Attica / Coming Together / Les Moutons De Panurge
(Opus One) Used LP $50.00
Brilliant early work from 1974, recorded after the composer’s free improv period with Musica Elettronica Viva, at the beginning of his investigations of more structured writing. With Jon Gibson on alto sax, Alvin Curran on synthesizer, Garrett List on trombone, Karl Berger on vibes, violist Joan Kalisch, Richard Youngstein, and Steve Ben Israel reading texts. “Coming Together,” as noted by Brian Olewnick, “melts a wonderfully undulating and propulsive score that just won’t give up with [ben Isreal’s] impassioned reading … of a text written by [Attica inmate] Sam Melville.” The instrumental “Les Moutons de Panurge,” performed by the Blackearth Percussion Group, “takes on the character of a wild gamelan orchestra, perhaps slightly tipsy. It’s utterly invigorating.” Jacket is water-damaged along bottom edge
First Recordings
(Finnadar) Used LP $10.00
Solo piano performed by composer/pianist Rzewski, whose “No Place To Go But Around,” originally written for a production by the Living Theater, mixes piquant romanticism with forthright modernist techniques. The Braxton piece is “a thorny number in which the performer is given wide latitude as far as what portions of the score to utilize: tempi, repetition of areas, and so on,” according to Brian Olewnick. Eisler’s 1940s composition “Third Sonata” is “a rambunctious work played with [Rzekski’s] usual drive and passion…, rhapsodic one moment, thundering and bellowing the next.”