptual statements that satisfy in multiple registers at once: visceral, intellectual, emotional, spiritual. Embracing a tradition of Japanese unaccompanied saxophone recordings, Shiroishi brought his horn and a glockenspiel into a resonant parking facility and captured in one take a recital encompassing isolation, rage, contemplation, assurance, and more. He’s one of the most vital artists around right now, and someone whose explorations demand and reward following.
Also worth noting: a second volume of Tangled, a chapbook of writings by Asian American artists curated by Shiroishi, is available for pre-order via American Dreams. (A handful of copies of the first volume are still available, too.)
Bruce Brubaker, an unfailingly thoughtful pianist known for his interpretations of works by William Duckworth, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and Nico Muhly, has issued a new album with a self-explanatory title: Eno Piano includes transcriptions of three sections of Music for Airports, plus three further brief selections. Some selections are sweet and straightforward; others achieve special effects with e-bows. They’re all beautiful, making the entire album a gift.
What’s nuts is that – having written briefly on six new records and another recent one – I’ve barely scratched the surface with what’s recommendable this week. So definitely don’t overlook fascinating new offerings from David Bird, Lucy Railton, Maja S. K. Ratkje & Nordic Affect, Linda Catlin Smith, or Yuhan Su.
To say nothing of today’s un-telegraphed mystery drops!! Admittedly, I had a day or two in advance to admire Swarasa, rush-released by Out of Your Head to seize on the buzz around Javanese singer-composer Peni Candra Rini, who turned heads with Kronos Quartet at Carnegie Hall last Friday. Here, she’s improvising with bassist and OOYH label head Adam Hopkins, drummer-composer Scott Clark, and gamelan scholar Andy McGraw—an arranger of her memorable Kronos piece. Impressive.
Tracing Hollow Traces, the new Andile Khumalo collection that landed in my inbox without warning this morning, is absolutely worth investigating. So, too, is Toccata et Fuga (celebrating our disorientation), an unusual organ-collage piece by Eva-Maria Houben, which showed up a few hours ago and demanded to be streamed immediately.
Finally, new Sunwatchers: hell, yeah.
New this week.
Susan Alcorn Septeto del Sur - Canto (Relative Pitch)
David Bird - Wire Hums (Oxtail Recordings)
David Bohigan - The Water Has Found Its Crack - performances by Clara Kim, Catherine Sandstedt, Heidi Schneider, Alina Tamborini, Rob Cosgrove, Kate Dreyfuss, violin; Sophia Sun, Tsung-Yu Tsai, Argus Quartet, Ensemble Decipher (Other Minds)
François J. Bonnet & Stephen O’Malley - Cylene II (Drag City)
Bruce Brubaker - Eno Piano (InFiné)
Teresa Burga - Estructura Propuesta Sonido: Piezas para instalaciones y composiciones con notas al azar (1972-2017) (Buh)
Candra Rini/Hopkins/Clark/McGraw - Swarasa (Out of Your Head)
Eðvarð Egilsson and Páll Ragnar Pálsson - Skjálfti (Sono Luminus)
Christoph Gallio, Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders - Live at Café Oto (Now-ezz-thetics)
Celia Hollander - 2nd Draft (Leaving)
Eva-Maria Houben - Toccata et Fuga (celebrating our disorientation) (Kvieto)
Kyle Hutchins and Eric Lyon - Cavern (Lurker Bias)
Andile Khumalo - Tracing Hollow Traces - performances by Wet Ink Ensemble, Argento Ensemble, and Ensemble Dal Niente (New Focus)
Sunny Kim, Vardan Ovsepian, Ben Monder - Liminal Silence (Earshift Music)
David Lang - the little match girl passion - Molly Netter, Kate Maroney, Gene Stenger, Dashon Burton, Trio Mediaeval (Cantaloupe Music)
Cecilia Lopez & Ingrid Laubrock - Maromas (Relative Pitch)
Myra Melford's Fire & Water Quintet - Hear the Light Singing (RogueArt)
David Lee Myers & Toshimaru Nakamura - Elements (Surface World)
Arvo Pärt - Tractus - Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra/Tõnu Kaljuste (ECM New Series)
Lucy Railton - Corner Dancer (Modern Love)
Maja S. K. Ratkje & Nordic Affect - RÖKKUR (Øra Fonogram)
David Shapiro - Sumptuous Planet - The Crossing/Donald Nally (New Focus)
Asha Sheshadri - Whiplash (Recital)
Archie Shepp - Derailleur: The 1964 Demo (Triple Point; vinyl-only, unissued studio demo with Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd)
Patrick Shiroishi - I was too young to hear silence (American Dreams)
Linda Catlin Smith - Dark Flower - Thin Edge New Music Collective (Redshift Music)
Yuhan Su - Liberated Gesture (Sunnyside)
Sunwatchers - Music Is Victory Over Time (Trouble in Mind)
Various artists - Oscillation ::: o tempo I - Ameel Brecht, Olga Kokcharova (Umland Editions)
Various artists - Oscillation ::: o tempo II - Maria Komarova, Limpe Fuchs & Valérie Vivancos (Umland Editions)
Various artists - Oscillation ::: o tempo III - John McCowen, Nur/Se performs Éliane Radigue (Umland Editions)
Various artists - Oscillation ::: o tempo IV - Clara de AsÃs & Rebecca Lane, Charlemagne Palestine (Umland Editions)
Christopher Whyte - Cold Stability - compositions by Christopher Whyte, Toshio Hosokawa, Sarah Hennies, and Lou Harrison (New Focus)
Mareike Wiening - Reveal (Greenleaf Music)
Miguel Zenón/Dan Tepfer - Internal Melodies (Main Door Music)
Upcoming releases.
November 15
Mattin - Seize the Means of Complexity (Xing)
November 17
Robert Gross - Penumbra - performances by Anna McKennon, Shana Oshiro, Drew Hosler, Matthew Salvaggio, and Cordova String Quartet (New Focus)
Kelly Moran - Vesela (Warp)
November 24
Büşra Kayıkçı - Places (Warner Classics)
December 1
Elton Dean Quartet - Seven for Lee Variations: On Italian Roads, Vol. 2 (British Progressive Jazz; recorded 1979)
Guillermo Gregorio - Two Trios (ESP-Disk’)
Prism Quartet with Arturo O’Farrill and Tony Arnold - Mending Wall - compositions by Arturo O’Farrill, Martin Bresnick, George Lewis, and Juri Seo (XAS)
December 8
Infant - sigla, sone (Warm Winters Ltd.)
Michael Jarrell - Paysages avec figures absentes - Nachlese IV; Sechs Augenblicke; Un long fracas somptueux de rapide céleste - Ilya Gringolts, Florent Jodelet, Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire/Pascal Rophé (BIS)
Thollem/Terry Riley/Nels Cline - The Light Is Real (Other Minds)
December 14
Ron Horton - A Prayer for Andrew (Newvelle)
December 15
Jaakko Kuusisto - Symphony, Op. 39 - Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra/Pekka Kuusisto; Multiple composers - Pictured Within: Birthday Variations for M.C.B. - BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins (BIS)
January 24
Celer - Gems I (Room40)
January 26
Philip Glass - Philip Glass Solo (Orange Mountain Music)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.