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Recorded live on Wednesday, November 6, 1974 at Composers Forum in Albany, The Arts Center on the Campus of the Academy of the Holy Names, Albany, New York. Performed by the S.E.M. Ensemble. Recorded by Steve Cellum. Tape transferred by Garry Rindfuss. With liner notes and then some by Mary Jane Leach. Mastered by Jim O'Rourke at Steamroom. Design by Antoine Verhaverbeke. Cover by Andrew Roth: »Untitled (Julius Eastman)«, c.1980.

Mica Levi returns to Slip with six piano pieces played by Eliza McCarthy in ‘Slow Dark Green Murky Waterfall’ - a crepuscular suite riddled with Mica’s inquisitive, conversational phrasing and smartly expanding upon their 7” track, ‘Riding Through Drinking Harpo Dine’ [Foom, 2017], a new recording of which also appears in this set. The culmination of three years work between Mica and Eliza - winner of the 2013 British Contemporary Piano Competition - ‘Slow Dark Green Murky Waterfall’ follows up their collaboration on the Oscar-nominated score for Pablo Larrain’s ‘Jackie’ score with a finer-shaded, patient space for low-lit, smoky expression that’s so intimate and personal it almost feels like eavesdropping a private recording.

The forty-disc box set features recordings spanning more than four decades of the composer’s career with the label. The release includes two extensive booklets containing new essays and notes by Timo Andres, Julia Bullock, Robert Hurwitz, Nico Muhly, and Jake Wilder-Smith. This will be released on the 24th of June via Nonesuch. Nonesuch Records releases the forty-disc John Adams Collected Works, a box set featuring recordings spanning more than four decades of the composer’s career with the label. The release includes two extensive booklets containing new essays and notes by Timo Andres, Julia Bullock, Robert Hurwitz, Nico Muhly, and Jake Wilder-Smith.



Nonesuch made its first record with John Adams in 1985. He was signed exclusively to the label that year, and since then the company has released forty-two first recordings and thirty-one all-Adams albums, of which six are full-length operas, oratorios, or staged theatrical presentations. Four of Adams’ Nonesuch records have won Grammy Awards, among other honours.



“John Adams coming to the label was one of the central events in our company’s history,” says Robert Hurwitz, Nonesuch’s longtime President and current Chairman Emeritus. “The idea of a label recording all of the works of its most cherished composers had been long established in the classical record business, most notably the efforts of Columbia with Stravinsky, Decca with Britten, and Deutsche Grammophon with Stockhausen.



“While most of Columbia’s Stravinsky recordings were made decades after the works’ premieres, and many of the admirable Decca Britten recordings came after his death, this Nonesuch collection is unique in the sense that the recordings were done in real time, mostly within a few months of a piece’s first performance. Every recording was either conducted by John, or made under close supervision of the composer, who was in the control booth for every album – when he wasn’t on the podium.”



Hurwitz continues: “As the record business changed, we realised the urgency of preserving this amazing accomplishment in a physical form; the music’s importance to our culture cannot be underestimated and the idea of much of it only being available digitally in the future was difficult to imagine.



“In making the box we left a little extra space, since Nonesuch plans to continue recording John’s work.”



John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of music. Long embraced by the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, instrumental soloists and singers, choreographers and opera directors, his works are among the most performed of all contemporary classical music. Early in his career, Adams was composer-in-residence of the San Francisco Symphony (1982-85), and creator of the orchestra’s highly successful and controversial New and Unusual Music series. Many of his landmark orchestral works were written for and premiered by the San Francisco Symphony, including Harmonium (1981), Grand Pianola Music (1982), Harmonielehre (1985), and Absolute Jest (2012).



In 1985, Adams began a collaboration with stage director Peter Sellars that has resulted in more than three decades of groundbreaking operas and oratorios: Nixon in China (1987) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), both to libretti by Alice Goodman; El Niño (2000), Doctor Atomic (2005); A Flowering Tree (2006); The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2012); and Girls of the Golden West (2017).



Since 2009 Adams has held the position of Creative Chair with the Los Angeles Philharmonic where he has been instrumental in the success of that orchestra’s highly creative Green Umbrella new music series.



Adams also has become a significant mentor of the younger generation of American composers. In his liner note, Adams’ label mate, composer and pianist Timo Andres, says: “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that when Road Movies was dropped into my lap as a college freshman, it triggered a chain reaction that led me where I am now… John’s music has been such a constant in my life that it’s reached a base level of my consciousness – it’s part of the way I hear all music now.”



This year launched with a major focus on Adams’ music in Zürich with the Tonhalle Orchestra, from January to March. Orchestras around the world will likewise present major performances of his works including Cincinnati Symphony, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra. This spring, Adams’ piano concerto Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? tours to orchestras around the world: Seattle, St. Louis, Cleveland, Zürich, Iceland, Gothenburg, and San Francisco; Adams conducted a performance of it by the Cleveland Orchestra and Jeremy Denk earlier this year. In September 2022, Adams’s new opera Antony & Cleopatra will open the San Francisco Opera’s centennial season.



Nonesuch Records has historically had close relationships with modern composers. During the years of Tracey Sterne, the label made multiple recordings of Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Charles Wuorinen, and William Bolcom. Since 1985, Nonesuch has made multiple recordings of works by Philip Glass, Stephen Sondheim, Laurie Anderson, Caroline Shaw, Louis Andriessen, John Zorn, Adam Guettel, Henryk Górecki, Timo Andres, Nico Muhly, and Donnacha Dennehy. For Steve Reich, like John Adams, Nonesuch has recorded every new piece of his music since 1985 and will also release a collection of his complete works – in 2023.



While Nonesuch recordings comprise thirty-five of the forty discs in Collected Works, the set also includes recordings from other labels, including: the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s recordings of The Gospel According to the Other Mary and Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?, with Yuja Wang, on Deutsche Grammophon; a recording by Christina and Michelle Naughton of Roll Over Beethoven on Warner Classics; and the San Francisco Symphony’s recordings of Absolute Jest and Grand Pianola Music. The Berlin Philharmonic’s recording of Harmonielehre, conducted by Adams, is the final CD in the set, serving as the bookend to the piece’s first recording, by the San Francisco Symphony led by Edo de Waart on Nonesuch that is the first disc of the set.

Jules Archive is a project founded by Marco Marzuoli and Marco Mazzei in 2016.

By employing various technologies, instruments, and approaches, the duo strives to craft a mysterious and fantastical persona named Jules. Through this persona, they aim to immerse listeners in a dreamlike atmosphere, transcending reality and dwelling in imaginary spatiotemporal dimensions.

Platonic Tales is the second chapter of Jules' journeys, more anthropocentric than the first album Adventures & Explorations (Volume 1), but equally exotic and dreamlike. The musical intention of this record was to rework a set of five (plus one) melodic tape loops, already structured in "song form”, through detailed arrangements. The treatment followed an experimental-pop-oriented production approach.

Recorded entirely at home by the artists, the music on the album features analog cassettes containing loops dating back to around 2016. The remaining arrangements were composed during the 2020 pandemic lockdown.

Several international guests collaborated on the album:

Lino Capra Vaccina, the legendary Italian percussionist/minimalist composer, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma engaged in a musical dialogue on An Ontological Novel.

Andrew Weathers contributed his voice to the tracks A Superior Truth and Exodus.

Christina Vantzou participated in Exodus and concluded the album with a string composition arranged and conducted by Minna Choi, performed by Magik*Magik Orchestra.

Recorded between Città Sant' Angelo (Pescara - Italy, 2016-2020), Francavilla (Chieti - Italy, 2020), and Firenze (2019-2020).

Welsh harpist Amanda Whiting returns on Jazzman Records following on from her successful debut album ’After Dark’ (2021).

New explorations and global changing events have led Whiting to ‘Lost in Abstraction’. The Reynolds/ Thorne/ Whiting trio is joined again by the mesmerising lines of flautist Chip Wickham, resuming their conversation reminiscent of Dorothy Ashby and Frank Wess.

‘Lost in abstraction’ was written during a period of the unknown when Whiting, like most, explored her own sense of self. The world paused, with no timeframe, and the fragility of life was laid bare. A time when humanity was left searching for purpose. Freedom and the dependable structures of familiarity were dissolved in most aspects of life. But music stayed constant. Creativity kept weaving its thread, connecting music and its makers in an indissoluble bond.

The album explores the questions and realisations whilst confined. The spiritual findings, the playful curiousness and the reflective moments of loss. Whiting’s writing indulges the listener with the spiritual ethereal washes of sound demanded of the harp, whilst also embracing her influences across many genres. Classically trained, her roots are evident. But with an emotionally charged energy and spiritual questioning, a new soundscape of modernity has emerged.

So often associated with Ashby and Coltrane, the harp finds itself in the hands of a new voice which tells the story of a period of time where the world was unified in reflection.

So what is that feeling when you resonate? When your breath steadies and you let go Lines no longer restrict or choke Energies envelop, yet set you free Are you lost or found?

Amanda Whiting - harp Chip Wickham - flute Aidan Thorne - bass Jon Reynolds - drums Baldo Verdú - percussion

About Amanda Whiting Following on from her sold out album ‘After Dark’ on Jazzman records, Amanda Whiting is making a name for herself on the British Jazz scene.

From Wales, the home of the harp, Amanda has taken her classical roots and forged them in the path of jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane. Her unique style resulted in her nomination for the Jazz FM “2021 Instrumentalist of the Year.”

She has toured extensively with Matthew Halsall and the Gondwana Orchestra performing at Jazz festivals around the world. More recent collaborations have included touring with Chip Wickham, Greg Foat and Rebecca Vasmant. She also performed at the We Jazz festival, Finland in November 2021.

2022 will see the release of her new album ‘Lost in Abstraction’ and performances in Helsinki and other festivals throughout the year. She will also be performing at XJazz Berlin and We Out Here with the Rebecca Vasmant Ensemble.

Jenny Conlee, the multi-instrumentalist best known for her 23-year tenure as a member of indie icons The Decemberists, is stepping once more to center stage this year with the release of Tides: Pieces for Accordion and Piano. The humble yet deeply emotional album of instrumentals finds Conlee pulling from her vast well of influences and knowledge to work in a more neo-classical mode.

A suite of raga-inspired compositions and improvisations that grew from a fertile collaboration between Christina Vantzou, Michael Harrison and John Also Bennett centered around a devotion to just intonation tuning, deep listening, and resonant spaces.

Michael Harrison is a composer and pianist who is a dedicated practitioner of just intonation and North Indian classical music. He was La Monte Young's protégé and piano tuner during The Well-Tuned Piano years and a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath, and has since developed his own customized tuning systems. Guided by conversations with Christina Vantzou, who provided structural frameworks for each piece and directed the sessions, the compositions drew from Harrison's daily raga practice, using its ancient forms as starting points from which the compositions could blossom and morph. A resonant backdrop of modular synthesizers played by John Also Bennett, who also contributed piano improvisations played on Harrison’s custom tuned Steinway concert grand, expanded the sessions into true collective praxis.

As noted by Parul Gupta, a conceptual artist based in New Delhi who contributed the stunning artwork for the album, “the songs feel like an extension of silence.” The notes from the piano emerge, resonate, and dissolve in measured and meditative sonic fields, allowing for a concentrated listening experience where every sound lives, breathes, and ultimately returns to silence. Contained within these aural ecologies are potentialities that emerge from a collective listening and improvising experience, and a resonant rebuttal of the standard equal tempered tuning system that has dominated Western music for centuries.

This release collects the verdant recordings from the trio’s 2019 Berlin sessions on two 45rpm records, accompanied by a risograph printed insert featuring track credits and Harrison’s handwritten tuning charts used on the album.

Artist Statement

An observer, a pianist and a synthesist form a triangle. The observer (Christina) is both witness and guide, the pianist (Michael) is precise and intuitive, and the synthesist (John) provides a palate of drones which offer increased resonance and a supportive framework. The piano has been carefully prepared to become a resonant body. This enhancement was achieved by tuning it to two of Michael’s just intonation tunings, based on his work, “Revelation,” and North Indian classical music, or ragas. These tunings maintain mathematically precise intervals. In place of voice, sitar or tabla, is the piano, and in place of the tanpura, is the synthesizer. Playing ragas is an ancient practice of structured improvisation. Time, knowledge and memory interplay in the body and mind of the practitioner and this is a large part of the raga practice. The raga combines with muscle memory and personal aesthetics to individuate results. Through the formation of a trio, multiple perspectives and timelines collapse and the raga mutates again. These twists and turns seem to only fall back on themselves as the raga shows us that there are multiple compositions already stored in our collective memory. They blossom, morph and spring forth like nature.

Nothing was written down to execute these recordings. The simplest forms were explored in the least complicated way. The first reflection of this process is what happens in the mind and body of the listener. The observer is always observing. Regions of sound tap into memory and imagination and the sound of the raga itself becomes a prismatic event.