Violin and viola players whisper over their instruments. A guitarist waits with the closest attention for the moment to make a gesture we might easily have missed. The tuba player rises to go over to the open piano, there to send sounds echoing into its interior. Two cellists, bowing with heavy pressure down near the tailpiece, produce an urgent rasping. From the timpanist comes the sudden fortissimo that seems to shock the music to a standstill...
Renowned German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s music is expressive in extraordinary ways, requiring the performers to play their instruments via unusual techniques, making for both compelling listening and viewing.
Lachenmann performs in and supervises these recordings with Ensemble Signal, one of America’s leading New Music ensembles. In addition to performing as narrator in „…Zwei Gefühle …“. Lachemann also is the soloist for three of his piano works.
These studio recordings followed an intensive four concert tour of this program. Lachenmann taught each musician of Ensemble Signal individually on his language of techniques for this project.
Liner notes by Paul Griffiths.
The DVD includes a 20 minute documentary of Lachenmann in conversation with Seth Brodsky (Assistant Professor of Music at The University of Chicago), filmed at New York’s Miller Theatre.
First in a series of Lachenmann on Mode Records.
“The audience whooped and cheered after every work.” – Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, reviewing the Miller Theatre concert.

Haunting, poignant and relentlessly physical, Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields is a lovingly detailed oratorio about turn-of-the-20th-century Pennsylvania coal miners, and a fitting recipient of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music. NPR Music’s Tom Huizenga describes the piece as “...almost a public history project and a music project at the same time,” which hints at the work’s universal appeal.
Weaving together personal interviews that she conducted with miners and their families, along with oral histories, speeches, rhymes and local mining lore, Wolfe sought to honor the working lives of Pennsylvania’s anthracite region. “It’s not necessarily mainstream history,” she told NPR shortly after she received word of winning the Pulitzer. “The politics are very fascinating—the issues about safety, and the consideration for the people who are working and what’s involved in it. But I didn’t want to say, ‘Listen to this. This is a big political issue.’ It really was, ‘Here’s what happened. Here’s this life, and who are we in relationship to that?’ We’re them. They’re us. And basically, these people, working underground, under very dangerous conditions, fueled the nation. That’s very important to understand.”
Featuring the always adventurous Bang on a Can All-Stars and the renowned Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Anthracite Fields merges multiple styles with classical themes—from the deep, ambient sweep of the opening movement “Foundation” (with the All-Stars’ Mark Stewart wrenching waves of keening sound from his electric guitar) to the athletic work-song mood of “Breaker Boys” and the elegiac, contemplative drift of “Flowers.” In the socio-politically engaged “Speech,” Stewart takes the lead with boisterous rock vocals, while “Appliances” spells out the economic weight of coal power with ruthlessly mechanical precision.

Pioneering vocal octet Roomful of Teeth will release its eponymous debut album October 30th on New Amsterdam Records. Founded in 2009 by director Brad Wells, the ensemble consists of eight classically trained vocalists dedicated to re-imagining singing in the 21st century. Through their study with vocal masters of singing traditions from all over the globe–including Tuvan throat singing, belt and pop techniques, yodeling, Inuit throat singing, and styles from Sardinia and Korea–Roomful of Teeth boasts an astounding dexterity that makes it “unlike anything you’ve ever seen before” (WBUR Boston).
Roomful of Teeth’s debut album spotlights seven of today’s brightest composers, each of whom taps into the singers’ astounding range of vocal sounds with elegance and power. A listener can drop into any track and, within seconds, realize that this is a truly singular ensemble unleashing one of the most original approaches to vocal music heard in years. Furthermore, the already dazzling performances are enhanced by the sure hand of Grammy-winning producer Jesse Lewis.
From the neo-alpine yodel on Rinde Eckert’s “Cesca’s View” to Caleb Burhans’s stirring post-minimalist take on bel canto singing in “No”, the album breathes fresh life into the a cappella landscape. One of this generation’s most dynamic vocal talents, Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, contributes two electrifying songs that explore a range of world-inspired grooves. African pygmy yodels, Inuit rhythmic pulsing, Appalachian hymn tunes, and bracing Eastern European belting all filter through Garbus’s powerful compositional voice. Composer-to watch Caroline Shaw uses her insider vantage as a Roomful of Teeth vocalist to create four sonically exquisite and emotionally charged journeys through the ensemble’s soundworld.
New Amsterdam co-directors William Brittelle, Judd Greenstein, and Sarah Kirkland Snider contribute as well: Brittelle’s daring “Amid the Minotaurs” pushes and pulls before opening into a heart-stopping soprano solo; Snider’s otherworldly “The Orchard” intertwines haunting vocals with the text of poet Nathaniel Bellows; and Greenstein’s three pieces explore the group’s polyphony at its most lively, tender, and affectin. Altogether, the album is a 13-piece showcase of this adventurous ensemble’s staggering range, resulting in an entirely unforgettable listening experience.
As annual residents at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), winners of the 2010 American Prize, and three-time headliners in the celebrated NYC-based Ecstatic Music Festival, Roomful of Teeth is becoming renowned for bringing audiences to their feet with its vibrant performances of all-new music.
The album was produced, recorded, and mixed by Jesse Lewis and recorded at the DiMenna Center in New York, NY in November 2011. The group will celebrate the release with a performance in NYC this fal , followed by a East Coast tour in the spring of 2013.

Artist(s):
Irvine Arditti, Ralf Ehlers, Lucas Fels, Arditti Quartet, Ashot Sarkissjan
Composer(s):
Helmut Lachenmann
Recording Date:
Jun. 2006
Recording Venue:
Beethovenhaus Bonn
Release:
July 2007

Co-producer [Co-Production] – Hat Hut Records, Ltd., Therwil, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne
Composed By – Morton Feldman
Engineer [Sound] – Otto Fries
Flute, Alto Flute, Bass Flute – Eberhard Blum
Glockenspiel, Vibraphone – Jan Williams
Liner Notes – Morton Feldman, Nils Vigeland
Mastered By [CD-Master By] – Peter Pfister
Piano, Celesta – Nils Vigeland
Producer – Harry Vogt, Pia & Werner X. Uehlinger
Recording Supervisor – Thomas Kern
Technician – Angelika Schraml, Mechthild Austermann
Typography, Design, Photography By [Photographs By] – Ann Holyoke Lehmann
Why Patterns? (1978) for flute/alto flute/bass flute, piano and glockenspiel
Crippled Symmetry (1983) for flute/bass flute, piano/celesta and glockenspiel/vibraphone
Digital recording 14th & 15th September 1990 at Studio Stolberger Strasse, Cologne.
Both works published by Universal Edition, London.
℗ + © 1991 Hat Hut Records, Ltd., Therwil
Made in Switzerland
This recording has been made possible by generous financial assistance of the Swiss Bank Corporation, Basel.

Composed to a libretto by Amin Maalouf and premièred at Salzburg in 2000 in a production by Peter Sellars, L'Amour de loin was described by the New York Times as the Best New Work of the Year in 2000. Kaija Saariaho's first opera follows a 12th-century troubadour's search for love across a constantly changing theatrical landscape. This reinterpretation of the medieval narrative of the life of Jaufré Rudel tackles a number of highly topical themes: love from afar, the virtuality of ideal love and relations between East and West.

Melnyk is noted for his continuous music, a piano technique based on extremely rapid notes and complex note-series, usually with the sustain pedal held down to generate harmonic overtones and sympathetic resonances. These overtones blend or clash according to harmonic changes. Most of his music is for piano, but he has also composed chamber and orchestral works. His piano music requires a special technique, closely related to the Martial Arts, and is too complex and difficult for any concert pianists to play. Because of his lifelong devotion to the piano, he has been called The Prophet Of The Piano. Melnyk lived in Paris from 1973 to 1975, supporting himself by playing for modern dance classes, most notably in conjunction with Carolyn Carlson at the Paris Opera. Many of his works were presented in conjunction with modern dance. Through his work with Carolyn Carlson, he began to create continuous music for piano. Melnyk has composed over 120 works, mostly for piano solo and double piano, and some for piano with ensemble. To explain the proper physical and mental techniques for his music, Melnyk wrote a treatise OPEN TIME: The Art of Continuous Music (1981) and 22 Etudes, to teach the fundamental levels of his continuous technique. [4] In 1985, Lubomyr Melnyk set two world records, documented on film and with full audio, at the Sigtuna Stiftelsen in Sweden. He sustained speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, and played between 13 and 14 notes per second for one full hour.