For the Record: Nov. 18, 2022.

Lead in.

For the Record is a regular round-up of new and upcoming recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.

This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Amazon, Bandcamp, and other  internet stores and sources, social-media posts, and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change. (Links to Amazon, used when all else fails, do not imply endorsement.)

After publication, new listings are incorporated into For the Record: The Master List, a continuously updated resource exclusively accessible to paying Night After Night subscribers, found here.

These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! To submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, email information to nightafternight@icloud.com.

Please note that all opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.‌

Another week, Another Timbre.

COVID has continued to get the best of me this week, on pretty much all fronts, which means a well-reasoned "Album of the Week" review is not in the offing.

That said, this also happens to be a week in which a new batch of releases from Another Timbre is available, and anyone who follows this newsletter knows I'm a label completist there. I don't imagine I'll need to twist many arms in drawing attention to Borderland Melodies, the label's latest splendid release devoted to music by the Swiss composer Jürg Frey, featuring exquisitely poised performances by the British ensemble Apartment House. The same invaluable ensemble is responsible for Naiads, a set of paradoxically liminal yet insistent pieces by Martin Iddon, a Manchester-born composer based at the University of Leeds, through which I'm making my way slowly and carefully.

I'm finding the other two releases in this batch just as compelling. The world doesn't have enough recordings of works by Evan Johnson, a lifelong composer based in Arlington, MA, and L'art de toucher is a brilliant introduction to his crystalline sound world—neatly described by Another Timbre owner Simon Reynell, in his useful Q&A with Johnson, as "a sort of impossible, hypothetical nexus between early music, complexity and Wandelweiser." (Buy the CD, which includes an 18-minute piece not available for streaming or download.)

Sarah Saviet, the deft, sensitive violinist prominently featured on Johnson's album, has the final new release to herself: A Coiled Form, originally a brief work for solo violin by the consistently fascinating Bryn Harrison, whose work deals in unorthodox and ingenious explorations of time perception and memory. Working with Saviet, he transformed the piece into a 51-minute tour de force. The continuous circling and spiralling in this uncompromising piece is mesmerizing, and Saviet's performance a quietly mighty achievement.

‌New this week.‌

Joakim Blattmann - Stegla (Dinzu Artefacts)

Joshua Bonnetta - Innse Gall (Shelter Press)

Paul Bowles - A Picnic Cantata - New York Festival of Song (NYFOS)

Patricia Brennan - More Touch (Pyroclastic)

Cornelius Cardew - Treatise - Jaka Berger (Inexhaustible Editions)

João Castro Pinto - faux naturel (Unfathomless)

Sarah Davachi - In Concert & In Residence (Late Music)

Yaron Deutsch - Live in New York City - compositions by Fausto Romitelli, Avshalom Ariel, Pierluigi Billone, Lisa Illean, and Klaus Lang (self-released)

Dimitriadis, Dörner, Freedman, Parkins, Williams - BeingFive (Relative Pitch)

Dezron Douglas - ATALAYA (International Anthem)

Matt Evans - Soft Science (Moon Glyph)

Avram Fefer Quartet - Juba Lee (Clean Feed)

Micah Frank & Chet Doxas - The Music of Hildegard von Bingen, Part One (Puremagnetik)

Jürg Frey - Borderland Melodies - Apartment House (Another Timbre)

Bryn Harrison - A Coiled Form - Sarah Saviet (Another Timbre)

Martin Iddon - Naiads - Apartment House (Another Timbre)

Philip Jeck - Resistenza (Touch)

Song Yi Jeon & Vinicius Gomes - Home (Greenleaf Music)

Evan Johnson - L'art de toucher - performances by Richard Craig, Susanne Peters, Sarah Saviet, Rie Watanabe, and Trio Accanto (Another Timbre)

LAMIEE. - NEN (Dinzu Artefacts)

Denman Maroney/Denis Fournier/Scott Walton - O Kosmos Meta (RogueArt)

Chantal Michelle - Pulse, Puls-ar, Procession (Dinzu Artefacts)

Kensho Nakamura - Electric Rust (mappa)

Else Marie Pade - EMP1: En digter og en komponist - performances by Elsa Marie Pade, Mikkel Pade, and Peter Steen (Dacapo)

Else Marie Pade - The Orchestral Album - performances by Christina Åstrand, Michael Frank Møller, and Malmö Opera Orchestra/Joachim Gustafsson (Dacapo)

Thomas Pizzini & Andrea Massaria - Opera (Zoar)

Andrew Poppy - Ark Hive of A Live (False Walls)

Pulverize the Sound (Peter Evans, Tim Dahl, Mike Pride) - Black (Relative Pitch)

Rauelsson and Tatu Rönkkö - Myriadi (Beacon Sound)

Rebecca Saunders - Skin - performances by Christian Dierstein, Dirk Rothbrust, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Enno Poppe, Quatuor Diotima, and Julia Fraser, Klangforum Wien/Bas Wiegers (NMC)

Günter Schlienz - Ausflüge I (Cosima Pilz)

Günter Schlienz - Current (Muzan Editions)

Matthew Shipp/Mark Helias - The New Syntax (RogueArt)

Eamon Sprod & David Prescott-Steed - crawlspace (Unfathomless)

Drew Wesely - Blank Body (Infrequent Seams)

Just announced.‌

December 2

Gabriel Prokofiev - Strange Blooms - Jane Chapman (Oscillations)

Shai Wosner - Variations on a Theme by FDR - compositions by Derek Bermel, Anthony Cheung,  John Harbison, Wang Lu, and Vijay Iyer (New Focus)

December 8

Various artists/Lea Bertucci - Xtended Vox - performances by Cansu Tanrikulu, Lea Bertucci + Ben Vida, and Audrey Chen + Phil Minton (SA Recordings)

December 9

The Crossing - Carols After a Plague - compositions by Shara Nova, Tyshawn Sorey, Edith Canat de Chizy, Joseph C. Phillips Jr., LJ White, Samantha Fernando, Leila Adu-Gilmore, Nina Shekhar, Vanessa Lann, Mary Jane Leach, Alex Berko, and Viet Cuong (New Focus)

Satoko Fujii - Hyaku: One Hundred Dreams (Libra)

December 16

Dave Liebman, Adam Rudolph, Tyshawn Sorey - New Now (Meta)

January 20

Kali Malone - Does Spring Hide Its Joy (Ideologic Organ)

Comfort ye.