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Space, Abrams, and Graves CDs designed by Matt Schickele

New music baritone Thomas Buckner, founder of the legendary 1750 Arch Records, which released more than fifty creative record albums, recently announced the formation of a new label, Mutable Music.

Mutable Music will release recordings that promote creative contemporary music. A major focus of the label will be recordings that feature contemporary composer/performers in composed and improvisational settings.

“My motivation for doing this label came from the fact that, just as when I started [1750 Arch Records], there are all kinds of music that I wanted to see out there that other people are not particularly interested in recording,” Buckner stated in an interview.

There are four releases scheduled for spring 2001. The debut release will be The Visibility of Thought, the first-ever recording of Muhal Richard Adams’s classical compositions, played by Joseph Kubera (piano), Jon Deak (contrabass), Ethel (string quartet), Mark Feldman (violin), Thomas Buckner (baritone), Philip Bush (piano), and the composer (piano). “I think that it’s exceptional music,” Buckner commented. “He’s been composing and performing this kind of music throughout his whole career.” The disc includes Baritone Voice and String Quartet, written for Buckner, as well as Piano Duet #1, written for Ursula Oppens and Frederic Rzewski.

Composer Mel Graves has been a prominent music figure in the San Francisco area for the past 30 years. The disc Day of Love features the title track, based on poems by Pablo Neruda, also written for Buckner, and the quartet Global Village. Performances are by Buckner, Ethel, Robert Afifi (flute), and the composer (bass).

Next will come Space: New Music for Woodwinds and Voice/An Interesting Breakfast Combination. This is a reissue of the two critically acclaimed 1750 Arch Records (from 1981 and 1984) of composed and improvisational works by Roscoe Mitchell, Thomas Buckner, and the late Gerald Oshita.

Completing the initial quartet of releases will be Eight O’Clock: Two Improvisations. Since the late 1970s, Thomas Buckner has worked closely with composer/performer Roscoe Mitchell, one of the founding members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. This recording documents some of their strongest work to date in their ongoing studies of improvisation since the formation of the trio “Space” (with Gerald Oshita) in 1979. The way Buckner explained it, he and Mitchell have been improvising together so long that they walked into a studio one day in December, decided to do “a long piece and a short piece,” and then simply recorded the results on the first take.

Plans for future releases include a recording of an improvised piece Jump the Circle/Jump the Line, performed live by Buckner and Tom Hamilton at Engine 27 in December 2000; a new recording of the solo percussion music of Jerome Cooper; and two 1750 Arch reissues: Ethnic Fusion, the music of Big Black and Anthony Wheaton; and Randy Weston‘s solo piano album Blue, complete with some newly recorded tracks.

Buckner stresses that Mutable is not solely a reissue label. “I’m reissuing people I still find interesting. Music is not objective, it’s subjective. [My selection process] is very arbitrary and capricious,” Buckner quipped. Even if he wanted to reissue the entire 1750 Arch collection, there are logistical problems. When he stopped 1750 Arch Records in 1984, Buckner initially sought to find an arrangement with a record company whereby the performers and composers would be able to access their master tapes. When no record company stepped forward, he decided, instead, simply to give the masters back to the composers and performers in question, enabling them to seek out re-release arrangements on their own.

According to Buckner, the name Mutable reflects his love of “music that changes. A lot of the music we have so far has an element of mutability, whether it’s improvisation or indeterminacy. There is an element in the music that isn’t completely fixed in the score.” Mutable could also apply to Buckner’s open-minded approach. “I’m not going to swear that we won’t do something completely different,” he explained. “I’m not going to let a concept keep me from putting out a recording that I want to put out.”

Muhal Richard Abrams’s The Visibility of Thought

Mel Graves’s Day of Love

Sharon Isbin

On February 26, 2001, Teldec announced New Line, a new series dedicated to the music of living composers and to world-premiere recordings of significant 20th century works. The first releases are scheduled for May 2001.

On May 15, New Line will release world-premiere recordings of Bang On A Can‘s Lost Objects: A Transmusicart Project, guitar concertos by Tan Dun and Christopher Rouse, and Luigi Nono‘s Al gran sole carico d’amore in the U.S.

Bang On A Can CD

Lost Objects was commissioned by the Dresden Music Festival and the RIAS Chamber Choir. The piece is an oratorio structured in eleven separate sections, each of which deals differently with the subject of “loss.” The texts that are set to music have been drawn from the Talmud, the Torah, and the Old Testament, texts that deal with lost religious rites and commandments; there are also texts dealing with the fates of people who have gone missing, such as the mountain climber George Leigh Mallory, who never returned from his Mount Everest climb in 1924. It is scored for a combination of Baroque instruments (represented by the Baroque ensemble Concerto Kˆln and the RIAS Chamber Choir), rock band, and DJ Spooky, who remixes the musical material.

Tan Dun’s Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra (Yi²) is part of a Yi¹ cycle of concerti that comprises Yi⁰, an orchestral concerto on which he superimposed independent works for solo instruments. His inspiration for the Yi¹ cycle is the Yi-Ching, or the Book of Changes, a Chinese philosophical work from the 5th century B.C. In Yi⁰, the orchestra is “that which already exists;” the solo is the “potential that is to be discovered.” In Yi², Tan’s writing for the guitar was influenced rhythmically and melodically by Spanish flamenco music.

Christopher Rouse’s Concert de Gaudí also reveals the influence of flamenco music. The piece is named after the Catalonian architect Antoni Gaudí. “What has always struck me about Gaudí is his quintessentially Spanish combination of surrealism and mysticism, and I strove to include these elements in my concerto,” Rouse writes. “I used music that almost everyone would recognize as archetypically Spanish – flamenco – as the foundation for the score,” the composer has written. “I then proceeded to ‘melt,’ ‘bend,’ ‘mist,’ and otherwise transform this material into something I hoped would be musically akin to the way Gaudí would like a traditional design and add fanciful and phantasmagoric touches to make it unlike any other’s work.”

The two concerti represent Sharon Isbin‘s ninth and tenth commissions. She performs them with the Gulbenkian Orchestra under the direction of Muhai Tang.

New Line has signed two composers to exclusive contracts: Gyorgy Ligeti and the 30-year old German composer Matthias Pinscher. Over the next three years, Teldec will release five CDs of the senior composer’s works under the title “The Ligeti Project,” concentrating on a broad representation of his music and picking up the project where Sony Classical left off. The first release includes his Piano Concerto, Melodien, Chamber Concerto and Mysteries of the Macabre. Pinscher’s first recording, made with the NDR Orchestra under the direction of Christoph Eschenbach, includes Hériodiade ≠ Fragmente, music from Thomas Chatterton, and Sur “Départ.” The discs of Ligeti’s and Pinscher’s music will be released in the U.S. on June 15, 2001.

Arthur Moorhead photo by Larry Busacca

“Since we’ve passed into the 21st century, there is this feeling that [in order to be] a company that artistically means something, you can’t just constantly document the past,” commented Arthur Moorhead, Vice-President of Associated Labels at Atlantic Records, Teldec’s parent company. “Museums have exhibitions of an historical nature, [but they also] go out on a limb and exhibit artists who are not yet established. Increasingly in our business, to be taken seriously as an artistic entity, you’ve got to be able to address the music of our time and the music of the future.”

Moorhead credits Martin Sauer, the President of Teldec, with the vision that has made New Line possible. “His commitment to living composers is driving this series,” Moorhead commented. “I don’t think that anyone thinks that this music is going to find its way to a mainstream audience. But composers, Martin [Sauer], and people at Teldec believe that these are recordings that people will listen to 50 years from now.” He admitted that a series of this kind presents “a real challenge for those of us who are judged on what kind of business we run. We’re going to do the best that we can to produce [the recordings] and market them.”

Marketing contemporary music, according to Moorhead, is not that different from marketing early music, something he has had experience with in the form of Teldec’s Das Alte Werk series. “We could be reaching as few as three or four thousand people,” he explained. “We can’t expect to run a full-page ad in Time and have any impact. [Our listeners are] people who listen to NPR, read The Utne Reader, are web-savvy.” He finds it interesting that early music listeners are frequently also new music listeners.

New Line’s function as a series will make it easier to market than the occasional “un-affiliated” new music release, Moorhead explained. “This is Teldec’s first concerted effort to present a real contemporary music series, both in terms of the underlying concept as to what kind of pieces to record, and in terms of packaging.” They are targeting an audience of 2500 to 5000, using what Moorhead calls “traditional elements of brand marketing, albeit on a smaller scale.” He hopes to create a positive kind of “brand recognition” for New Line among new music listeners. There are enough releases “in the pipeline,” Moorhead stated, to keep the series going for at least a couple of years.

One additional and little-publicized fact about New Line that may contribute to its success is the release of each recording into DVD-Audio format. The Bang On A Can Lost Objects recording, for instance, will be released onto DVD in the fall of 2001. Moorhead does not anticipate simultaneous CD/DVD-A releases for another two years, in keeping with the behavior of the rest of the industry.

Tan Dun’s Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra (Yi2)

Christopher Rouse’s Concert de Gaudí

George Crumb photo by Sabine Matthes

Congratulations to George Crumb on being honored with a Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition at the 43rd annual presentation of the awards on February 21, 2001. The winning piece, Star-Child, for soprano, antiphonal children’s voices, male speaking choir, bell ringers, and large orchestra, was composed in 1977 and recorded on Bridge Records in 1999. The Bridge recording was produced by the label’s co-principal, David Starobin and features Susan Narucki, soprano; Joseph Alessi, solo trombone; the Warsaw Boys’ Choir; the Warsaw Philharmonic Choir; George Crumb and Paul Cesarczyk, bell ringers; the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra; and Thomas Conlin, conductor.

The recording was funded in part by The Aaron Copland Fund. Other works on the all-Crumb CD are Mundus Canis (1998) (David Starobin, guitar, George Crumb, percussion) and Three Early Songs (1947) (Ann Crumb, soprano, George Crumb, piano). For an in-depth look at Star Child, its composer, and interviews with Conlin and Starobin, go to the American Symphony Orchestra League’s NewMusicNow website and click on “More Works to Explore.”

Yehudi Wyner photo by Susan Davenny Wyner

Associated Music Publishers, Inc. has announced the signing of Yehudi Wyner to an exclusive five-year agreement in which the company will represent the music formerly self-published by Wyner.

“It’s been a long exile, but I feel I’m coming home,” said Wyner after his 10-year absence from Associated Music Publishers. “[Schirmer/AMP has] participated in the evolution of a thriving enterprise. . .supported above all by faith and vision and by the clearheaded belief that business and quality are not irreconcilable antagonists.”

Schirmer/AMP vice president Susan Feder observes, “Yehudi Wyner possesses a rare gift of compelling, expressive, immediate, individual musicianship. We welcome him home and are delighted once again to have the opportunity to bring music of such quality to a place of wider recognition and appreciation.”

With his return, Wyner brings a diverse catalog of works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, chorus, voice, solo instrumental works, liturgical settings, as well as music for klezmer ensemble.

For more information, click here.

Gerald Plain photo by Louis Ouzer

Gerald Plain has had his compositions performed by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Monte Carlo, and the Louisville Orchestra. His awards include an Artists’ Fellowship from the New York Foundation of the Arts, a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a residency at the Millay Colony, the Prince Pierre of Monaco Musical Composition Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Composer Fellowship Grant, the Prix de Rome, and a Rackham Block Grant from the University of Michigan. He has taught at the Eastman School of Music, the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, Roosevelt University, DePaul University, and Texas Tech University. Dr. Plain’s music is published by Oxford University Press.

“My music is clearly influenced by my Southern roots,” Plain commented in an interview. “My Granddaddy Salmon was a folksinger, and my parents were into church music and folk music.” As a teenager, Plain played the pedal steel guitar and had a band that played square-dance music as well as rock and roll. “I started composing when I went to college,” he explained. “There was a contemporary arts festival at Murray State [University], and I became fascinated by the music of the Second Viennese School.” While at Murray State, he also heard the music of Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, and others. His bass professor had studied with Hindemith at Yale, and it was he who introduced Plain to the string quartets of BartÛk. Plain later went on to study composition with Ross Lee Finney and Leslie Bassett at the University of Michigan.

Plain is currently working on a concerto for the recorder player Piers Adams. The concerto will be scored for solo recorder, string ensemble, harpsichord, and percussion. Plain plans on making an arrangement of one movement of the concerto for Adams’ ensemble Red Priest, a mixed quartet of recorder, violin, cello, and harpsichord. He is also working on an orchestra piece of an autobiographical nature.

The recorder concerto is somewhat unique in Plain’s music for its lack of folk-music influence. Much of his orchestra music features recognizable folk music tunes. Plain’s 1975 orchestra piece and left ol’Joe a bone, AMAZING! includes references to “Old Joe Clark” and “Amazing Grace.” The American folk tunes “Pretty Polly” and “Sally Goodin” make appearances in his two Portraits for orchestra from the late 1980s.

At present, no recording of Plain’s music is available; a recording of his music was made in the early 1970s on the Advance label, but has never been reissued. Plain hopes that the $7500 designated for recording will help him to bring one step closer to fruition a long-held dream: a CD of his orchestra music. According to Plain, several conductors have approached him about recording his music, but as yet he has not come up with the funds to make it possible. “[This award] is going to be a good thing,” he commented, “because recording orchestra music is prohibitively expensive.”