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Punktum: A Diary in Musical Adventures Then came a long overdue purchase – the triple CD by super minimalist Phill Niblock. Four hours of single instrument drones, beautifully Touch style packed. This is going to be one of those record I will listen to very rarely, but when I do, it will be very rewarding. I never knew Phill Niblock until this record appeared on The Wire’s top 50 in 2006, but since then I keep noticing reference to him and his work. Hope that within long I will have time to sit down for four hours and just listen.

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I liked the last long track especially. Same goes for the last track on vol. 1, which...I've rarely heard such an unearthly powerful drone. ―d'Avignon on Volume 2

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Pléïades was composed during the 1978-79 period upon the appointment of the city of Strasbourg. The composition was played for the first time by Les Percussions de Strasbourg at a performance staged by Les Ballets du Rhin on May 3, 1979. In 1985, the Makoto Aruga Percussion Ensemble of Japan recorded the music for the first time. Les Percussions de Strasbourg, to which Xenakis dedicated this work, also recorded it in 1986 with the composer in attendance.

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One of contemporary music’s greatest and most elusive mavericks returns to Tzadik with yet another CD of ear bending electronic sounds. A student of Stockhausen and close collaborator of John Cage and David Behrman, Amacher has been creating acoustic art, electronic soundscapes and site-specific installation work since 1967. A new CD of Amacher compositions is a true cause for celebration and Teo! Is one of her greatest works. The winner of Prix Ars Electronica in the Digital Musics category, Teo! premiered in the Esplanade of the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and is a collaboration with scientists at the Sun Pyramid of Teotihuacan. An absolutely stunning electronic masterpiece!

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Progarchives John Zorn has done it all, from surf rock to klezmer to metal to free jazz to classical to noise. In every area, he has excelled, producing a litany of amazing CDs over his long career. While critics often accuse him of merely "dabbling" in classical music, Madness, Love, and Mysticism proves otherwise as the absolute pinnacle of his classical music. Three monstrous compositions form this entity, exploring the boundaries of dissonance with an intellectual bent and compositional rigor that makes Zorn so endearing. Of course, it doesn't lack anything from an emotional standpoint: each of the three compositions is stuffed with tension. At any moment, each feels as if it could explode, and each does numerous times.

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Oxingale Inspired by centenarian composer Elliott Carter and his two Figments for solo cello, the new program brings together a wide range of important new music for cello and electronics by leading and emerging North American composers. From the Middle Eastern microtones of Gilles Tremblay's Threnody for Lebanon to Ana Sokolovic's Balkan folk-influenced Vez, from Serge Provost's cutting-edge Les Vertiges de S. for electronically-processed solo cello to up and coming composer/songstress Du Yun's San, a deconstruction of haunting ancient Chinese fragments, Figment embraces the diversity of our collective experience. The program, which also includes music by Steven Stucky, Luna Pearl Woolf, and composer/producer Socalled, celebrates innovative North American composers who seek a renewed lyricism and epitomize a new era of hope and creativity in the face of challenging times.

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Recorded live from the Wurttembergishches Staatstheater Stuttgart, Grosses Haus, this luminous, visionary opera tells the story of how Mahatma Gandhi developed the philosophy of satyagraha, nonviolent active resistance, as a political revolutionary tool to fight oppression, connecting his lifework to three historical figures who advanced his philosophy: the celebrated Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, the great Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore and the heroic American civil rights leader Martin Luther King. The libretto is comprised of passages from "The Bhagavad-Gita," India's greatest philosophical epic, and perfectly complements Glass' ravishing score, mysteriously transporting the audience with a serene power and an all-encompassing sense of peace.

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Liner Notes Viewed collectively, Herbert Henck's recordings for ECM add up to a portrait gallery of some of the most fiercely independent spirits in 20th century music. In this series of recordings, Henck has illuminated composers whose work is outside all the "schools". After Mompou, Mosolov, Barraqué, and Hans Otte, the resourceful German pianist now turns his attention to two maverick Americans - George Antheil and Conlon Nancarrow.

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Liner Notes "Altered Realities is an album of solo acoustic guitar and live electronics. All of the compositions were recorded in real-time, directly to DAT (Digital Audio Tape) without any overdubs, mixing, editing, post-processing, or the use of previously recorded material. All of the textures were created based only on the acoustic guitar signal with no other sound source used during the recording. Within these textures, there are long sustaining single notes, beautiful shimmering chords and rhythmic clusters. With no post-processing, no editing and no use of previously recorded material, the moment that is recorded is the moment that we hear on the CD."

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Amazon The Riley compositions will be a bit of a revelation to those who know him primarily from his "In C" and "Rainbows in Curved Air" days. His work here is much more nuanced, and frankly, interesting. The first work is an homage to John Lennon, using elements of "I am the Walrus". The two pieces by Adams are much more in the minimalist vein, and for this listener, more satisfying -- the Riley pieces are in a rather more light-hearted mood. As Adams states in the liner notes, the "Gates" in the titles are derived from electronics, not door-like things. In both pieces he abruptly (but not disturbingly) shifts from one mode to another, like flipping a switch (or a "gate"). In the more ambitious of the two, Phrygian Gates, there is a great breadth of expression: tempo and dynamic changes abound. It is also quite complex, both structurally and technically.

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Jean-Claude Risset (b 1938) is a French composer of electronic music. Arriving at Bell Labs in 1964, he used Max Mathew's MUSIC IV software to digitally recreate the sounds of brass instruments. He made digital recordings of trumpets and then studied their timbral composition using "pitch-synchronous" spectrum analysis tools, revealing that the harmonics of these instruments would differ greatly depending on pitch, duration and loudness. From 1975-79, he became IRCAM's computer music director and worked in close collaboration with the likes of Pierre Boulez.

This documentary captures the overflowing energy and activity of one today's greatest composers, Philip Glass, and allows us to follow him from New York to London and from Paris to Boston. He speaks about his beginnings, his moving to Paris for two years of intensive study with Nadia Boulanger, his meeting with Indian musician Ravi Shankar and director Robert Wilson, who had a deep influence on his career. The film also shows him at work on the last details of his opera The Sound of a Voice, directed by Robert Woodruff and conducted by Alan Johnson.

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AMG Zwilich once remarked that her frequent excursions into the art of concerto writing are particularly pleasant as they give her the opportunity to consider the special character any instrument has, which she can deeply explore in her work. She considers virtuosity (the putative goal of concertos) to lie in realms other than fleetness of fingers and breath. "In the case of the oboe," she said, "it seems to me that a soloist's highest virtuosity is displayed in the way a phrase is shaped...in the intense vocal artistry of the finest solo player." Therefore, this 17-minute concerto, without slighting the audience's expectation for brilliant display, has a particular emphasis on lyrical melody, testing the soloist's ability to achieve beautiful singing. Since the oboe has a naturally soulful, thoughtful quality, these qualities predominate in the concerto. The work is in two movements, played without pause. Those opening "family trio" chords generate the main musical material, bringing the music to three powerful waves of emotion and then ending on a peaceful, if slightly lonely, statement.

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But Yesterday is Not Today is a survey of the American art song over a period of almost fifty years. Eight composers are represented here, the well known (Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Paul Bowles, and Roger Sessions) and the not-so-famous (Theodore Chanler, John Duke, Israel Citkowitz, and Robert Helps). The choice of composers and songs illustrates the variety and vitality of a genre that in a previous generation could count among its exponents Leontyne Price, Phyllis Curtin, and Jennie Tourel. The songs encompass the broadest spectrum of emotions couched in musical language that mirrors their joy, sorrow, sadness, nostalgia, and humor. They are sensitively interpreted by two of the genre’s most authoritative exponents, baritone Donald Gramm and soprano Bethany Beardslee. The accompanying 32-page program booklet by Ned Rorem contains one of the best available essays on American song as well as brief critiques of the composers and the songs, all written in his lucid and elegant style.

A child of America's east coast, who now makes his home on its west, the prolific John Adams reflects that journey in these two autobiographical works. My Father Knew Charles Ives looks back to the New England of Adams's youth. His father did not, of course, know Ives, but that composer's influence is evident in Adams's evocation of his New England youth. Written for the opening of Frank Gehry's Disney Hall in LA, The Dharma at Big Sur thrillingly fuses sitar and jazz with Appalachian fiddle riffs, brilliantly played by Tracy Silverman, with the BBC Symphony conducted by the composer. Nevertheless, the ambience of each piece is so different that it made sense for Nonesuch to package this as a two-disc set―even though the program would fit comfortably on one―for any more direct collision between East Coast and West would have been truly disorienting.