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Heidi Louise Williams - Drive American (2011)

Posted By: Designol
Heidi Louise Williams - Drive American (2011)

Heidi Louise Williams - Drive American (2011)
works by John Adams, Joan Tower, Daniel Crozier, Chen Yi, Augusta Read Thomas, William Bolcom

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 266 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 208 Mb | Scans included
Classical, Contemporary | Label: Albany | # TROY1298 | Time: 01:18:19

A superlative program of piano music by American composers is offered by pianist Heidi Williams. The oldest work on the program dates from 1988 (William Bolcom) and the most recent was written in 2009 (Daniel Crozier), giving us a snapshot of what American composers have been writing for piano in the past 25 years. Praised by New York critic Harris Goldsmith for her ¨dazzling performances¨ and ¨impeccable solistic authority,¨ American pianist Heidi Louise Williams has appeared in performances across the United States and internationally. Her concert schedule has included solo and chamber music recitals at the Kennedy Center, the Chicago Cultural Center, Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Brevard Summer Music Festival, the Peabody Conservatory of Music and a debut recital in St. Louis as winner of its 2000 Artist Presentation Society Auditions, as well as concerto appearances with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the Oregon Symphony, and others. Williams is on the piano faculty at the Florida State University College of Music. She completed her BM, MM, and DMA degrees at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Maryland.

Michael Nyman - The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover: Soundtrack To The Film By Peter Greenaway (1989)

Posted By: Designol
Michael Nyman - The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover: Soundtrack To The Film By Peter Greenaway (1989)

Michael Nyman - The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
Soundtrack To The Film By Peter Greenaway

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 218 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 104 Mb
Label: Venture | # DBEBN 55(4) | Time: 00:40:24 | Scans included
Soundtrack, Score, Avant-Garde, Minimalism

For this, his seventh soundtrack for director Peter Greenaway, Nyman deftly orchestrates a mix of strings, horns, and voices to produce another of his fetching and romantic minimalist backdrops. The opening "Memorial" is the highlight of the lot and drives along with stuttering saxophones, an insistent string arrangement, elegiac brass solos, and the soaring vocals of soprano Sarah Leonard (Leonard would be featured on a large part of the Prospero's Books soundtrack). The piece was originally inspired by a 1985 Belgian soccer match tragedy, in which 39 Italian fans were killed. Nyman utilized a death march in his earlier Greenaway collaboration, Drowning by Numbers, and revives the scheme to great effect here for what would become the main theme of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Nyman contrasts the piece's climatic quality with two relatively sedate yet brooding numbers.

Philip Glass - The Thin Blue Line (1989)

Posted By: Designol
Philip Glass - The Thin Blue Line (1989)

Philip Glass - The Thin Blue Line (1989)
EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 301 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 157 Mb | Scans ~ 35 Mb
Label: Elektra/Nonesuch | # 7559-79209-2 | Time: 01:08:50
Soundtrack, Score, Contemporary Classical, Minimalism

The soundtrack to Errol Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line emphasizes story over music; the interviews which make up the majority of the film – a crusading effort which led to the the release of its subject, Randall Adams, from a Texas prison – are presented on record as they were on screen, with Glass' chamber orchestra music hovering in the background. The result is a soundtrack which comes remarkably close to capturing the power of its source film; even without the moving images, this is a chilling document.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - 1996 (1996)

Posted By: Designol
Ryuichi Sakamoto - 1996 (1996)

Ryuichi Sakamoto - 1996 (1996)
EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 238 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 120 Mb
Label: Milan | # 7313835759-2 | Scans ~ 60 Mb | Time: 00:52:27
Modern Classical, Minimalism, Ethnic Fusion, Jazz, Electronic

The album 1996 contains 12 pieces arranged for violin (Everton Nelson, David Nadien, or Barry Finclair), cello (Jaques Morelenbaum), and piano (Ryuichi Sakamoto), including both new compositions and music used in the soundtracks to The Last Emperor, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Sheltering Sky, and High Heels. The music is for the most part restrained and reflective, as Sakamoto makes use of the contrasting timbres of the chamber instrumentation, mixing melodic and rhythmic effects soothingly (the exceptions being the more quick-moving "M.A.Y. in the Backyard" and "1919," which uses a barely audible voice and staccato playing to stirring effect).

Philip Glass - Les Enfants Terribles (Children Of The Game) (2005) 2CDs

Posted By: Designol
Philip Glass - Les Enfants Terribles (Children Of The Game) (2005) 2CDs

Philip Glass - Les Enfants Terribles (Children Of The Game) (2005) 2CDs
EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 348 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 214 Mb | Scans included
Label: Orange Mountain Music | # OMM 0019 | Time: 01:31:09
Classical, Minimalism, Opera, Ballet

This low-budget Philip Glass opera, Les enfants Terribles, is based on a novel and play by Jean Cocteau, forming the third ring in Glass' trilogy of works devoted to the elaborate personal mythology of the great French visionary. Foregoing the controversial and dualistic 1949 film of Les enfants Terribles made by Jean-Pierre Melville, Glass decided to realize the visual element through a collaboration with choreographer Susan Marshall, re-creating Cocteau's story as a "dance opera." Les enfants Terribles is the most compelling Glass score beheld in many years.

Alarm Will Sound & Ossia, Alan Pierson - Steve Reich: Tehillim, The Desert Music (2002)

Posted By: Designol
Alarm Will Sound & Ossia, Alan Pierson - Steve Reich: Tehillim, The Desert Music (2002)

Alarm Will Sound & Ossia, Alan Pierson - Steve Reich: Tehillim, The Desert Music (2002)
EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 445 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 194 Mb | Scans included
Contemporary, Minimalism, Vocal | Label: Cantaloupe Music | # CA21009 | 01:14:44

Alarm Will Sound's recording of Steve Reich's monumental orchestral/choral works The Desert Music and Tehillim, released on the Cantaloupe label in 2002, greatly benefits from the group's close connections with the composer: the ensemble's conductor, Alan Pierson, and several of the performers studied at the Eastman School with Brad Lubman, a conductor frequently enlisted by Reich. Also, Pierson's arrangements, which reconcile the chamber and orchestral versions that exist for both works, were prepared in close consultation with the composer; thus, this may well be the definitive recording of these pieces. Brilliantly sonorous in their climaxes – the burst of light near the end of Desert Music, the "Alleluias" that close Tehillim – the players also articulate Reich's intricate canonic textures with nimble precision.

Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Double Sextet & Radio Rewrite (2016)

Posted By: Designol
Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Double Sextet & Radio Rewrite (2016)

Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Double Sextet & Radio Rewrite (2016)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 211 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 119 Mb | Scans included
Classical, Minimalism | Label: Harmonia Mundi | # HMU 907671 | Time: 00:39:45

Following their internationally acclaimed recording of Steve Reich's masterpiece Music For 18 Musicians, Ensemble Signal and Brad Lubman present two recent pieces by the composer: Double Sextet from 2007 and Radio Rewrite from 2012. Double Sextet is scored for two sextets of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone and piano. It won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music - the first for the composer. Radio Rewrite is a work for instrumental ensemble inspired by two songs by the British rock band Radiohead - ''Jigsaw Falling into Place'' and ''Everything in Its Right Place.'' The piece represents the first time that Reich has reworked material from western pop/rock music. These strong, tuneful, energetic, tightly made works receive impassioned performances from Ensemble Signal, who The New York Times has called 'one of the most vital groups of its kind.'

Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians (2015)

Posted By: Designol
Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians (2015)

Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians (2015)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 309 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 171 Mb | Scans included
Classical, Minimalism | Label: Harmonia Mundi | # HMU 907608 | 00:59:16

As more ensembles perform and record Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, its status as a minimalist masterpiece is increasingly affirmed. Ensemble Signal's 2015 release on Harmonia Mundi is one of several amazing performances that have matched Reich's original ECM New Series recording in technical brilliance and expressivity, and it has even earned the composer's approval for being, "…fast moving, spot on, and emotionally charged." Under the direction of Brad Lubman, Ensemble Signal maintains a relentlessly steady pulse and articulates the interlocking patterns with absolute precision, though the shifting tone colors are perhaps a little clearer in this performance than in other recordings. The microphone placement is not so close that individual instruments stand out, but there is enough separation of parts to allow some sense of direction and the orientation of the smaller sub-groups of pianos, xylophones, marimbas, strings, clarinets, and voices. This is a mesmerizing performance that will transfix listeners, and the music is so compelling that it will linger on well after the CD stops. Highly recommended.

Third Coast Percussion - Steve Reich: Mallet Quartet; Sextet; Nagoya Marimbas; Music for Pieces of Wood (2016)

Posted By: Designol
Third Coast Percussion - Steve Reich: Mallet Quartet; Sextet; Nagoya Marimbas; Music for Pieces of Wood (2016)

Third Coast Percussion - Steve Reich:
Mallet Quartet; Sextet; Nagoya Marimbas; Music for Pieces of Wood (2016)

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 322 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 145 Mb | Scans included
Classical, Minimalism | Label: Cedille | # CDR 90000 161 | Time: 01:02:27

GRAMMY WINNER, 59TH AWARDS: Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. Third Coast Percussion has been saluted by the Washington Post for its virtuosity and precisely timed wit, and was called by the New York Times a commandingly elegant ensemble. The group, which is ensemble-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame, teaches and performs a concert series in Chicago, and has commissioned dozens of new works. This album is the ensembles Cedille label debut, and is an 80th birthday acknowledgement to American composer Steve Reich, the founding father of musical minimalism. This recording features four of Reichs most notable percussion works.

Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volumes I-IX (2006) 9CD Box Set

Posted By: Designol
Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volumes I-IX (2006) 9CD Box Set

Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volumes I-IX (2006) 9CD Box Set
Philip Glass - Michael Nyman - John Adams - Terry Riley - Arvo Pärt - John Cage
Friedrich Nietzsche - Erik Satie - Tom Johnson - Wim Mertens - Jacob ter Veldhuis
Yann Tiersen - Klaas de Vries - Simeon ten Holt - John Borstlap - Carlos Micháns

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 2 Gb | Scans ~ 63 Mb | Time: 10:15:53
Classical, Minimalism, Contemporary | Label: Brilliant Classics | # 8551

There's perhaps a touch of irony in the title of Dutch pianist and composer Jeroen van Veen's box set Minimal Piano Collection because at nine discs, it's a pretty massive collection. The program booklet notes that he recorded the entire set, which includes more than ten hours of music, in only six days, an astounding feat. In the program notes, van Veen offers a remarkably clear and concise history of minimalism in music. He defines it broadly enough (following the lead of composer and critic Tom Johnson) to include works by Friedrich Nietzsche and Satie. Philip Glass is the composer most widely represented, with three of the set's nine CDs devoted to his music originally for piano, as well as transcriptions from his film scores and operas. Two discs are given to van Veen's mammoth 24 Préludes, organized according to the framework of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Other composers range from the very well known, such as Michael Nyman, John Adams, Terry Riley, Arvo Pärt, and John Cage, to the familiar-to-specialists, like Tom Johnson, Wim Mertens, and Jacob ter Veldhuis, to those little-known to American audiences, like Klaas de Vries, Simeon ten Holt, John Borstlap, Yann Tiersen, and Carlos Micháns.

John Adams - Earbox: A Ten-CD Retrospective (1999) 10 CD Box Set

Posted By: Designol
John Adams - Earbox: A Ten-CD Retrospective (1999) 10 CD Box Set

John Adams - Earbox: A Ten-CD Retrospective (1999) 10 CD Box Set
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 2.98 Gb | Scans ~ 80 Mb | Time: 10:59:43
Classical, Contemporary, Minimilism | Label: Nonesuch | # 79453-2

On October 19, 1999, Nonesuch Records released The John Adams Earbox, a 10-CD box set retrospective, representing nearly all of John Adams’s recorded output for the label. The set includes all of the composer’s major works with which Adams has redefined contemporary classical music over the previous two decades. All recordings on The John Adams Earbox were supervised by the composer, and many were conducted or performed by Adams as well. All but four works on the Earbox were originally released on Nonesuch as first recordings. The John Adams Earbox includes examples from every phase of Adams’s career, from his earliest orchestral pieces such as Grand Pianola Music (1982), Harmonielehre (1985), and Harmonium (1980), to the widely hailed operas Nixon in China (1985-86) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1990-91), to works of this decade including Chamber Symphony (1992), Violin Concerto (1993), John’s Book of Alleged Dances (written for Kronos Quartet in 1994), Gnarly Buttons (1995) and the 1995 stagework I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw The Sky.

Gloria Cheng-Cochran - Piano Music of John Adams and Terry Riley (1998)

Posted By: Designol
Gloria Cheng-Cochran - Piano Music of John Adams and Terry Riley (1998)

Gloria Cheng-Cochran - Piano Music of John Adams and Terry Riley (1998)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 215 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 185 Mb | Scans included
Classical, Contenporary, Minimalism | Label: Telarc | # CD-80513 | Time: 01:08:09

This unique recording couples the music of two major 20th-century composers, and includes the world premiere on disc of Riley's "The Heaven Ladder, Book 7," commissioned by Cheng-Cochran and written in 1994. California-based pianist Gloria Cheng has become a favoured collaborator with some of the most demanding of today's composer/conductors, including Pierre Boulez, Essa-Pekka Salonen and Oliver Knussen, for her renditions of thorny 20th century scores. "The multifarious pulsings of Adams's Phrygian Gates (all 26 minutes of it) are more palatable here than on some rival versions, and the relatively brief China Gates (just five minutes) are well worth visiting. Terry Riley's pieces are more varied in colour and rhythm, less obviously 'minimalist', than you might have expected, with the worlds of jazz remaining well within earshot. Gloria Cheng-Cochran seems fully absorbed in the tasks to hand, and the sound is superb." (Gramophone Magazine).

Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volume XXI-XXVIII (2017) 8CD Box Set

Posted By: Designol
Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volume XXI-XXVIII (2017) 8CD Box Set

Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volume XXI-XXVIII (2017) 8CD Box Set
Dennis Johnson - Philip Glass - Tom Johnson - Peter Garland
Terry Riley - Harold Budd - Le Monte Young

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 1.44 Gb | Scans included | Time: 09:46:40
Classical, Minimalism | Label: Brilliant Classics | # 95543BR

This 8CD set bring the listener back to the roots of Minimalism, all works were written in the seventies of the 20th century, a time when the new aesthetics and perception of music, sound, repetition and time experience were creating a new chapter in music history. The longest piece is the 5 hour “November” by Dennis Johnson, a work in which the player is free to build the intervals and chords according to his own timing and spacing. The other composers in this set are Philip Glass, Tom Johnson, Peter Garland, Terry Riley, Harold Budd and La Monte Young. Recorded in his own studio by the most important protagonist of Minimalism today, Dutch pianist Jeroen van Veen. Van Veen has a myriad of recordings to his name, notably the multi CD boxes Minimal Piano Collection 1 and 2, complete Satie, Einaudi, Tiersen, Jacob ter Veldhuis, Simeon ten Holt and many more.

Orchestre National de Lyon, David Robertson - Steve Reich: Different Trains, Triple Quartet, The Four Sections (2004)

Posted By: Designol
Orchestre National de Lyon, David Robertson - Steve Reich: Different Trains, Triple Quartet, The Four Sections (2004)

Steve Reich: Different Trains, Triple Quartet, The Four Sections (2004)
Orchestre National de Lyon, conducted by David Robertson

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 305 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 149 Mb | Scans ~ 42 Mb
Classical, Minimalism | Label: Naïve | # MO 782167 | Time: 01:05:01

There’s something special about this version of Different Trains. It’s the one commissioned by Wolfgang Sawallisch and David Robertson and their respective orchestras (Philadelphia and Lyon) in 2001 for string orchestra, and it impresses immediately by the richness of its vastly expanded sound palette. Though it may be heresy to say so, I never found the original string quartet version entirely convincing. This recording shows why: inside that frenetic chamber work was a much larger piece trying to get out, and here it is, fully realised, as it were, in glorious technicolor.

Philip Glass - From The Philip Glass Recording Archive Volume VI: The Music of Philip Glass and Foday Musa Suso (2011)

Posted By: Designol
Philip Glass - From The Philip Glass Recording Archive Volume VI: The Music of Philip Glass and Foday Musa Suso (2011)

Philip Glass - From The Philip Glass Recording Archive Volume VI:
The Music of Philip Glass and Foday Musa Suso (2011)

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 352 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 168 Mb | Scans included
Minimalism, Ethnic Music | Label: Orange Mountain Music | # 0066 | Time: 00:59:15

From the Philip Glass Archive is a series of releases from Orange Mountain Music which seeks to document archival and unreleased material or reissue classic albums by Philip Glass. The current volume, the sixth, features a collaboration between Glass and African musician Foday Musa Suso from a score they both worked on in the 1990s. The work was incidental music to the play The Screens by Jean Genet and was directed by JoAnne Akalaitis. Glass described the collaboration as the closest thing he had come to at that point of a true collaboration with both artists contributing original pieces and both working on many in the score together. The Screens was originally released on Point Music in the late 1990s. Orange Mountain Music is also pleased to present this remastered version with the inclusion of two bonus tracks of Philip Glass and Foday Musa Suso LIVE, recorded in New York in 2009.