For the Record: Sept. 29, 2023.
Goings on at Bandcamp and elsewhere, an Album of the Week honoring a great American composer, 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.
Bandcamp gets bought, again.
Yesterday’s Billboard magazine headline was an attention grabber: “Songtradr Acquires Bandcamp From Epic Games.”
Many questions followed: What’s Songtradr? Is this better or worse than when Epic Games acquired the formerly independent Bandcamp platform? What happens to artists? What happens to Bandcamp’s prized editorial efforts? Should we start downloading everything now?
Not many answers so far, and that’s a concern in itself—definitely as regards the editorial thrust, which has produced first-rate journalism and criticism on a daily basis for quite some time.
The Billboard article is behind a paywall, but other sources have weighed in. Writing for Vulture, Justin Curto reports:
Songtradr, in its own press release announcing the acquisition, made the same commitment to “continue to operate Bandcamp as a marketplace and music community with an artist-first revenue share.” The company seems to see Bandcamp as an asset to its own licensing business, describing plans to “offer Bandcamp artists the ability and choice to have their music licensed to all forms of media including content creators, game and app developers and brands.”
In the aforementioned press release, Songtradr CEO Paul Wiltshire says this:
“The acquisition of Bandcamp will help Songtradr continue to grow its suite of services for artists. I’m a passionate musician myself, and artistry and creativity have always been at the heart of Songtradr. Bandcamp will join a team of music industry veterans and artists who have deep expertise in music licensing, composition, rights management, and distribution,” said Paul Wiltshire, CEO of Songtradr.
Understandable, certainly, why so many are concerned about the editorial wing…
…and, certainly, about one of the most equitable music-sales platforms to emerge during the digital era.
For more thoughts and implications, check out this timely, thorough Future of Music Coalition thread on X/Twitter.
So, what’s going on outside of Bandcamp?
After holding out for years, John Zorn took the plunge this week, allowing the entire Tzadik label – his own releases and those by everyone else on the label – to stream on all the usual platforms: Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Tidal, etc. (Not, however, on Bandcamp.) There are some pretty serious metadata issues, as anyone might expect from a launch this massive: albums by Derek Bailey, Steve Lacy, Charles Wuorinen and many others were co-billed to Zorn, thus popping up in searches of his own ample discography.
Those discrepancies are being addressed even as I type this, so things should improve on that front. Meanwhile: what a bounty.
Speaking of bounties, Zorn also has a new offering coming later in October via Tzadik Limited Run. Masada 30th Anniversary Edition: The Complete Studio Master Takes is a handsome box set containing the 10 discs of studio recordings the original Masada quartet – Zorn, Dave Douglas, Greg Cohen, and Joey Baron – issued on the Japanese label DIW. The set also includes an hour of outtakes and rehearsal tracks, plus a booklet filled with vintage photos and new essays. The box is available in signed and unsigned editions; neither is cheap, but the music is invaluable.
Also new to streaming platforms are two albums recorded by the late cornetist, composer, and bandleader Ron Miles, whose stature had been rising steadily just prior to his premature death last year at age 58. Last Saturday, WMG Global added to streaming platforms two albums Miles made in the late 1990s for the Gramavision label during the years it was overseen by producer Hans Wendl: My Cruel Heart (1996) and Woman’s Day (1997)—the latter marking the start of Miles’s long and fruitful connection with guitarist Bill Frisell. If you love these albums, you’ll need no urging; if you don’t know them, you’re in for a heady discovery.
Album of the week.
George Walker
Five Sinfonias
National Symphony Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda
(National Symphony Orchestra; CD, DL)
“George Walker: the great American composer you’ve never heard of,” The Guardian proclaimed in the headline for a 2015 appreciation by Tom Service. At the time, Walker was still very much alive and composing; he died three years later, at 96, in Montclair, NJ. Despite being the first Black composer to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1996, for Lilacs – one of many firsts in his career – Walker spent decades misunderstood and under-appreciated for his edgy but urgently communicative compositions.
The tide began turning not long before his death, thanks in part to attention from writers like Service and artists like Ethan Iverson, who published a very intelligent interview with Walker on his popular blog, Do the Math. Virtually alone among conductors, Ian Hobson performed a genuine service to Walker’s orchestral music with a series recorded with the Sinfonia Varsovia on the Albany label.
Those ardent recordings brought this important music to wider attention. But just lately, Walker’s music has found some highly visible champions in Franz Welser-Möst, who made a superb recording with the storied Cleveland Orchestra for its in-house label last year, and in Giandrea Noseda, whose complete cycle of Walker’s five Sinfonias with the National Symphony Orchestra – issued across a span of months in digital formats – has now been compiled into a comprehensive set.
Beyond serving to further spread the word about Walker, the new set demonstrates what a fine rapport Noseda has built with his players in Washington, D.C., who’ve endured their share of high and low fortunes over the decades. Walker’s compositions proclaim kinship with Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Berg, infused with and enhanced by spiritual and folkloric sources, and the orchestra rises to meet its opportunities and demands with power and refinement.
Noseda’s commitment is proved by his continued advocacy: last season he conducted works by Walker with the NSO at Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. His faith in Walker’s stature is a gift to listeners everywhere.
New this week.
Jason Adasiewicz - Roscoe Village: The Music of Roscoe Mitchell (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Marja Ahti - Tender Membranes (Black Truffle)
Assembly Quartet - (RE)Mix - compositions by Avner Dorman, Alfred Schnittke, and Bill Ryan (AMP Recordings)
Vilhelm Bromander - In this forever unfolding moment (Thanatosis)
Jeremiah Chiu - In Electric Time (International Anthem)
Lainie Fefferman - White Fire (Gold Bolus)
Morton Feldman - Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello - dissonArt Ensemble (GOD)
Filera (Wilfrido Terrazas, Carmina Escobar, Natalia Perez-Turner) - Filias/Fobias (Infrequent Seams)
Daniel Fishkin - Dark Listening - performances by Daniel Fishkin, the Daxophone Consort, Science Ficta Viola da Gamba Consort, and ensemble mise-en (Tripticks Tapes)
Ghost Train Orchestra & Kronos Quartet - Songs and Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog (Cantaloupe Music)
Vinny Golia - Even to This Day… Music for Orchestra and Soloists – Movement Two: Syncretism: For the Draw… (self-released)
Elis Hallik - Born in Waves - performances by Ensemble Synaesthesis, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Fractales, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble for New Music Tallinn, and Ensemble U: (Kairos)
Hollow Deck (Mia Friedman and Andy Allen) - Over East (Triptick Tapes)
Jlin - Perspective (Planet Mu)
Darius Jones - fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s̶ suite but sacred) (Northern Spy)
Dominique Lawalrée - De Temps en Temps - Nicolas Horvath (Collection 1001 Notes)
Wolfgang Muthspiel - Dance of the Elders (ECM)
Oceans Roar 1000 Drums - Gowanus (Sacred Realism)
Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the garden… (Constellation)
Todd Sickafoose - Bear Proof (Secret Hatch)
Maria Elena Silva - Dulce (Astral Spirits/BIG EGO)
Tender Crust - Convexity (Full Spectrum)
Christopher Tignor - The Art of Surrender (Western Vinyl)
UNCSA School of Music - Windows - compositions by Reena Esmail, Jessie Montgomery, Kamala Sankaram, and Valerie Coleman (UNCSA Media)
George Walker - Five Sinfonias - National Symphony Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda (National Symphony Orchestra)
Nate Wooley - Four Experiments (Pleasure of the Text)
Upcoming releases.
October 6
Samuel Reinhard - Two Pianos and String Trio (Präsens Editionen)
October 20
Gates/Dunn/Fox - Deliriant Modifier (Riverworm)
October 27
Patricia Alessandrini - Leçons de ténèbres - Riot Ensemble (Huddersfield Contemporary Records)
Alon Nechushtan - For Those Who Cross the Seas (ESP-Disk')
Rakhi Singh - Purnima (Cantaloupe Music)
November 3
Terry Riley - In C Irish - Zoë Conway, Dónal Lunny, Michelle Mulcahy, Louise Mulcahy, Paddy Glackin, Máirtín O'Connor, and Mick O'Brien. (Louth Contemporary Music Society)
Wrens (Ryan Easter, Elias Stemeseder, Lester St. Louis, Jason Nazary) - alligator shoes [on flatbush] (Novel Service)
November 10
Linda Catlin Smith - Dark Flower - Thin Edge New Music Collective (Redshift Music)
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
Hey! Does this Ron Miles news mean the Gramavision catalog might be in the process of being revived?
"During 2001 Wiltshire worked with the Los Angeles producing team, The Matrix, responsible for writing songs for Avril Lavigne, Korn, Hilary Duff." (Wikipedia, citing APRA Roadshow, 2007) Well, that's reassuring! ...