I have been listening to Jürg Frey’s music intensively in the last few months. I first became aware of Frey’s works in 2010, around the time when I discovered Wandelweiser composers’ works and became deeply immersed in - first Michael Pisa…

'Collection Gustave Roud' is a double CD of Jürg Frey's recent works from 2007 to 2016. All five pieces of this album are closely connected with the works of the French-Swiss poet Gustave Roud, who has been a profound influence on Frey’s c…

“It’s about how ‘normal’, ‘regular’ things are transformed - by the work of composing, by decisions, by intuition, by the ear - to an art work.” - Jürg Frey (8/16/2017) My new essay on Jürg Frey's L'ame est sans retenue composition series …

Successful interaction of composers and improvisers The trumpeter and composer Nate Wooley organized a two-night mini-festival “FOR/WITH” at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn on September 29th and 30th, featuring four iconoclastic composers—C…

Jürg Frey - L'ame est sans retenue I (ErstClass 002-5) Jürg Frey's L'ame est sans retenue I (ErstClass 002-5) is officially released from Erstwhile Records today (10/6). This is so far my favorite package I have ever designed. The cover ar…

Favorite Releases of 2016 (classical + experimental genres) 1. Keith Rowe - The Room Extended (ErstSolo) 2. Michael Pisaro/Reinier Van Houdt - the earth and the sky (ErstClass) 3. Mitsuko Uchida - Mozart Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major / …

About ten years ago, I talked about 'music with fluctuations' at one of the lecture series held every Saturday at a jazz cafe in Tokyo, where music writers and critics gave small lectures each week while playing some music (mostly jazz) un…

Michael Pisaro's new and the most ambitious works: 3CD box set 'Continuum Unbound' (GW011-013) just came out from our Gravity Wave label. The box set contains 3 CDs and a 12-page full color booklet of Michael Pisaro's essay. You can see th…

Antoine Beuger / Michael Pisaro - this place / is love (erst 068) was officially released today. Very happy with the final product, especially how the disc image turned out. One of my favorite CD covers and disc labels I have ever designed…

Dissolve the borders between the outer world and the inner world with the equality of sound, silence, performer, environment and listener In order to understand and appreciate Antoine Beuger’s compositions, I strongly recommend you to expe…

Michael Pisaro’s new piece The Middle of Life (Die ganze Zeit), just released from the Gravity Wave label in January 2013, is his 2011/2012 composition inspired by Austrian contemporary poet Oswald Egger’s 2010 book Die ganze Zeit. The 47’…

The vivid contrast between sound and silence brings out the purest form of sound, affecting the gravity in music In Radu Malfatti’s compositions, the contrast between sound and silence is sharp. In many of his works, continuous monotonic s…

Composer of micro symphony born in the gray area between sound and silence, impressionism and minimalism Jürg Frey’s compositional approach keeps him at the keen edge of contemporary music while simultaneously maintaining a faint touch of …

2010年にエディション・ヴァンデルヴァイザーからリリースされた「keine fernen mehr」は、アントワン・ボイガー自身が吹く口笛の音で演奏された曲を収録した２枚組のアルバムだ。全体的に非常に静かなかすれた質感の口笛の音の前後に、ボイガーが息を吸い込…

ヴァンデルヴァイザー派の作曲家アントワン・ボイガーによるこの作品（1997年）は、演奏者がスピノザの「エチカ」の文章を８秒間に１語ずつ、 静かなトーンとゆっくりしたテンポで読み上げるというものだ。個々の単語は、表情や抑揚や意味を一切付加しないよ…

Keith Rowe and Wandelweiser composer Michael Pisaro seemed to have quite different interests and orientations judging from their previous bodies of work, but the result of the first meeting of this duo at AMPLIFY 2013 was surprisingly bala…

GW 008: Michael Pisaro/Oswald Egger/Julia Holter - The Middle of Life (Die ganze Zeit) GW 009: Michael Pisaro - The Punishment of the Tribe by its Elders ... Both are available at ErstDist: http://www.erstwhilerecords.com/distro.html You c…

Hearing the music in the moment of experiencing the natural and immediate relation to the world Manfred Werder shows that music exists all around us in our natural environment, and leads the listener to experience this via performers’ real…

ユルク・フレイによる２つの作曲作品を収録したCD「Piano Music」が、米国のピアニスト、アンドリュー・リーによる演奏で、「Irritable Hedgehog」から昨年末にリリースされた。「Irritable Hedgehog」は現代音楽の新しいレーベルのようで、ピアニスト名もレ…

Top 10 Releases of 20121. Jürg Frey - Piano Music (piano by R. Andrew Lee) (Irritable Hedgehog) 2. Radu Malfatti - darenootodesuka (b-boim) 3. Manfred Werder (Jason Kahn) - 2005¹ (Winds Measure/8CDr) 4. Jakob Ullmann - fremde zeit/addendum…

GW 008 / 009 front covers Michael Pisaro/Oswald Egger/Julia Holter - The Middle of Life (Die ganze Zeit) (GW 008) Michael Pisaro - The Punishment of the Tribe by its Elders (GW 009)... to be released in the mid or late January 2013.

When I visited my family in Japan two months after 3/11, I noticed that the air was obviously different from what I remembered. Wherever I went out for a walk on the familiar streets or got on the trains, I could not help realizing that th…

1) Michael Pisaro - Hearing Metal 3 (gw 006)1) Jürg Frey / Nick Hennies - Metal, Stone, Skin, Foliage, Air (L’innomable, 2011)3) Michael Pisaro - Hearing Metal 2 (gw 005)4) Michael Pisaro - asleep, street, pipes, tones (gw 004)5) Michael P…

As my year-end project of 2011, I made a visual chart of Michael Pisaro's 'Hearing Metal 3' from his 64-page score. It looks small here, but actually consists of 30 pages of A4 papers. You can see a bigger version here. I made the timetabl…

Hearing Metal 2 is a continuous 62-minute piece, consisting of three parts. Part 1 begins with calm nature sounds - field recordings of water (rivers, waves) and birds chirping, softly fading in and out in between humble silences like ephe…

I just listened to the live recording of Radu Malfatti / Taku Unami duo improvisation set from the AMPLIFY festival again. I still think that this might be the best set I have ever seen, listened, and experienced in the whole AMPLIFY histo…

In the first long silent day after the busy 15 days of the AMPLIFY festival, I still hear Radu Malfatti's almost inaudible little click sounds on his trombone mute which he made occasionally in his sets, not just in my memory but in my act…

9/1 Thursday @ The Stone, NYC 8 pm Antoine Beuger - approcher s'éloigner s'absenter (premiere) preformed by Barry Chabala (guitar) Dominic Lash (contrabass) Ben Owen (electronics)10 pm Michael Pisaro - hinwandeln, augen zu (premiere) prefo…

Michael Piraso / Greg Stuart - Hearing Metal 2 and 3 (gw005/006) (now on sale: http://michaelpisaro.blogspot.com/ ) Toshimaru Nakamura - maruto (ErstSolo 002) (now on sale: http://www.erstwhilerecords.com/ ) Taku Unami / Takahiro Kawaguchi…

Michael Pisaro / Greg Stuart - Hearing Metal 2 (gw 005) Michael Pisaro / Greg Stuart - Hearing Metal 3 (gw 006) More details: http://michaelpisaro.blogspot.com/ - Official release date for both discs will be August 16th.Ben Ratliff's previ…