Marc-Antoine Charpentier - Intermedes d'Andromede; Le Ballet de Polieucte

"In 1682 Comédie-Française mounted a full-scale revival of Pierre Cormeille's machine play 'Androméde' (1650), which had not been seen in Paris for 27 years. This revival coincided with the premiere of 'Persée' — Quinault and Lully's operatic version of the same myth — which had been playing at the Paris Opéra for three months (premiéred April 17).

"This spectacular 1682 production of 'Androméde' aimed to re-establish the pre-eminence of the Comédie-Frangaise in lyric theatre. Marc-Antoine Charpentier had been engaged to provide a new musical score, which included an overture, nine instrumental numbers, eight accompanied choruses, five vocal solos, and two sung duos. The cantata-like structuring of the choral and balletic interludes brought Corneille's machine play more in line with the aesthetic of opera. The original aerial flights and spectacular machine effects of Giacomo Torelli were re-created by Dufort, the resident machinist of the Comédie-Frangaise. This new production of 'Androméde' opened on 19 July 1682, and was given a total of 45 performances during the 1682-83 season. The review in the Mercure Galant singled out for praise the climactic battle scene with the sea monster, in which Pegasus, Perseus's flying horse, was played this time by a live horse. Because of Lully's restrictions on theatre music, which limited public theatres to only two singers, the singing roles and the chorus were taken by actors of the Comédie-Frangaise: Monsieurs de Villiers, Guérin, La Grange, Hubert, Verneuil, and Mademoiselles Dyot (perhaps Guyot?) and Hennebaut.

"Charpentier's incidental music for the machine play is remarkable for both its length and its high quality. The Prologue is set at the summit of Mount Pamassus, where Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, meets with the Sun — who arrives after the overture in his blazing chariot. They praise the King, in whose honour the performance is being given, and the Sun invites Melpomene to join him in his chariot to proclaim the rare qualities of this youthful prince throughout the world in a single day. To the music of an instrumental prelude Melpomene flies up and takes her place next to him, and together they sing praises to the Sun King ('Cieux, écoutez; écoutez, mers profondes') — with which the chorus of shepherds joins in ('D'un héros qu'en tous lieux'). Then Melpomene and the Sun depart to a musical envoi in order to spread the news of Louis's fame to the rest of the universe.

"The first act takes place in Ethiopia, in the capital city of the kingdom of Cepheus. Cassiopeia, Andromeda's mother, is en route to the temple with Perseus to decide by casting lots which maiden is to be the next to be sacrificed to the sea-monster that is plaguing the land. The heavens open, and Venus appears on her star. The people sing her a hymn of praise ('Reine d'Erice et d'Amathonte') while Venus slowly descends. Cassiopeia bids the group be silent to hear Venus's prophesy: Andromeda is to be wed this evening, and the gods will join in the festivities. As Venus departs, the chorus sings a song of thanksgiving ('Ainsi toujours sur tes autels'). Phineus, Andromeda's cousin and fiancé, considers Venus's prophecy to be a good omen; Perseus, however, reveals his feelings for Andromeda to the Queen. An instrumental rondeau is played as an interlude while the scene changes.

"The second act is set in a luxurious garden with white marble vases, orange trees, and an arbour. Andromeda is gathering flowers with her nymphs to fashion a floral crown for Phineus. Meanwhile, one of his pages sings a song in anticipation of Phineus's arrival ('Qu'elle est lente, cette journée'). When Phineus arrives Andromeda in turn has Liriope, one of her ladies-in-waiting, sing a song for him ('Phinée est plus aimé qu'Androméde n'est belle'). Afterwards, the page and Liriope sing a musical dialogue, that concludes with the oracle delivered by Venus in Act 1: before the day is out, Andromeda will have married a man worthy of her. This refrain is taken up by the chorus, representing the followers of Phineus ('Joignons nos voix'). Then the King, accompanied by Perseus, suddenly arrives to announce that the lot has fallen upon Andromeda: she is to be the next sacrificial victim. Aeolus and his eight Winds descend to thunder and lightning, fly around above the stage, and carry away Andromeda in one of their clouds. Perseus, left alone with the King and his entourage, vows that he will rescue her. The instrumental air entitled 'The Winds' (which no doubt accompanied Andromeda's enlévement) is performed as an entr'acte.

"The scene changes in the third act to a barren landscape with high cliffs bordering the sea. Two Winds are seen tying Andromeda to the foot of a rock, while the chorus of Ethiopians looks on from the shore and sings a lament (Charpentier's music unfortunately has not survived). The Queen, in despair, vows to throw herself into the sea. The sea-monster approaches, but at that instant Perseus appears in the sky on his winged steed Pegasus. As the chorus urges the hero on in his battle Perseus slays the monster; he then frees Andromeda, and flies away on Pegasus. The Ethiopian people sing a chorus of victory ('Le monstre est mort, crions victoire') in which they acknowledge that Perseus, not Phineus, is the man worthy of Andromeda. The act closes with the arrival of Neptune, who rises from the depths of the sea in a sparkling mother-of-pearl conch shell drawn by two sea-horses. Neptune is incensed by Perseus's interference, and plots his revenge. The instrumental entr'acte that follows is a caprice — an Italianate capriccio comprising a succession of fugal sections in contrasting tempi.

"Act 4 takes place in the vestibule of a stately royal palace. Perseus declares his love for Andromeda, and then departs — lest she mistake feelings of gratitude for love. Andromeda reveals to her nymphs that her affection for Perseus is growing stronger, and she rejects Phineus when he arrives, explaining that if he could leave her to the monster before, he could now leave her to Perseus. Juno then appears in the sky in her chariot drawn by two peacocks, and promises to lend her support to Phineus. At the end of the act, the King and Queen have made ready their wedding preparations, and the chorus sings a wedding song ('Vivez, vivez, heureux amants'). Two airs are played during the interlude: an instrumental repeat of the preceding chorus, and an 'English gigue'.

"The final act is set in a bronze temple, where Phineus pleads with Andromeda for the last time. But when Andromeda and her mother both treat him with contempt he departs to take his revenge on Perseus. It is then reported that Perseus has used the head of Medusa to petrify Phineus and his warriors. Mercury arrives in the sky to announce the imminent arrival of his father Jupiter, and the chorus implores Jupiter to give Perseus and Andromeda his blessing ('Maître des Dieux, hâte-toi de paraître'). Jupiter descends from the sky on his gilded throne situated on a cloud, flanked by two other clouds bearing Juno and Neptune, who have been appeased by the sacrifices made by the lovers. Suspended mid-air on his throne, Jupiter declares that the marriage of Perseus and Andromeda must be celebrated among the gods. Perseus and Cepheus climb onto Juno's cloud, while Andromeda and Cassiopeia climb onto Neptune's, and to the slow and stately song of the chorus ('Allez, amants, allez sans jalousie') they ascend to the heavens to take their places amongst the stars.

"During the 17th century, annual theatrical productions became part of the academic fare of Jesuit colleges in France. Usually drawn from saintly and pious subjects, these student plays were accompanied by balletic interludes of song and dance on allegorical themes. For the Collége d'Harcourt, Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed such a ballet to accompany a production of Pierre Corneille's Christian tragedy 'Polyeucte Martyr'.

"Evidently Charpentier used some precomposed music for this event. His overture was originally composed for Moliére's comedy 'Le Dépit amoureux' — possibly for a given revival at the Comédie-Francaise on 11 July 1679.

"The title page of the composer's manuscript reads: 'Ouverture du prologue / ['du depit amoureux' is crossed out] de Polieucte pour le college d'Harcourt'. Evidently Charpentier added to it the twelve dances that would comprise what he referred to as 'le ballet de Polieucte'.

"Further light on this is shed by Paul Lacroix's catalogue of the 'Bibliothèque dramatique de Monsieur de Soleinne'. Here Lacroix lists a collection entitled 'Recueil de pieces dramatiques représentées dans les anciens colleges de Paris', containing a ballet entitled 'Le Combat de l'amour divin et de l'amour profane' that was performed at the Jesuit College d'Harcourt on 8 August 1680. According to the catalogue, the ballet was 'aprés Polyeucte, de Comeille'. Unfortunately this fivret has not survived, but it seems likely that Charpentier's allegorical dances made up the ballet that was danced for this performance. The titles of the individual movements suggest a spiritual struggle which is acted out in dance-pantomime: 'Profane Love, Games and Pleasures'; 'Pantomimes for the same [dancers]'; 'Sadness', 'Signs of Zeal'; 'Grace and the Virtues"; 'Desperation'; 'The Picklocks', "Noble and Base Feelings'; 'Cupid Blacksmiths', 'Triumphal March'; 'Joy Alone'; 'Combatants'. One dance carries the cue 'Why has the tender heart not returned?', thus translating the feelings expressed in a spoken passage." (John S. Powell. From the liner notes.)

Performers: New Chamber Opera, Gary Cooper, Rachel Elliott, James Gilchrist, Thomas Guthrie, Giles Underwood

1. Andromède: Ouverture

2. Andromède: Prélude Pendant Que Melpomene Vole Dans Le Char D’Apollon

3. Andromède: Récit D’Apollon 'Cieux, Ecoutez'

4. Andromède: Chœur De Bergers (Ensemble) 'D’un Héros Qu’en Tous Lieus A Suivi La Victoire'

5. Andromède: Prélude (Scène III)

6. Andromède: Chœur Des Suivants Du Roi Et De La Reine 'Reine D’Erice Et D’Amathonte'

7. Andromède: Replique De Choeur 'Ainsi Toujours Sur Tes Autels'

8. Andromède: Rondeau (Intermède Du Premier Au Second Acte)

9. Andromède: Petit Prélude De Caprice

10. Andromède: Air D’un De La Suite De Phinée 'Qu’elle Est Lente, Cette Journée'

11. Andromède: Air De Liriope 'Phinée Est Plus Aimé'

12. Andromède: Dialogue 'Heureux Amant!/Heureuse Amant!'

13. Andromède: Chœur De La Suitte De Phinée Et D’Andromède (Ensemble) 'Joignons Nos Voix'

14. Andromède: Dialogue 'Le Ciel Le Veut'

15. Andromède: Chœur De La Suitte De Phinée Et D’Andromède (Ensemble) 'Douce Union Que Chcun Doit Bénir!'

16. Andromède: Les Vents (Intermède Du Second Au Troisième Acte)

17. Andromède: Chœur D’Ethiopiens 'Le Monstre Est Mort'

18. Andromède: Un De La Suite Du Roy 'Quand Le Danger Presse'

19. Andromède: Duo 'Vous Êtes Sa Digne Conquête'

20. Andromède: Chœur D’Ethiopiens 'Le Monstre Est Mort'

21. Andromède: Caprice (Intermède Du 3ème Au 4ème Acte)

22. Andromède: Chœur De Peuple 'Vivez, Vivez, Heureux Amants'

23. Andromède: Premier Air (Intermède Du 4ème Au Cinquième Acte)

24. Andromède: Deuxieme Air — Gigue Angloise

25. Andromède: Chœur 'Maître Des Dieux, Hate-toi'

26. Andromède: Chœur 'Allez, Amants, Sans Jalousie'

27. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Overture

28. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Amours Profanes: Jeux Et Plaisirs

29. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Panthomimes Pour Les Mesmes; Inquietude; Attention Ou Aplaudissement; Tristesse

30. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Marquis De Zelle

31. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Les Graces Et Les Vertus

32. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Le Despespoir

33. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Les Crotcheteurs

34. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Sentiments Généreux Et Lasches

35. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Amours Forgerons

36. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Marche De Triomphe

37. Le Ballet De Polieucte: La Joye Seulle

38. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Pourquoi N'avoit Pas Le Coeur Tendre Retourné

39. Le Ballet De Polieucte: Combattants

flac/16-bit

Nicola Porpora - Or Sì M'avveggio, Oh Amore: Cantatas for Soprano

"'I have been studying Handel and his era for more than two years; [...] to my great astonishment, I have observed the superiority of Porpora in respect of both grandeur of style and dramatic power.'

"This forceful statement, taken from a private letter which Romain Rolland sent to the Italian scholar Giuseppe Radiciotti around a century ago, displays an attitude verging on consternation at the unexpectedly high standard the Frenchman had discovered in the music of Nicola Porpora. Even today the Neapolitan composer remains completely unknown to the general public. In musicological circles, although his output has not yet been systematically studied, there is at least a general acknowledgment of his importance, and there has been some valuable research into specific aspects of his work. We have chosen to include on this CD cantatas that are not only of outstanding quality (and thus intrinsically deserving of revival), but which also convey the least monolithic view of Porpora's style. By representing the diversity of Porpora's music, we can do justice to some of the variables inevitable in the work of a prestigious composer: the tastes and demands of patrons, the historical moment at which his creative achievements took shape, and the natural and continuous transformation of his aesthetic philosophy over the course of time.

"The parallel often drawn between Handel and Porpora has long-established roots, and is closely connected with the two men's open rivalry on the London operatic scene. The Italian composer arrived on English soil between late summer and autumn 1733 at the invitation of the so-called Opera of the Nobility, for which he worked until its collapse in 1736–7. While it is true that the ferocious controversies arising from this rivalry have long clouded the image of Porpora with reductive, rough-and-ready judgements (he is often mentioned solely as Handel's 'opponent'), it did at least ensure, by acting as a stimulus to research now and then, that his name never entirely disappeared from music history books. In 1951, Frank Walker (a pioneer of Porpora studies) gave the first clearcut description of the composer's importance at the time of his arrival in London: 'When Porpora came to England in 1733, at the age of forty-seven, he had done more than pursue his own shadow. He had to his credit, after a quarter of a century's hard work, twenty-eight operas, three oratorios and a dramma sacro, six or seven serenatas and much church music.' Porpora was indeed one of the most sought-after composers in the celebrated theatres and principal musical establishments of the major European cities. Both before and after his sojourn in Britain he maintained a highly prestigious international career (divided between Naples, Venice, Dresden, Vienna, Turin, Rome, Milan, and so on), enjoying considerable influence on the contemporary musical scene and leaving a large number of excellent pupils (including Haydn, Farinelli, Caffarelli and Corri). One aspect of Porpora's work which Walker did not seem to hold in high esteem when writing his article (and he could hardly have done otherwise, since the fundamental thesis on the subject, by Everett Lavern Sutton, appeared only in 1974) was his significance as a composer of chamber cantatas, a repertory to which he made an abundant contribution in terms of both quantity (over 130 works) and quality.

"At the peak of Porpora's London popularity there appeared an extremely successful collection of twelve cantatas (for soprano or contralto with basso continuo or obbligato harpsichord, and in certain cases a concertante instrument as well) entitled 'Nuovamente composte opre di musica vocale' ('Newly composed works of vocal music'). Published in an elegant edition in 1735 (neatly and accurately printed, on high-quality paper and with ample margins), these exquisite pieces were subsequently to become, from the late eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, the principal yardstick for assessing the composer's style in dictionaries of music, along with the 'Sonate XII di violino e basso' ('Twelve sonatas for violin and bass'), the 'Sei duetti latini sulla Passione di Cristo' ('Six Latin duets on the Passion of Christ'), and a few sacred pieces. The high production costs of the publication were borne by Frederick, Prince of Wales, who evidently saw in this collection a fitting monument to his patronage: integrally planned and executed by a refined avant-garde composer of the calibre of Porpora, and setting unpublished texts by the greatest poet of the age (Metastasio), it epitomized the aesthetic aims which the prince championed in England in the realms of opera, poetry, and painting.

"The cantatas assembled in this volume clearly display the principal features of Porpora's compositional style at this stage in his career, notably his legendary melodic elegance, the remarkable fidelity of the music to the sentiments expressed in the text, and his skill in writing recitative, which was regarded as exemplary (more than one author described him as 'the father of recitative'). 'Già la notte s'avvicina (La pesca)' was included in this sumptuous publishing venture, and neatly illustrates all these stylistic features, as well as the unusual nature of the bass line in the pieces in the collection, which owes its exceptional cantabile quality to the fact that it was mostly conceived for the cello (an instrument of which the Prince of Wales was a creditable amateur exponent). Also connected to England, but for quite different reasons, is 'Or sì m'avveggio, oh Amore', whose forces include a concertante cello for the only time in Porpora's cantatas. This work has survived only because it is contained in a volume from the private collection of the London musician Benjamin Cooke (the younger), whose books were transferred in 1883 from the library of the Sacred Harmonic Society to constitute a substantial part of the collections of the newly founded Royal College of Music. How the piece came into Cooke's hands has still to be established, even though the use he made of it is obvious enough: well known at the time as an excellent teacher, he adapted it as a tool for his pupils to study continuo. The voracious but selective curiosity of this late eighteenth-century collector must have had no difficulty in finding compositions by Porpora on the market even years after he left England: works by the Neapolitan composer were still circulating and arousing the interest of British musicians (and would long continue to do so), and we know that precious manuscript copies passed through the hands of such personalities as William Savage, Richard Stevens and William Robinson. However, there is nothing to show that 'Or sì m'avveggio, oh Amore' was actually written in England. Stylistic analysis does not yield any elements that can help us to date it very precisely: we can do no more than assert that this cantata broadly corresponds to traits shown by the composer during his years in Naples in the 1720s and his London period of the mid-1730s, although it certainly dates from a few years before the publication of the 'Nuovamente composte opre di musica vocale' (1735).

"We can, however, be sure of the dating of the earliest cantata on this CD, 'Credimi pur che t'amo', completed in Rome (as is indicated by Porpora himself on his conducting score) on 4 July 1712. A constant exchange of composers and performers between Naples and the capital of the Papal States was the norm in the early eighteenth century: one need only think, for example, of the careers of Alessandro Scarlatti and Giovan Carlo Cailò and their respective influence on the Roman operatic scene and the Neapolitan string school. The young and promising Porpora must have quickly entered this virtuoso circle, assimilating the influences of the surroundings in which he found himself. Although the instrumental sections of this cantata are written in the style of the concerto grosso (with systematic alternation between soli and tutti), and while some passages in the vocal lines display a Scarlattian flavour, and the character of the recitatives and certain harmonic options immediately call to mind the Roman milieu, there are many elements which (even to a modern ear) evince considerable originality and powerful innovations. An example is found in the conclusion of the last movement of the opening Sinfonia. Such innovations would not have stood out so strongly in the artistic climate of Naples, where the far-reaching transformations of musical language that Porpora himself, Leo, Vinci and their contemporaries were shortly to export to the world were already being prepared and tried out.

"'Or che d'orrido Verno' is among Porpora's finest chamber cantatas. It cannot be securely dated, but may have been written when the composer was active in Naples or Venice (or perhaps even Dresden), between 1725 and 1730, or else in the late 1740s. The work features a twosection sinfonia (with no tempo marking) and assigns exceptionally brilliant roles to both the singer and the concertante flute. However, the demands on virtuoso technique do not overshadow the prominent, delicately handled echoes between voice, solo instrument and string accompaniment that characterize the writing (a typical trait of the composer, here illustrated in exemplary fashion in the sensual, poignant 'Lungi dal ben che s'ama'). Indeed, refinement, subtle interplay between the parts, and highly intensive (at times obsessive) exploitation of the thematic material were among the distinctive features of Porpora's output in general. These elements, combined with extremely rich melodic invention, a mastery of compositional technique, and a keen sense of theatre and dramatic pacing, marked him out for a successful career. Today, after centuries of neglect, all these characteristics surge from the pages of his scores with explosive force, showing how groundless are the widespread stereotypes which portray Porpora exclusively as a skilful purveyor of bravura arias for the use of his pupils. In the aesthetics of so profound and refined a musician, virtuosity was a means to an end: his requirement of an extremely high level of technique from performers was an instrument to enable him to obtain a seductive, spellbinding naturalness of style, necessary in its turn to create for the intellect and the senses a pleasure that would 'move the passions'." (Stefano Aresi, tr. Charles Johnston. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Auser Musici, Carlo Ipata, Elena Cecchi Fedi

1. Or Sì M'avveggio, Oh Amore: I. Or Sì M'avveggio, Oh Amore

2. Or Sì M'avveggio, Oh Amore: II. Dolce Pace, Lieta Calma

3. Or Sì M'avveggio, Oh Amore: III. Più Che Nel Ciel Tra' Numi

4. Or Sì M'avveggio, Oh Amore: IV. S'asconde Amor Nel Volto

5. Credimi Pur Che T'amo: I. Sinfonia. Presto

6. Credimi Pur Che T'amo: II. Sinfonia. Andante, E Spiritoso

7. Credimi Pur Che T'amo: III. Sinfonia. Allegro

8. Credimi Pur Che T'amo: IV. Credimi Pur Che T'amo

9. Credimi Pur Che T'amo: V. Sì, Sì, T'adoro Ma

10. Credimi Pur Che T'amo: VI. Sarò Pur Nell'amarti

11. Credimi Pur Che T'amo: VII. Amami E Non Languir

12. Già La Notte S'avvicina 'La Pesca': I. Già La Notte S'avvicina

13. Già La Notte S'avvicina 'La Pesca': II. Lascia Una Volta, Oh Nice

14. Già La Notte S'avvicina 'La Pesca': III. Non Più Fra Sassi Algosi

15. Or Che D'orrido Verno: I. Sinfonia. [Untitled]

16. Or Che D'orrido Verno: II. Sinfonia. [Untitled]

17. Or Che D'orrido Verno: III. Or Che D'orrido Verno

18. Or Che D'orrido Verno: IV. Lungi Dal Ben Che S'ama

19. Or Che D'orrido Verno: V. Pur Fra Tanta Mia Pena

20. Or Che D'orrido Verno: VI. Nocchier Che Mira

flac/16-bit

Nicola Porpora - 6 Sinfonie da Camera, Op. 2

"Nicola (Antonio) Porpora was an Italian composer of Baroque operas and teacher of singing, whose most famous singing student was the castrato Farinelli. He graduated from the music conservatory Poveri di Gesù Cristo of his native city, where the civic opera scene was dominated by Alessandro Scarlatti.

"Nicola Porpora's first opera, 'Agrippina', was successfully performed at the Neapolitan court in 1708. His second, 'Berenice', was performed at Rome. In a long career, he followed these up by many further operas, supported as maestro di cappella in the households of aristocratic patrons, such as the commander of military forces at Naples, the prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, or of the Portuguese ambassador at Rome, for composing operas alone did not yet make a viable career. However, his enduring fame rests chiefly upon his unequalled power of teaching singing. At the Neapolitan Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio and with the Poveri di Gesù Cristo he trained Farinelli, Caffarelli, Salimbeni, and other celebrated vocalists, during the period 1715-1721. In 1720 and 1721 he wrote two serenades to librettos by a gifted young poet, Metastasio, the beginning of a long, though interrupted, collaboration. In 1722 his operatic successes encouraged him to lay down his conservatory commitments.

"After a rebuff from the court of Charles VI at Vienna in 1725, Nicola Porpora settled mostly in Venice, composing and teaching regularly in the schools of La Pietà and the Incurabili. In 1729 the anti-Händel clique invited him to London to set up an opera company as a rival to Händel's, without success, and in the 1733-1734 season, even the presence of his pupil, the great Farinelli, failed to save the dramatic company in Lincoln's Inn Fields (the 'Opera of the Nobility') from bankruptcy.

"An interval as Kapellmeister at the Dresden court of the Elector of Saxony from 1748 ended in strained relations with his rival in Venice and Rome, the hugely successful opera composer Johann Adolph Hasse and his wife, the prima donna Faustina, and resulted in Nicola Porpora's departure in 1752. From Dresden he went to Vienna, where he gave music lessons to the young Joseph Haydn, who lived with Porpora as accompanist and in the character of a valet, but allowed later that he had learned from the maestro 'the true fundamentals of composition'. Then Porpora returned in 1759 to Naples.

"From this time Nicola Porpora's career was a series of misfortunes: his florid style was becoming old-fashioned, his last opera, 'Camilla', failed, his pension from Dresden stopped, and he became so poor that the expenses of his funeral were paid by a subscription concert. Yet at the moment of his death Farinelli and Caffarelli were living in splendid retirement on fortunes largely based on the excellence of the old maestro's teaching.

"A good linguist, who was admired for the idiomatic fluency of his recitatives, and a man of considerable literary culture, Nicola Porpora was also celebrated for his conversational wit. Besides some four dozen operas, there are oratorios, solo cantatas with keyboard accompaniment, motets and vocal serenades. Among his larger works, his 1720 opera 'Orlando, one mass, his 'Venetian Vespers', and the serenata 'Arianna in Nasso' (1733) have been recorded." (Biography from The Bach Website. See here.)

Performers: Artifizii Musicali, Guy Delvaux

1. Sinfonia No. 4 In D Major: I. Adagio

2. Sinfonia No. 4 In D Major: II. Allegro

3. Sinfonia No. 4 In D Major: III. Adagio

4. Sinfonia No. 4 In D Major: IV. Allegro

5. Sinfonia No. 5 In E Minor: I. Affettuoso

6. Sinfonia No. 5 In E Minor: II. Allegro

7. Sinfonia No. 5 In E Minor: III. Adagio

8. Sinfonia No. 5 In E Minor: IV. Giga. Allegro

9. Sinfonia No. 3 In G Minor: I. Adagio Sostenuto

10. Sinfonia No. 3 In G Minor: II. Allegro

11. Sinfonia No. 3 In G Minor: III. Adagio

12. Sinfonia No. 3 In G Minor: IV. Allegro

13. Sinfonia No. 1 In G Major: I. Adagio

14. Sinfonia No. 1 In G Major: II. Allegro

15. Sinfonia No. 1 In G Major: III. Allegro

16. Sinfonia No. 1 In G Major: IV. Presto

17. Sinfonia No. 2 In C Major: I. Adagio

18. Sinfonia No. 2 In C Major: II. Allegro

19. Sinfonia No. 2 In C Major: III. Affettuoso

20. Sinfonia No. 2 In C Major: IV. Allegro

21. Sinfonia No. 6 In B-Flat Major: I. Adagio

22. Sinfonia No. 6 In B-Flat Major: II. Allegro

23. Sinfonia No. 6 In B-Flat Major: III. Affettuoso

24. Sinfonia No. 6 In B-Flat Major: IV. Adagio

25. Sinfonia No. 6 In B-Flat Major: V. Allegro

flac/16-bit

Per Nørgård - Songs from Evening Land

"Exactly 25 years ago I had my first intense encounter with Per Nørgård's music. I had just been accepted on trial by the vocal ensemble Ars Nova, and one of the first jobs on the programme was Nørgård's 'Wie ein Kind'. My qualifications for rehearsing music with this degree of difficulty were close to zero, but I struggled determinedly to learn my part, and my amazement, joy and excitement were great when I was at last able to hear all the parts united in a totality. At the time, of course, I was not aware that the experience was to be of great importance to the direction my artistic career was to take later. 

"Subsequently I have had many opportunities to work with Per Nørgård's music in solo contexts – with among other things the opera 'Nuit des hommes' and the cantata 'The Will-o'-the-Wisps Go to Town'. The unmistakable Nørgård vocal lines have continued to appeal to my urge to explore the possibilities of my voice and to make use of expressive devices that are otherwise rarely justified in the classically trained use of the voice. 

"In the winter of 2008 I drove to Langeland and visited Per Nørgård. My idea was to do a CD with a collection of vocal works from the whole of Per's production, as an opportunity to sum up all the experience I had gained from his music over the years. During the next few months we exchanged ideas for the repertoire on the CD and arrived at the result that is now presented here. 

"It has proved a strange and wonderful journey through time in Per Nørgård's vocal music, where rich, sophisticated chamber music instrumentation illuminates the poems in the different languages, and where we meet a composer who, ever since the earliest works, has tried out recitational and declamatory effects in the use of the singing voice; a method that culminates in the works from the 1980s, in which he makes explicit use of these elements. 

"It has been a constant challenge to work with the material, but there is no doubt that Per Nørgård's music is to a very special degree reflected and echoed in me, and that there was a deeper meaning in my experience of the encounter with his music 25 years ago." (Helene Gjerris. From the liner notes.)

"Per Nørgård (born 1932) is Denmark's great, original composer from the time after World War II. With his lively emotional imagination and his ingenious musical structures he has shifted boundaries and opened up new musical landscapes and modes of awareness that challenge the musicality of the performers and listeners. 

"Per Nørgård was born in Copenhagen, where his parents had a shop selling wedding dresses and other ladies' wear. He has lived most of his life in Denmark, but he has also travelled widely in both East and West. In his student years Per Nørgård was a pupil of Vagn Holmboe; at the same time he was a great admirer of the music of Jean Sibelius.

"In those years Per Nørgård worked with the idea of 'the universe of the Nordic mind', understood as a feeling that nature and the light in the northern regions helped to unite our cultures. Later, like other composers of his generation, he explored the serial music of central Europe. 

"This was the background for Per Nørgård's invention in 1959 of his unique 'infinity series' on the basis of the fractal theories of the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot. Skewed rhythms, in many cases based on the proportions of the Golden Section and interference phenomena, also became important elements in his music.

"Around 1980 Per Nørgård began to extend his compositional palette once more, looking for means of expressing the darker sides of the human mind. To this end he created a number of works inspired by the schizophrenic Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli. These works included a good deal of highly expressive vocal music as well as the Fourth Symphony, which alternates between idyll and disaster, order and chaos.

"The vocal works on this CD were composed in the 1950s, the 1960s and the 1980s. For Per Nørgård the texts were to a very great extent the crucial inspiration for his vocal compositions. They are powerful, and come from a variety of countries and language areas. The accompaniment to the songs is highly varied, as is the choice of instruments and the sophisticated way they are used to bring out the sonorities and structure of the music.

"In 1953, long before Jess Ørnsbo made his debut as a poet and Per Nørgård had his debut concert, Per Nørgård composed music to Ørnsbo's poem 'Solen så jeg' ('I saw the Sun'). This short, intense song is about maturing enough to love. The instrumentation, with flute, violin, viola and cello, was done in 2010 in connection with the recording of this CD. 

"Over the next few years Per Nørgård composed a number of 'Evening Land works' to texts by the Swedish poet Pär Lagerkvist, specifically the choral work 'Aftonland' ('Evening Land') from 1954, Two Recitatives and Songs from 'Evening Land'. The last of these is five songs about grief, longing and departure. Per Nørgård's idea of 'the universe of the Nordic mind' found its form during the composition of these Lagerkvist songs, and the inspiration from his great exemplar Jean Sibelius is unmistakable in the orchestral-sounding instrumentation of the almost folk-like song lines. 

"Per Nørgård's music from the 1960s is represented by two works. In 'Three Love Songs' a very short poem by Arthur Rimbaud is combined with two poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. 'Three Love Songs was originally composed for soloist and orchestra. For this CD recording Per Nørgård has adapted the instrumentation of the songs to the ensemble of musicians who play in the other works on the CD. The work 'Trois chansons de 'L'Amour la poésie'' was composed to texts by the French Surrealist poet Paul Éluard. They revolve around the relationships between sleep, ravens and the orange-blue earth and with the beloved. The musical idiom is subdued: the erotic intensity is concentrated around the closely interwoven lines of the singer and the solo flute. 

"There is a great expressive leap from the early works to the vocal work 'Plutonian Ode', which Per Nørgård composed to fragments of the American Allen Ginsberg's poem from 1978 with the same title. Here the poet and composer lash out on the issue of the terrible taboo of the time – total nuclear annihilation – with great verbal intensity. Under the inspiration of some stays on Bali, Per Nørgård saw his rendering of this poem as a kind of exorcism. Per Nørgård described this wild, sprawling aria as '... a rhythmically intense threnody to plutonium, viewed as the basic emptiness of total destruction – opposed to the indefatigable will of the human spirit to create connections and meaning. The constant ambivalences of the rhythm are united here with the transformations of words in gradual shifts of meaning (for example 'at last' – 'Atlas' – 'alas').'

"'Day and Night' from 1982 has texts by Ted Hughes and William Shakespeare. Ted Hughes' poem, 'A Kill', is a description of the pangs of coming into the world, of being born. Shakespeare's balmy declaration of love, on the other hand, also calls night and darkness to mind and is a brief extract from 'Romeo and Juliet', Act II, Scene III.

"'Entwicklungen' ('Developments') was composed to two poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. The first poem, 'Kindheit' ('Childhood'), revolves around the remote, lost, long afternoons of childhood. The second poem, 'Die Genesende' ('The convalescent), describes how life plays with the invalid until healing arrives as a soft, sensitive caress. 

"The last item on the CD, 'Schlafen gehen, Schmerz und Not' is a free version of Nørgård's choral piece 'Abendlied' (from 'Two Wölfli Lieder' from 1980). In this 2012-style 're-mix' Helene Gjerris herself recorded all four choral parts, while Gert Sørensen added gamelan instruments." (Eva Hvidt. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Helene Gjerris, Toke Møldrup, Ulla Miilmann, Jesper Lützhøft, Gert Sørensen, Lotte Wallevik, Johannes Søe Hansen, Anne Marie Abildskov, Tine Rehling

1. Two Recitatives, Op.16: I. Jag Lyssnar Till Vinden

2. Two Recitatives, Op.16: II. Gammal Genius

3. Entwicklungen: I. Kindheit

4. Entwicklungen: II. Die Genesende

5. Plutonian Ode: Recitation (Introduction)

6. Plutonian Ode: I. Recitation

7. Plutonian Ode: II. Aria

8. Trois Chansons De 'L'amour La Poésie': I. Le Sommeil

9. Trois Chansons De 'L'amour La Poésie': II. Les Corbeaux

10. Trois Chansons De 'L'amour La Poésie': III. La Terre

11. Three Love Songs: I. L'étoile A Pleuré Rose

12. Three Love Songs: II. Wie Soll Ich Meine Seele Halten

13. Three Love Songs: III. Opfer (Fragment)

14. Day And Night: I. A Kill

15. Day And Night: II. Silver-sweet Sound

16. Solen Så Jeg

17. Sånger Från 'Aftonland', Part I: No. 1, Allt Är Så Underligt Fjärran I Dag

18. Sånger Från 'Aftonland', Part I: No. 2, Du Människa Som Står Vid Stranden Av...

19. Sånger Från 'Aftonland', Part I: No. 3, Det Är Om Aftonen Man Bryter Upp

20. Sånger Från 'Aftonland', Part II: No. 1, Preludio

21. Sånger Från 'Aftonland', Part II: No. 2, Nu Är Det Sommermorgon

22. Sånger Från 'Aftonland', Part II: No. 3, Tacka Vill Jag

23. Sånger Från 'Aftonland', Part III: Det Är Om Aftonen Man Bryter Upp

24. Schlafen Gehen, Schmerz Und Not

flac/16-bit

Sun Ra - Cymbals

Also recorded in 1973 and first released (this time in 2010 by Troglosound) as a limited bootleg by an Italian label, followed by a full (and in this case extended) release on Modern Harmonic, 'Cymbals' is decidedly more restrained than it's sister release 'Crystal Spears' (see below). Its lineup also varies, with Marshall Allen absent and Ronnie Boykins' double bass backing Ra's organ, Danny Davis's alto, John Gilmore's tenor and Akh Tal Ebah's trumpet (among others). A worthwhile listen if lacking the same psychedelic fury of experimentation as 'Crystal Spears'.

A1. The World Of The Invisible

A2. Thoughts Under A Dark Blue Light

B1. The Order Of The Pharaonic Jesters

B2. The Mystery Of Two

B3. Land Of The Day Star

mp3/320kbps

Sun Ra - Crystal Spears

Originally planned as a release for ABC/Impulse!, these sessions were recorded in 1973 and eventually shelved. While for the initiated Sun Ra listener there is much rewarding exploration here, it is easy to why this was not a viable studio release in an era of diminishing mainstream interest in 'out-there' improvisations. The group is typical of this Arkestra era, featuring (of course) John Gilmore's tenor and Marshall Allen and Danny Davis's alto sax, as well as Akh Tal Ebah on trumpet, Danny Ray Thompson on baritone sax, Eloe Omoe on bass clarinet and Clifford Jarvis on drums, among others. There is no double bass here, Ra's organ filling that role à la organ combo. First released unofficially in 2014 on Italian bootleg label Sinner Lady Gloria, it saw its first official CD/LP/digital release by the American archival label Modern Harmonic (available to buy digitally and as a CD here).

A1. Crystal Spears

A2. The Eternal Sphynx

A3. The Embassy Of The Living God

B. Sunrise In The Western Sky

mp3/320kbps

Charles Tolliver - Mosaic Select 20

"It was 1970, and Slugs' a 4 A.M. joint on a gritty street of Alphabet City on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, was in the in-club, a scene of true-edge jazz. Hipsters, listeners, mack men, slick women, students, artists, activists, arrivistes—'Everyone went there, night after night,' remembers Charles Tolliver, trumpeter with Jackie McLean on the very first night live music was played in the place, in the summer of 1964.

""For much of the next decade, Tolliver's own Music Inc. was among Slugs' resident ensembles, in company with Sun Ra's Arkestra, Charles Mingus' combos and bands of such incandescent stars like trumpeter Lee Morgan, who, just off the bandstand, was shot dead by a jealous lover. Music Inc. 'Live at Slugs'', released originally by Tolliver's semi-collective Strata-East record label, has long been treasured as a like-it-was document of the high, hot music born in that smoky, boozy, seductive room (reopened in the mid '80s as the Nuyorican Poets' Café). Put this CD on, and you're there.

"'For jazz you'd start at the Vanguard, maybe hear Sonny Rollins playing to five people, then go to the Gate to catch Cannonball Adderley, who was often there, then pass by the Five Spot—all glassed—in on the corner of St. Mark's and Bowery, so you could see in before deciding if you were going in. You'd end up at Slugs',' Tolliver recalls with satisfaction.

"For a taste of the real thing; the hard, bright exuberance of clarity or the down and sometimes dirty but nevertheless spiritually untarnished intensity of urban dwellers grappling with that very day's practical, personal, social and aesthetic issues, finding rough and tumble answers often beyond conventions, limits or constraints. For instance, the music on this record—urgent, probing, hoodoo chasing performances, able to satisfy one's itch to get up, maybe bust open some new possibilities (dig the collective improv peak of 'Wilpan's'), or tenderly craft and linger in the luxuriance of a ballad (as on 'Felicite' and 'Orientale').

"Music Inc., live at Slugs', typically played generous sets, each tune easily running 10, 20 minutes or more. Energy was the watchword of the era's music, due partly to the influence of John Coltrane, among the jazz masters Tolliver idolized while coming up. Indeed, Coltrane's quest for musical fulfillment, and his great quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, informed Music Inc.'s horn/piano/bass/drums format and repertoire of modal improvisation, motivic melodies and stretched-out hard-bop minor blues. As for Tolliver himself: 'The whole point of Music Inc. was not to have an alternate — a saxophonist to spell me if I got tired,' he explains, 'and to gain urgency from having to deliver myself, as the only horn player and composer-leader. I had to keep my chops up and strengths about me all the time.'

"By the date of this recording, Tolliver had long distinguished himself as a comer among the full range of pace-setters of the day (including Miles, Dizzy, Kenny Dorham, Freddie Hubbard, Don Cherry, Donald Byrd, Blue Mitchell, Woody Shaw and others). His particular forte is the focus with which he unleashes dramatic strokes — and those strokes themselves, broad figures he brings to inspired heights. He'd gigged with Jackie McLean, Max Roach, Roy Ayers, Roy Haynes and Andrew Hill, woodshed with Joe Henderson, Jack DeJohnette, James Spaulding and Chick Corea, recorded on Blue Note and led his own band (featuring pianist John Hicks) up at Count Basie's, a lounge in Harlem. With firm command of attack, tone and tempo, in the tradition of trumpeters such as Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown and Booker Little, Charles Tolliver was not so modest as to eschew the dazzling showcase; here he blazons swaggering statements over churning rhythms, floats ultra-pretty, heartfelt lines upon mousse-rich piano chords, dares to try—and nails!—thrilling lip trill climaxes. But he also surrounded himself with colleagues who superbly supported, challenged and balanced him, for utmost interaction and groove. If they don't top the Coltrane quartet's transcendence, Music Inc.'s members for sure demonstrate admirable physical concentration and enviable musical imagination.

"Pianist Stanley Cowell was Tolliver's dream accompanist: percussive, rhnythm-grounded, sly yet churly-soulful, an evocative soloist and harmonic visionary with exemplary keyboard technique. 'I was so lucky to meet him at the beginning of my career,' Tolliver says. Bassist Cecil McBee was also indispensable, a fluid bedrock giving constant bottom and lift to the band. Drummer Jimmy Hopps stirred up and juggled a storm of polyrhythms, tending the pots, tubs and cymbals at a bubbling simmer as emphatically as at a ferocious boil. And he's exceptionally well recorded.

"'T always like to hear the drummer, yeah!' Tolliver enthuses. 'When I sat down to mix these recordings — which were recorded analog, of course, the format which I think retains the most warmth and punch — I made sure the drums were prominent. Because, you know: a trumpet player's got to have drums!'

"In the '90s, Jimmy Hopps has disappeared from view. Cecil McBee remains an internationally renowned, first-call New York bassist. Stanley Cowell, based around Washington, D.C., continues to perform and teach jazz. Tolliver lives in NYC and is a professor at New York City's New School for Social Research (Mannes School of Music).

"'We had a style then,' Tolliver says 'which endures in some players of the 90s I could easily name, which was based on being half-free, half-straight ahead. Or maybe 30 percent free to 70 percent straight ahead, mainstream — I don't know. Everything had a structure, but we could take the music any way we felt.

"'The music we created then is of course historical — but also, 30 years later, it still sounds as if it's just about to be conceived now. Some of that's the urgency which encompassed our lives at the time, also the necessity of having to deliver, on the fly! Some of it's because we're still living with Diz, Monk, Bird, Miles and Trane,' Tolliver considers.

"'Slugs' was a forum for us, an opportunity,' he notes, 'and we took good advantage of it, The audience at Slugs' was there to hear that kind of music, our kind of music, so we didn't have to satisfy them with standards or pop songs, didn't have to hold back or save something for another take or deal with producers who wanted to put other stuff under us than what we'd written ourselves. We were 95 percent acoustic — Stanley tinkered with the Moog and Fender Rhodes keyboards, but we always had an upright, not an electric bass. We got to play the way we were thinking at the time, and as long as we cared to.

"'Also we could always feel something from the audience there. Maybe not something specific about their responses: something intangible. We were able to play for ourselves, and for the real fans, members of the community who knew what we were trying to say, what the music meant. They're on the record, too, somehow, as much as Freddie Freeloader adding his ‘Yeahs!' to a Miles solo.

"'Of course, today, it's not written that I'm an enfant terrible, the way they used to,' Tolliver cautions. 'But I'm still playing, of course, and I've got to say I don't feel any different in 1998, at age 55, than when it came out, almost three decades back. It's all for real, and that's forever.'" (Howard Mandel, February 1998. Reprinted in the liner notes.)

"Slugs' Saloon, which was located on 3rd Street between Avenues B and C on the Lower East Side of New York City, was created in the mid 60s by two guys named Jerry and Robert. In its brief history, roughly 10 years, Slugs' became one of the main arenas to perform and listen to the music during those turbulent and extremely creative times.

"One day during the summer of '64 I got a call from the saxophone great Jackie McLean, who at the time lived just one street from the club, to do an afternoon ‘hit' at this new place called Slugs'. It would be the first time live music would be presented there. No bandstand had as yet been erected. So, in the middle of the club on a sawdust covered floor, Jackie, myself, Larry Willis, John Ore, and Billy Higgins inaugurated the place.

"The rest is history as just about every artist involved with creating the music during this period either played the club or passed through to see and hear what was going on. The music presented here is from a week engagement I made at the club in 1970 with my first Music Inc. group featuring Stanley Cowell, Cecil McBee, and Jimmy Hopps." (Charles Tolliver, 1998. Reprinted in the liner notes.)

"The music and philosophy of Charles Tolliver hails from a time when the most powerful artistic minds in Black America were in sync with its radical elite. As the trumpeter and self-made label executive puts it, 'One of the reasons the music of that era sounds the way it does is because there was at that time a oneness of purpose among Black people in general and musicians in particular. The whole push towards equality, along with John Coltrane's music, permeated everything we did for about five to eight years.'

"In 1971, under the influence of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and John Coltrane, Tolliver, along with business and musical partner Stanley Cowell, began what has become the most successful musician-run label in jazz history: Strata-East. But though the Strata-East story dovetails nicely with that of '60s, Black cultural nationalism and the desire for independence, Tolliver recounts also being motivated by the death of Kenny Dorham, a legendary trumpeter, friend and idol:

"'Kenny Dorham was truly one of my heroes and one of the greatest artists jazz has produced. As a player and composer he did amazing work, yet he died in obscurity. I went to see him just before he died and I asked myself, how does this happen, that someone who has recorded all this music has nothing? That's when I realized he didn't own any of his masters, and that recognition is what set me on the course I've been on to this day and I have not swerved from it. As musicians, I knew that we've got to leave something behind for our children.'

"Though the roots of Strata-East may lay in the above observations, the label's fruits were a catalogue of music that spoke to jazz as an art form in transition, poised between triumph and trauma. By the early ‘70s jazz had firmly established itself on the international scene as the definitive American contribution to world culture. The usual suspects, Monk, Mingus, Max, Miles, Ornette and Trane — a litany of giants really — had changed the face of 20th-century music in ways never predicted by Western modernism, and had proven the seriousness of jazz as a challenging aesthetic endeavor. For conscious and daring young African-American musicians of Tolliver and Cowell's caliber, the moment must have seemed like a rite of passage: one in which they would have to prove themselves worthy of assuming the mantle of their forefathers. Leaving Howard University's School of Pharmacy in his third year, Tolliver had come up in jazz the old-fashioned way, apprenticing with the masters. His post-college internships were with Jackie McLean, McCoy Tyner, Gerald Wilson and Max Roach. His recollection of that time identifies him as someone who caught the meteoric tail end of a golden age:

"'I played with all the great guys who were around then: Hank Mobley, Philly Joe Jones, Horace Silver, Elmo Hope, Sonny Red, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey. I was close to all of them. The camaraderie was really high at that time, because everybody grew up playing together. It was really a once-in-a-lifetime period when everybody was living here. Old cats like Pee Wee Russell got a chance to see us and we got to see them. From 1965 to about 1975 there were a group of guys who played together, stayed together, did everything together. When Miles would come to the Five Spot, he was just one of the guys. And this even after he had given us several turning points in the music, like 'Round Midnight and Kind of Blue.'

"Anything but a retired veteran, Tolliver continues to oversee the Strata-East legacy, while actively performing and teaching jazz orchestration and the repertoire of Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers at the New School. Quizzed on the musical instruction methods of his younger days, he cuts to the chase: 'the real players' way of letting you know that you could play back then was by calling on you for gigs. I never got instruction, nor did I ever harangue anyone to show me anything. You learned this stuff from your elders by listening to the records. If you've got any craft in you, that's going to come out as you're practicing anyway. Like the old saying goes, ‘if you can't hear it, you don't belong.'

"Musically, the question on the table for Tolliver's generation at the dawn of Strata-East's inception was deciding what parts of bebop tradition remained viable in an age set on fire by Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra. As can be heard on this and his other Strata-East releases, Tolliver's Music Inc. group proposed clear answers to such questions, with meaty and melodious playing that celebrated the classical virtues of swing, virtuosity and the unbridled expressionism and spontaneity that were the '60s stock-in-trade. Call it a case of eating your cake and immolating it too.

"The lengthy, open-ended forms Tolliver preferred provided for incisive explorations of a composition's crevices, fissures and depths. On Cowell's 'Effi', a superb mid-tempo ballad, as well as the band's sumptuous and dangerous reading of Thelonious Monk's ''Round Midnight', Tolliver puts his globular and molten tone (often compared with Freddie Hubbard's), to driven yet sublime use. (On the subject of those Hubbard comparisons by the way, Tolliver has this to say: 'We have a similar sound and attack but the idea usage is completely different. Because we used to hang out, people assumed I was sitting at his knees, but it wasn't like that at all.')

"Tolliver brings an assured and bold approach to ''Round Midnight', where he jumps from a languid introduction to a near triple-time explosion of crisply chosen bursts of brass that almost seem in flight from Monk's famous changes. His sudden return descent to cruising altitude is incredibly smooth and romantic, if only to sucker punch us again by flaring up an Afro-Cuban groove that brings the song in for a three-point landing. Bassist Clint Houston and drummer Clifford Barbaro make for an energetic and sympathetic rhythm section, and the passages where Cowell stops comping and leaves the trio to blaze without his harmonic signposts make for champion feats of agility and dexterity. Imbued in this music is a fanatical devotion to both viscerality and technical acumen that unabashedly proclaims the enduring impact of Coltrane on Tolliver: 'Trane was in every fiber of what I did and still is. And Bird too. The point was to mix it up and make something of it that's my own. That's what being a jazz musician is all about.'

"As 'Live in Tokyo' and all his Strata-East recordings make apparent, Tolliver's achievements as a musician and as an entrepreneur mark him as one of the great independent minds of the jazz tradition. As the music finds a pathway into the 21st century, he appears destined to remain an intrepid frontrunner." (Greg Tate, April 1998. Reprinted in the liner notes.)

"Charles Tolliver arrived on the jazz scene in 1964, just in time for the last cycle of the golden era of hard bop. Had he arrived 10 years later with the same considerable talents as a trumpeter and composer, he might hardly have been noticed. But in the 60s, jazz had an ad hoc infrastructure of its own. There were thriving labels, jazz on the radio, jazz clubs in all five boroughs and every major city, bandleaders mentoring sidemen, booking agents, managers and tours.

"And that infrastructure was real. Consider that the equally talented trumpeter/composer Woody Shaw hit Manhattan around the same time and how parallel their careers ran for the next six years. They both gained their greatest initial exposure on Blue Note sessions, worked with Jackie McLean who gave their compositional skills a platform and gigged and/or recorded with Horace Silver, Joe Henderson, Art Blakey, Willie Bobo, Archie Shepp and Andrew Hill.

"In May of 1969, Tolliver formed Music Inc., a quartet featuring his close friend and musical cohort Stanley Cowell. While there are a lot of quartets fronted by saxophonists and guitarists, the format is rare for a trumpeter. And for good reason. The physical demands that the trumpet places on a musician far exceed those that a saxophone or a guitar would have. In fact, there are very few quartet albums featuring trumpet, let alone working bands! 

"But Charles, a quietly determined man who sees no reason not to face a challenge head on, picked this demanding context and made it work. He picked rhythm sections that would engage and push him. He built a band book of contemporary pieces rather than familiar standards, which meant the originals had to be strong, varied and memorable.

"It's interesting to note that many of the originals on these three CDs had been previously recorded, but at the time of these sessions only versions of 'Truth' (Jackie McLean, 1964), 'Earl's World' (Tolliver, 1968) and 'Effi' (Max Roach, 1968) had been released. The original recordings of 'Orientale' (Bobby Hutcherson, 1969), 'Effi' (Hutcherson, 1968) and 'On the Nile' (Jackie McLean, 1965) would not be issued until years later. And the first recordings of 'Drought' (Roach, 1968), 'Felicite' (Yusef Lateef, 1969) and 'Wilpan's' (Charles Lloyd, 1966) are still unreleased. Still these compositions, especially those by Charles and Stanley, have had considerable currency once they were introduced into the jazz world.

"As the music on this set proves, Tolliver's Music Inc. met every challenge and then some. These live recordings from 1970 and 73 embrace hard bop in all its various approaches and epitomize the teamwork that is so essential to any successful jazz performance. And Charles' endurance is absolutely remarkable.

"In 1971, Charles and Stanley took on another risky venture. Partly out of self-determination and partly because of the fading recording scene at the time, they formed Strata-East Records, a label that would be run by Tolliver to issue albums produced and owned by the artists themselves. And he took to this task with typical drive and thoroughness. When the first release came out, he brought promotional copies to my apartment personally! Now free records are one things, but hand delivered by the president of the company!

"It was on Strata-East that two volumes of Live at Slugs' and one LP of Live in Tokyo were first issued. On the occasion of this Mosaic Select set, Charles dug into the vault and came up with another 73 minutes of unissued music from these gigs. Hopefully this is just the first in a line of co-ventures between Mosaic and Strata-East." (Michael Cuscuna, September 2005. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Charles Tolliver (tp), Stanley Cowell (pi), Cecil McBee/Clint Houston (bs), Jimmy Hopps/Clifford Barbaro (dr)

1.1. Drought

1.2. Felicite

1.3. Orientale

1.4. Spanning

1.5. Wilpan's

1.6. Our Second Father

2.1. Drought

2.2. Stretch

2.3. Truth

2.4. Effi

2.5. 'Round Midnight

3.1. On The Nile

3.2. Ruthie's Heart

3.3. Repetition

3.4. Impact

3.5. Our Second Father

3.6. Earl's World

flac/16-bit

Charles Wuorinen - On Alligators

"Charles Wuorinen (b. 1938, New York) is one of the world's leading composers. His compositions encompass every form and medium, including works for orchestra, chamber ensemble soloists, ballet and the stage. Wuorinen has been described as a 'maximalist', writing music luxuriant with events, lyrics and expressive, strikingly dramatic. His works are characterized by powerful harmonies and elegant craftsmanship, offering at once a link to the music of the past and a vision of a rich musical future. As composer, conductor and pianist Wuorinen has worked with some of the world's finest performers and his music reflects the great virtuosity of his collaborators." (Biography from the liner notes.)

"I composed my fourth string quartet during 1999, for the Brentano Quartet, with whom I had had previous happy associations; the piece was commissioned by a consortium of chamber music presenters. At somewhat over twenty minutes playing time, the quartet's single movement necessarily involves a wide variety of attitudes, gestures, textures and speeds. But overall one can detect a directed progress from slower to faster, from sparer to denser - although with many detours - and finally to a kind of repose. Stasis is not victorious, however, for the work ends (some might say) with the musical analogue of a question.

"I completed 'Natural Fantasy' in 1985 in response to a commission from the American organist David Shuler. The composition of the piece was strongly affected by my then-recent engagement with the work of Benoit Mandelbrot, and the profound connection of music to the world of fractals is the underlying theme. Technical details would be burdensome to explore, but it is easy enough to describe the work's basic principles: strands of the polyphony that generate the piece have a 'statistical' character - not that any detail is other than fully chosen, but rather that the gestural shapes that describe the lines are the fundamental units of continuity, and their actual note-content is made to fit the needs of the shape. This turn my otherwise constant way of working on its head, for in all other works of mine, the note or pitch-class content has absolute priority over all other dimensions of a composition. In this sense, then, the 'Natural Fantasy' is unique in my catalogue." (Charles Wuorinen. From the liner notes.)

1. On Alligators

2. Fourth String Quartet

3. Natural Fantasy

4. Third Piano Concerto: I. Allegro Giusto

5. Third Piano Concerto: II. ♩ = 52

6. Third Piano Concerto: III. ♩ = 96

flac/16-bit

Giacinto Scelsi - Trilogia, I Tre Stadi Dell'uomo

"Most composers' centenaries are marked by a flurry of celebratory discs, but in the case of Giacinto Scelsi, it was the centenary (in 2005) that seems to have prodded the companies into commemorating him. The results are appearing only now, though the Mode collection of orchestral works is the sixth release in its Scelsi series.

"Since his death in 1988, few composers of the 20th century have polarised opinion more radically than Scelsi; there are a number of significant figures, led by the late Gyorgy Ligeti and also including French spectralists such as Grisey and Murail, who have cited him as an important influence, while others have dismissed his music (around 120 pieces published, with more still in manuscript) as little more than the work of a charlatan. Certainly, the sense of holy writ that some of the more extreme Scelsi supporters promote and write about with such rapture is hard to stomach. At the same time, there is something undeniably powerful about the best of his music when you hear it performed with the devotional fervour he seemed to demand of his interpreters.

"One of the most famous of that committed group of musicians has been the singer Michiko Hirayama and her performance of the '20 Canti di Capricorno', which Scelsi composed for her between 1962 and 1972. Released in full for the first time on the Wergo disc, the cycle is totally compelling, with its fractured monodies, each obsessing around a single pitch or small group of notes, and punctuated in some of the numbers by drums, gongs, a wailing saxophone or recorder, creating a self-sufficient and unique sound world. In the massive trilogy for solo cello subtitled 'The Three Ages of Man', Scelsi focuses even more closely on the minutiae of sound, the inner details of a single pitch or timbre, often in a way that suspends all conventional notions of musical time. The demands on the player (Belgium's Arne Deforce in the Aeon recording) are extreme by any standards.

"The orchestral disc is the most varied of the three, and offers perhaps the best introduction to Scelsi's strange, quasi-mystical world. The 'Four Pieces on a Single Note', from 1959, is arguably his best known work; 'Uaxuctum', his 1966 evocation of a Mayan civilisation, includes a chorus and an ondes martenot in the aural mix.

"Most intriguing of all is 'La Nascita del Verbo', for chorus and orchestra. Composed in 1947, it was the last score Scelsi completed before he suffered a complete mental breakdown. What came after his recovery was something totally different from the rather earnest neoclassicism of that work, and couched in its own, personal musical terms." (Review by Andrew Clements from The Guardian. See here.)

Performer: Arne Deforce

1. I. Triphon: Jeunesse

2. I. Triphon: Énergie

3. I. Triphon: Drame

4. II. Dithome: Maturité - Énergie - Pensée

5. III. Ygghur: Vieilesse

6. III. Ygghur: Souvenirs

7. III. Ygghur: Catharsis/Libération

flac/16-bit

Sun Ra - Live at Slug's Saloon

Staggering six CD, six hour collection of the Sun Ra Arkestra's residency at the infamous Slug's Saloon club in 1972. The recording quality is very muddy, but sensational moments abound from not only a group but possibly an entire art form in its creative prime. James Gavin writes of the venue:

"Past Avenue B, at 242 East 3rd Street, stood a bar whose hanging wooden sign read 'Slugs'.' According to Sounds & Fury, a jazz magazine of the day, the windows were 'usually dirty,' the front door 'hard to open.' It had two eye-level grates, out of which spilled tough-sounding jazz. According to author Paul Pines—who later opened another neighborhood jazz club, the Tin Palace—'you knew you were at the gates of the underworld.'

"Slugs' Saloon was the ultimate jazz dive: bare brick walls; hanging globe light fixtures that barely lit up the dark; pushers hovering near the men’s room; sawdust, mixed with peanut shells, on the floor. 'If someone threw up you’d just cover it up,' says saxophonist Gary Bartz, who played there often. A bar ran along the left; beat-up tables and chairs filled out the room. Slugs' was crowded with jazzmen and hardcore fans, who focused on a stage in the back." (From his Jazz Times article. See here.)

If we take this (plausibly hyperbolic) description of this infamous venue, the fervent, manic psychedelic energy of the music really takes hold and we can begin to comprehend what seeing a giant like Ra in New York in 1972 may really have been like. Released on American archival label Transparency in 2008.

1.1. Untitled (Cello, Oboe, Long Percussion Section)

1.2. Discipline #?

1.3. Instrumental Theme (Mid-Tempo Theme, Plus 7/4 Vamp Section)

1.4. They'll Come Back

1.5. Scene N Take N

1.6. Calling Planet Earth

1.7. Untitled (Trumpet Solo)

1.8. Theme Of The Stargazers

1.9. Discipline 11/Discipline #?

2.1. Unidentified (Alto Solo, Riff Theme, Ensembles And Solos)

2.2. Enlightenment

2.3. Love In Outer Space

2.4. Discipline #?/The Shadow World/Discipline #? (Organ Prelude, Theme, Alto, Applause)

2.5. Unidentified (Organ Chords, Percussion Solos, Different Theme)

3.1. Angels And Demons At Play/Watusi

3.2. Unidentified (Ra Solo)

3.3. Theme Of The Stargazers

3.4. Space Is The Place

4.1. Percussion Episode

4.2. Strange Worlds/At First There Was Nothing

4.3. Discipline/Discipline #?

4.4. Untitled Ra Solo

4.5. Calling Planet Earth

4.6. Angels And Demons At Play/Watusi

4.7. Outer Space (Is A Pleasant Place)

4.8. Discipline #27

4.9. I'll Wait For You

4.10. Untitled 9 - 10

5.1. Discipline 27-II

5.2. Theme Of The Stargazers

5.3. Space Is The Place

5.4. Untitled (Ra Solos And Ensemble Freakout)

5.5. Enlightenment

5.6. Love In Outer Space

5.7. Discipline 33

5.8. Untitled (Ra Solo)

6.1. Stardust From Tomorrow

6.2. The Shadow World

6.3. Why Go To The Moon?

mp3/320kbps

Giacinto Scelsi - Bot-Ba

"Giacinto Scelsi (1905–1988) is one of the most unusual composers of the twentieth century, a unique figure whose importance was only fully recognized and celebrated after his death. During his lifetime, he was often dismissed, especially in Italy, as a pretentious dilettante because he did not notate his music himself. Beginning in the mid-1950s, he recorded his improvisations at the piano and had them transcribed by others. In this way, in the course of only a few years hundreds of piano pieces appeared, many of which Scelsi then collected into suites. He began his series of suites with the number 8, since the number 8 had for him a mystic significance. The 'Suite No. 8' is subtitled 'Bot-ba', which means 'Tibetan'. In fact, the suite has nothing to do with actual Tibetan ritual music, but is an expression of Scelsi’s deep affinity for Eastern philosophy." (Description of Suite No. 8 from Presto Classical's abstract of Sabine Liebner's 2020 recording. See here.)

Performer: Marianne Schroeder

1. Un Adieu: Molto Lentamente

2. Sonata No. 2: I. Con Estremo Impeto, Agitatissimo

3. Sonata No. 2: II. Lento Meditativo

4. Sonata No. 2: III. Vivace Tempestoso

5. Sonata No. 3: I. Lento, Rubato

6. Sonata No. 3: II. Col Dolcezza

7. Sonata No. 3: III. ♩ = 72

8. Suite No. 8 'Bot-Ba': I. 

9. Suite No. 8 'Bot-Ba': II. 

10. Suite No. 8 'Bot-Ba': III. 

11. Suite No. 8 'Bot-Ba': IV. 

12. Suite No. 8 'Bot-Ba': V. 

13. Suite No. 8 'Bot-Ba': VI. 

flac/16-bit

Bud Powell - Live in Geneva 1962

Excellent later set of Bud Powell jamming live in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962. According to Discogs their exists a twelve track version with Johnny Griffin in the tenor sax chair on the additional two tracks, recorded in France rather than Switzerland, but I have been unable to track it down. For what it's worth, the ten previously unreleased recordings are all included here. Released by Catalonian label Gambit Records in 2009.

1. Ornithology

2. Swedish Pastry

3. Hot House

4. I Remember Clifford

5. Just One Of Those Things

6. Anthropology

7. 'Round Midnight

8. Jordu

9. I Know That You Know

10. Blues In The Closet

mp3/v0

Siege Electronics / Support Unit

Power electronics split between the (apparently) Scottish Siege Electronics and American Support Unit  with a thematic focus on geurilla warfare. Released on US noise label Black Ring Rituals as a cassette run of twenty five copies in 2016.

A1. Siege Electronics - Tamil Tigers

A2. Siege Electronics - Brutality Is A Necessity

A3. Siege Electronics - Crack LVX

B1. Support Unit - Thomas Sankara

B2. Support Unit - Blaise Compaoré

flac/16-bit

Vomir / Discipline

Split between harsh noise wall iconoclast Romain Perrot (Vomir) and French-based Lebanese native Joseph Ghosn (Discipline). Across the six cassette, four hour runtime we are offered customary Vomir noise walls and dark ambient drone pieces from Discipline. Released in 2018 by French experimental label Scum Yr Earth, and available to buy digitally here.

A. Vomir - Unicité De L'intrication

B. Discipline - Descente 1 

C. Discipline - Descente 2 

D. Vomir - L'oubli Des Frontières

E. Vomir - La Scie Avec Une Grande Science

F. Discipline - Descente 3 

G. Discipline - Descente 4 

H. Vomir - Le Profond Désespoir Surgi D'un Grand Désir

I. Vomir - La Science Avec Une Grande Scie

J. Discipline - Descente 5 

K. Discipline - Descente 6 

L. Vomir - Qui Sache Vomir Et Proprement Définir Notre Époque

mp3/v0

Sun Ra - Disco 3000: Complete Milan Concert 1978

Extended release by London label Art Yard of a 1978 El Saturn LP. A highly engaging set from certainly one of the most fertile periods of Ra's career. The synth and electronics work is nothing short of incredible. Also staggering is the music force and fluidity coming from such a small ensemble of musicians: Ra's keyboards and synthesizers, Michael Ray's trumpet, John Gilmore's tenor horn, Luqman Ali's impeccable drumming and June Tyson's occasional but always welcome vocal. Ra's small group and solo work in this period is certainly some of his best work and this concert is exemplary.

Performers: Sun Ra (pi/og/sy/drum machine/vo), Michael Ray (tp/vo), John Gilmore (t-sx/dr/vo), Luqman Ali (dr/vo), June Tyson (vo)

1.1. Disco 3000

1.2. Sun Of The Cosmos

1.3. Echos Of The World

1.4. Geminiology

1.5. Sky Blues

1.6. Friendly Galaxy

2.1. Third Planet/Friendly Galaxy

2.2. Dance Of The Cosmo Aliens

2.3. Spontaneous Simplicity

2.4. Images/Over The Rainbow

2.5. When There Is No Sun

2.6. We Travel The Spaceways

mp3/320kbps

LHD - Veiled

Apparently the last in a long running series of 7" releases by noise duo Phil Blankenship and John Wiese, this is archival material from 2002 released in 2011 on Wiese's Helicopter imprint (the releases seem to mostly bounce back and forth between the labels run by each artist). High density, textured noise assault spanning four minutes. 

A. Veiled

flac/16-bit

LHD - Los Angeles

Double 7" released in 2008 by noise duo Phil Blankenship and John Wiese on Blankenship's own label Troniks. High intensity, high density harsh noise that keeps up the high standard set by their long running series of 7" releases.

A. Untitled

B. Untitled

C. Untitled

D. Untitled

flac/16-bit

LHD - Limbs of the Fawn

Very high intensity (almost) full-length noise assault from L.A. power duo Phil Blankenship and John Wiese. Fires a relentless, highly textures assault over thirty-five minutes. Released as a CD on noise/experimental label Misanthropic Agenda in 2006. The title bears a parallel to their 2003 7" 'Hands of the Priestess' (see here).

1. Limbs Of The Fawn

flac/16-bit

Experiments in American Music - My Wife Is So Brave!

Single sided noise venture by this so far one-off noise supergroup 'mail collaboration' (recorded in Texas, Baltimore, Göteborg, Philadelphia, Providence), released as a run of thirty cassettes on experimental label The Gift of Music in 2018. Opens with a fascinating monologue on certain death metal motifs and continues with a surly, low burning half hour noise journey.

A. My Wife Is So Brave!

mp3/320kbps

Sun Ra - Fate in a Pleasant Mood

By 1960 Sun Ra's 'Myth-Science Arkestra' had begun to transition into the freer, far reaching improvisations that would define their move to New York around this time, which could go some way to explaining why this session (recorded in 1959) was shelved until 1965, eventually released on El Saturn sublabel Saturn Research. It would be inaccurate to call this 'tame', however, as the music is at once moving, colourful and distinct in a way only Sun Ra's music could be. The ensemble is relatively small: two trumpets, John Gilmore's tenor sax, Marshall Allen doubling on alto sax and flute, Ra's piano, bass and drums. 

Performers: Sun Ra (pi), George Hudson/Phil Cohran (tp), Marshall Allen (a-sx/fl), John Gilmore (t-sx), Ronnie Boykins (bs), Eddie Skinner (dr)

A1. The Others In Their World

A2. Space Mates

A3. Lights Of A Satellite

A4. Distant Stars

B1. Kingdom Of Thunder

B2. Fate In A Pleasant Mood

B3. Ankhnaton

mp3/v2

Sun Ra - God Is More than Love Can Ever Be

The late seventies were a very fertile period for Sun Ra and his Arkestra and this is one of many overlooked gems, released on Ra's own El Saturn imprint in 1979. A rare trio outing (backed by Richard Williams on the bass and Luqman Ali on drums), the captivating and instantly intoxicating mastery Sun Ra possessed at the piano becomes apparent even in absence of a larger group. The poetry in the title is indicative of the other worldly beauty truly on display here.

Performers: Sun Ra (pi), Richard Williams (bs), Luqman Ali (dr)

A1. Days Of Happiness

A2. Magic City Blue

A3. Tenderness

B1. Blithe Spirit Dance

B2. God Is More Than Love Can Ever Be

mp3/192kbps