Various Artists - Unus Mundus - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Emmy award-winning composer Michael Price will Tender Symmetry, his second album with Erased Tapes, on August 31st 2018. The ambitious musical project takes in a series of iconic National Trust locations across England as it's inspiration, turning them into unlikely recording spaces. Michael and a host of musicians and collaborators including soprano Grace Davidson (featured on Max Richters Sleep) and Shards (the choir on Nils Frahms All Melody) travelled across the country in pursuit of places far removed from the traditional recording studio to create seven unique and moving pieces, straddling the past and the future.1. Sandham2. Speke3. Willow Road4. Quarry Bank5. Fan Bay6. Fountains7. Shade of Dreams

The InchKing of Instruments,Inch the pipe organ, has a long and storied history. It's long association with the church has been a source of strength but also, in recent times, led to it's seeming neglect by contemporary concert composers. Organon Novus is a monumental effort to bring together this hidden slice of American music. Clocking in at over three hours of music, and running the gamut from Adler to Zorn, it includes 25 works from the past 25 years by 25 celebrated composers - composers not often associated with their organ oeuvre. With 8,565 pipes in 132 ranks available to them, the 1928 E.M. Skinner symphonic organ in Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago is no modest resource for a composer's imagination (not to mention a player's active limbs). Randall Harlow, in this marathon tour de force, reaches them all. Compositional approaches range from the sonic tapestries of Thomas and Zorn, to the linear complexity of Adler and Mamlok; from the full-bodied symphonic approaches of Ran and Tower, to the eclectic and unique voices of Lang, Johnson, Lucier and Wolff. The album concludes with the premiere of Aaron Travers' monumental Barlow Prize work, Exodus. Exploring the extremes of what is possible on the organ, the work offers a way forward for the instrument in contemporary art music, an exit from the common modern associations of the organ with churches and staid liturgical Gebrauchsmusik. Organon, Inchthe deviceInch the original Greek word for the pipe organ from the third century BCE. Novus, Inchthe new.Inch From it's beginnings as a noise maker to it's apotheosis as a contrapuntal keyboard-controlled orchestra, all coupled with the acoustic and architecture of it's location, the organ can be many things. This musical snapshot is both a chronicle and a revelation.

In August 2020, Signum Classics began releasing Cantus' COVID-19 Sessions. Recorded on March 17, 19, and 20 at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the COVID-19 Sessions came together quickly as society began to shut down amidst the growing outbreak in the United States. The artists recorded these 19 tracks thanks to the expertise of members Chris Foss (audio) and Jacob Christopher (video). The COVID-19 Sessions were first released on YouTube and Facebook in the spring of 2020 and racked up millions of views, prompting Signum to the tracks internationally on digital music providers like Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, and Amazon Digital in higher-than-CD-quality audio. The artists write InchThe inspiration for this project came during the week of March 8, when word began spreading of the coronavirus' presence in the United States. As gatherings became limited, it quickly became clear that we needed to postpone our spring program... As we made those hard decisions at home, our national touring schedule was simultaneously unravelling. Presenters faced the same looming challenges and concerns as we did, and they also began to postpone or cancel all of their upcoming programs. We soon found ourselves with our earned revenue sources, which comprise two-thirds of our budget, cut off. Amidst these concerns, a more fundamental uncertainty grew with the guidelines on social distancing and the prohibitions on large gatherings. How can we, how can you, how can anyone create a sense of community during a crisis like this? We recognized we had a limited window in which to offer what we could as artists. These recordings are the result of that action - we wanted to come together in a time of great stress and uncertainty and offer what we could to the world, our community, and each other.Inch