Arthur Honegger (March 10, 1892 – November 27, 1955) was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les Six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which imitates the sound of a steam locomotive.

This is the third album of the stars/astronomy related trilogy ... and it's my favorite one. It has just the right mix of melodic elements and what I'll call "chaos" in the track reviews - the parts that consist of relatively free improvising, only conducted/guided by Zorn.

How many other bands can you name that had the gall to debut with a double album? Magma’s debut was, in many ways, their most daunting and challenging release. Curiously, there are moments of great beauty here, soft passages expressed on piano and flute. I think this serves to make the darker passages all the more harrowing. The darkness of the music is underscored by the vocals—Klaus Blasquiz’ Wagnerian basso profundo and Christian Vander’s inhuman screeching. I think that this all combines to make this seem like water torture to the neophyte Magma listener. Indeed, it took me a long time to come back to this release after my first listen. This is one you have to spend a long time with to appreciate. It’s also perhaps their jazziest release, with lots of stellar reed work from Teddy Lasry and Richard Raux. I don’t think I’d recommend anyone starting with this album if you’ve never heard any Magma before, but it is an excellent release. It’s just got a bit of a “time-release” appeal.

This is, we are told, the penultimate release in the Ligeti Project, a series that Teldec took over from Sony. It aims to put on disc all Ligeti’s major works, performed by some of the world’s leading musicians and in state-of-the-art sound, a sort of ‘definitive edition’ for generations to come. This new disc is every bit as good as its predecessors, and follows their enterprising programming, where we get classics from his early career put alongside the very latest from his pen. The resulting juxtaposition is one of the most interesting things about the series.

This is, we are told, the penultimate release in the Ligeti Project, a series that Teldec took over from Sony. It aims to put on disc all Ligeti’s major works, performed by some of the world’s leading musicians and in state-of-the-art sound, a sort of ‘definitive edition’ for generations to come. This new disc is every bit as good as its predecessors, and follows their enterprising programming, where we get classics from his early career put alongside the very latest from his pen. The resulting juxtaposition is one of the most interesting things about the series.

This is, we are told, the penultimate release in the Ligeti Project, a series that Teldec took over from Sony. It aims to put on disc all Ligeti’s major works, performed by some of the world’s leading musicians and in state-of-the-art sound, a sort of ‘definitive edition’ for generations to come. This new disc is every bit as good as its predecessors, and follows their enterprising programming, where we get classics from his early career put alongside the very latest from his pen. The resulting juxtaposition is one of the most interesting things about the series.

This is, we are told, the penultimate release in the Ligeti Project, a series that Teldec took over from Sony. It aims to put on disc all Ligeti’s major works, performed by some of the world’s leading musicians and in state-of-the-art sound, a sort of ‘definitive edition’ for generations to come. This new disc is every bit as good as its predecessors, and follows their enterprising programming, where we get classics from his early career put alongside the very latest from his pen. The resulting juxtaposition is one of the most interesting things about the series.

This is, we are told, the penultimate release in the Ligeti Project, a series that Teldec took over from Sony. It aims to put on disc all Ligeti’s major works, performed by some of the world’s leading musicians and in state-of-the-art sound, a sort of ‘definitive edition’ for generations to come. This new disc is every bit as good as its predecessors, and follows their enterprising programming, where we get classics from his early career put alongside the very latest from his pen. The resulting juxtaposition is one of the most interesting things about the series.

This is, we are told, the penultimate release in the Ligeti Project, a series that Teldec took over from Sony. It aims to put on disc all Ligeti’s major works, performed by some of the world’s leading musicians and in state-of-the-art sound, a sort of ‘definitive edition’ for generations to come. This new disc is every bit as good as its predecessors, and follows their enterprising programming, where we get classics from his early career put alongside the very latest from his pen. The resulting juxtaposition is one of the most interesting things about the series.

This is, we are told, the penultimate release in the Ligeti Project, a series that Teldec took over from Sony. It aims to put on disc all Ligeti’s major works, performed by some of the world’s leading musicians and in state-of-the-art sound, a sort of ‘definitive edition’ for generations to come. This new disc is every bit as good as its predecessors, and follows their enterprising programming, where we get classics from his early career put alongside the very latest from his pen. The resulting juxtaposition is one of the most interesting things about the series.

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Written two years before his death in 1987, Morton Feldman's Piano and String Quartet is a shimmering, pristine musical event. Contrasting Aki Takahashi's widely-spaced piano arpeggios with Kronos Quartet's extended chords, Feldman allows lingering sounds from either the piano or the strings to haze over many of the piece's near-silences. Kronos plays their parts with tremulous fragility, often making pointedly clear the viola's musical valley between the leading violins and the trailing cello. By the time Feldman composed this piece, he was deeply committed to extended works—chamber pieces that could telescope motifs and worry their tonality so that it warbled between hauntingly atonal and familiarly tonal singing. Amazon.com Review

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A new radio show for the musically curious: post rock, avantgarde, old time radio, contemporary classical and some fun stuff. Every week a new installment, a new experiment, a new musical statement. This week's highlights: Alfred Hitchcock, Apocalyptica, Basil Rathbone, Danny Elfman, David Bowie, Edgar Allan Poe, Keith Emerson, Marilyn Manson, Mick Karn, P.J. Harvey, Peanuts, Rammstein, Sikitikis, Ulan Bator...

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The four works on this newly remastered CD are eloquent testimony to Harry Partch’s aesthetic of corporeality. The music he composed for The Dreamer That Remains, for Rotate the Body in All Its Planes, for Windsong, and for Water! Water!, was intended as only one component in the total artistic experience. The Dreamer That Remains (1972) was Partch’s last work, commissioned by the patroness Betty Freeman for her film on Partch which was directed by Stephen Pouliot. Rotate the Body in All Its Planes (1961) was a spin-off of the “Tumble On” sequence in Partch’s large-scale theatre piece Revelation in the Courthouse Park. It was premiered at the National Collegiate Gymnasts Championship in 1961. Windsong (1958) was also written for film, the soundtrack to a film by Madeline Tourtelot in which Partch saw the Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo. (A later version of the work was named Daphne of the Dunes). Finally, somewhat akin to a Broadway musical, Water! Water! (1961) is perhaps Partch’s most lively and lighthearted work. It pokes fun at many targets, especially the rush of audiences for water at the interval; thus the subtitle: "An Intermission with Prologues and Epilogues.”

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As one of the most important figures in the 20th century electronic avant-garde music, Pauline Oliveros has made contributions to numerous experimental groups dating back to the San Francisco Tape Center in the ‘60s, where she played in the premiere of Terry Riley’s In C for Instruments. Important Record has paid her a welcome tribute by reissuing two discs of her accordion-based compositions dating from the late 70’s and early 80’s. As such, this is the first time The Wanderer has been made available on CD after being out of print for over 20 years. The Wanderer is based on a single modal scale (B C# D D# E F# G#) and rhythmic modes based on a meter consisting of 3/4 and 3/8. Part I, Song, is intended to explore the unique resonant qualities of accordion reeds through long sounds. Subtle variations come about from differences in tuning and air pressure. Part II, Dance, demonstrates the sharp accenting power of the accordion bellows in a mixture of cross rhythms characteristic of jigs, reels, batucadas, Bulgars, klezmer forms, Cajun dances, and music of other diverse cultures. The orchestra consists of twenty accordions, two bass accordions, and five percussionists, with Pauline Oliveros as soloist and Falcetti conducting. This recording documents The Wanderer's world premiere, as it was performed on January 27, 1983 at Marymount Manhattan Theatre. Included as a bonus track is a lengthy live recording of Oliveros with David Tudor that was discovered on the reels during the digital transfer.