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ABLAZE RECORDS RELEASES ORCHESTRAL MASTERS VOL. 8 AND TREMOR, WITH ROBERT NAIRN, IN MARCH 202224/2/2022 US-based contemporary classical label Ablaze Records releases Orchestral Masters Vol. 8 on 11 March 2022 with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Robert Kružík, and Tremor, featuring double bass soloist Robert Nairn, on 18 March 2022, in partnership with Ulysses Arts.
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Ulysses Arts releases German composerJohannes Schlecht's album Ich spiele noch on Friday 4 March 2022, with Landeskapelle Eisenach (now Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach) conducted by Wolfgang Wappler and Tetsuro Ban, soprano Susann Möbius-Huss and 'cellist Grita Bühler.
Click above to download on iTunes or stream on Apple Music
Johannes Schlecht comments:
'At some point, many years ago, I had my first contact with poet Rose Ausländer during a night drive. On the radio. I heard her talk about herself andher exciting, fulfilling life, I heard her read from her poems. Her voice sounded cheerful and lovable, friendly and comforting, modest and humble, amazed and hopeful, curious and lively. This voice came from a woman who had been bed-ridden for years, sick, in a Jewish old people’s home in Düsseldorf. I was impressed and touched by the clarity and simplicity of her language and above all, the brevity in which she said the important, essential and necessary. For a long time I had the idea of composing poems by Rose Ausländer, of tracking down the melody of her language and poetry. For me that means composing by listening to the melody of the language and bringing it to life musically. In this sense, as a composer, I see myself as a creator and mediator. I put my personal, subjective view of poetry up for discussion: I try to provide a comment that brings the word, at best read or spoken, sung to another level of experience and feeling. Understanding the word, initially an ostensibly intellectual means of communication, becomes unimportant. It took me years to tackle Rose Ausländer’s poems. In between, to name just two important works, were the composition of ten songs based on poems by Paul Celan. For this cycle I received the last Hanns-Eisler Composition Prize from GDR Radio in 1989. Paul Celan, just like Rose Ausländer, comes from that melting-pot and centre of Eastern Jewish intellectual life - Cernowitz. I have developed a great affinity for this way of thinking and feeling. And in between there was also the composition of the small volume “DIR”, which was composed and drawn by Heinrich Vogeler, fourteen very soft, tender, sad-melancholy love poems for voice, cello and viola.'
Album Details
Ich spiele noch: Sieben Stücke für Singstimme, Flüte, Oboe, Fagott, Violoncello und Streichorchester nach Texten von Rose Ausländer Susann Möbius–Huss – Sopran; Landeskapelle Eisenach, Leitung: Wolfgang Wappler Streichquartett Nr. 1 i. nicht zu schnell ii. sehr langsam iii. unglücklicher Walzer mit glücklichem Ausgang iv. schnell, ausgelassen Divertimento Streichquartett der Landeskapelle Eisenach: Simona Balan, Violine; Silvia Peter, Violine; Gheorghe Balan, Viola; Roxana Mereutza, Violoncello Kommen und Gehen – Orchestermusik für Sophia i. Sehr ruhig ii. Ruhige Viertel iii. Sehr ruhig Landeskapelle Eisenach, Leitung: Tetsuro Ban Kommentare zu einem Thema von Max Reger – für Violoncello allein i. sehr frei, so langsam wie m glich ii. gehend iii. sehr ruhig, sempre col legno schnell, hüpfend iv. sehr langsam v. gehend vi. Thema, Largo Grita Bühler, Violoncello
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TIDAL STREAMING LINKS DEEZER YOUTUBE Links to download and stream on HDtracks and other service providers will be published here.
Composer Douglas Knehans comments: 'Cloud Ossuary began as a setting of my daughter Katarina Knehans' riveting and poignant poem Bones and All. When I first read her poem, I was seized with an immediate desire to set it to music. So, almost as immediately I got to work on it. As work progressed, I became more and more pleased with the piece—until it was finished. Once completed I had some difficulty reconciling the feelings of satisfaction with the setting with my concomitant feelings that it was incomplete. After much reflection, I came to realize that Bones and All was actually the final movement of a larger work, hence creating the two preceding movements: Breathe Clouded and The Ossein Cage. Breathe Clouded is an inverted and compressed version of Bones and All and The Ossein Cage follows the same harmonic architecture as both of the outer movements. Thus, Cloud Ossuary sits as three different guises of the same harmonic material and structural approach, though with dramatically different surfaces.' Preceding Cloud Ossuary is Knehans' hauntingly evocative single-movement Mist Waves for solo violin and strings - a 'loose chaconne based on veiled repetition of its initial eight bars' - performed by Pavel Wallinger, leader of the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra.
VIEW SCORES
CLOUD OSSUARY MIST WAVES (violin and strings version) MIST WAVES (violin and piano version)
APPLE MUSIC
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'Cloud Ossuary is a striking and fascinating work, full of gorgeous textures and colours,
yet throughout it is clear that Knehans brings a strong structural underpinning to the beauty, making for a satisfying symphonic work.’ PLANET HUGILL
'Eloquent and original'.
GAPPLEGATE CLASSICAL-MODERN MUSIC REVIEW 'Atmospheric presence and strong waves of inner exploration: the perfect match of classical music in modern times.' Anthony Biasioli, BRNO DAILY
HEAR MIST WAVES LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY
11 MAY 2022- LEFRANK CONCERT HALL * 12 MAY 2022 - WEILL RECITAL HALL, CARNEGIE HALL, 8PM * * Note Pandemic re-scheduled changes of date from those in advertised links  Released on 8 October 2021
Ulysses Arts is delighted to be working with leading US-based contemporary classical music label Ablaze Records to manage digital distribution of its extensive catalogue of orchestral, choral and chamber music recordings. The partnership starts with a series of re-releases of Ablaze recordings on 24 September and 1 October 2021, then Othmar Schoeck's song cycle Das stille Leuchten, on 8 October, with mezzo-soprano Clara O'Brien and pianist James Douglass. James Ross, Ulysses Arts' director, comments: 'Ablaze Records is one of the world's most innovative classical label, whose catalogue is a treasury of contemporary composers' works. Ablaze's mission aligns strongly with our wish to present classical music as a living, evolving art-form and to support today's composers to create a new generation of great works for us to perform and hear. We are looking forward hugely to helping Ablaze to widen its digital reach to listeners on a huge range of digital platforms, and to help the composers it records to maximise their visibility worldwide.' Mist Waves by Douglas Knehans Pre-release from Cloud Ossuary album: 3 December 2021 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1gudwIIpTYs1JPcGjVu0ET Deezer: www.deezer.com/en/album/273169602 YouTube: youtu.be/JHqwuvaMy5s New Release: 7 January 2022: Douglas Knehans, Cloud Ossuary 24 September 2021 Releases
Released in October 2021
Released in November and December 2021
Millennial Masters
ELECTRONIC MASTERS
CARITAS CHAMBER CHOIR AND BENEDICT PREECE RELEASE CROSSING THE BAR - MUSIC FOR REFLECTION AND HOPE20/9/2021
Released on 19 November 2021:
Download on iTunes or stream on Apple Music - click above
Ulysses Arts released two singles from Crossing the Bar - Music for Reflection and Hope, performed by the Caritas Chamber Choir directed by Benedict Preece. The first single, O Nata Lux by Philip Stopford, releases on 1 October, followed by Crossing the Bar, by Benedict Preece, on 22 October, on Apple Music/iTunes, Spotify, Qobuz, HDtracks and all other major digital service providers. O Nata Lux is a world première recording from Philip Stopford, one of the most celebrated contemporary choral composers. It is conducted by Benedict Preece, who featured on Ulysses Arts' 2020 J.S. Bach horn and organ album with Anneke Scott. This calm but powerful work takes us from darkness to light, a theme of Advent, when this piece would normally be sung. It has musical elements that hark back to the familiar version of the same text by Thomas Tallis. Benedict Preece writes about his motet Crossing the Bar: 'Written in 2016 as a gift to Gothenburg's HagaMotettkör for collaboration with Caritas Chamber Choir, I chose to create deliberately simple hymnlike music to allow this most powerful poem to remain the listener's focus. The 'aw' section, sung by lower voices, is intended to represent the sea. The work builds to an almighty climax: “I hope to see my pilot face to face” before finishing with an echo of the “sea”, this time as a hum, which depicts crossing the bar from this life to what comes next.'
 Download on iTunes with digital booklet or stream on Apple Music: click above
Ulysses Arts launched Silent Sirens, an album of music composed and performed by Stephen Horne, on 9 July 2021. One of the world's leading silent film performers, Stephen Horne is pianist in residence at the British Film Institute at London's Southbank Centre.
Silent Sirens is on all main streaming and download services including Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, YouTube, Qobuz and HDtracks. 
Stephen Horne comments: 'I have been a silent film pianist and composer for over thirty years. What began as an intriguing musical sideline developed gradually into a full-time nomadic career, accompanying more than a thousand films in more than twenty countries. During that time I developed hundreds of musical themes and it has long been my ambition to record an album, incorporating some of these into musical pieces. The tracks on this album are intended to stand alone from the films by which they were initially inspired. However, most of these films have two things in common. Firstly, they share a certain haunting quality, leaving unanswered questions to reverberate in the viewer’s mind long after ‘The End’. Secondly, at least for me, the strongest impression is made by the films’ leading women – the actresses and their roles. Combining these two elements suggested the theme of Silent Sirens. While the music of Silent Sirens stands on its own, in general terms inspiration has come from The First Born, The Manxman, Varieté, The Informer, Tonka of the Gallows, Menilmontant, Stella Dallas, L'Hirondelle et La Mésange and Visages d’Enfants. For those who are interested, some of the titles are taken directly from the films’ inter-titles. A couple of the pieces are purely personal, with no connection to any film.' Read Stephen Horne's interview about his album in Silent London. 
STEPHEN HORNE SINGLE RELEASES
Featured in Apple Music's New in Classical and Classical Concentration playlists
 Click above to download Embers on iTunes
Embers
While the Pandemic persists in making regular concerts impossible, the Louth Contemporary Music Society continues its work in the studio. Last autumn’s CD release Meadow, featuring music by Linda Catlin Smith, won praise from leading critics on both sides of the Atlantic, including Alex Ross in The New Yorker. Now comes a follow-up, Embers - three world première recordings again devoted to music for strings – instruments that, in their intimacy, seem to touch our moment. In Samuel Beckett's radio play Embers, the main character stands at the sea shore, sifting through fragments of memory and story that are still living embers, hot to the touch. So it is in this recording, in which music by distinguished Irish composer Raymond Deane supports robustly an important quartet by one of the great masters of our age, Valentin Silvestrov.  Raymond Deane
The opener, Deane’s Marthiya, is named after a form of Middle Eastern lament. It was composed in the wake of the 2003 Iraq invasion. The music’s 'atmosphere of mourning', Deane writes, is 'not unrelated to the devastation wreaked on Iraq since 2003, and to the wider carnage inflicted upon the Arab and Islamic world'.
Deane’s other contribution is the title track, written thirty years earlier but with the same recognisable voice. Though perhaps more questioning than elegiac, Embers is music again on the edge of tears. Ideas, bits of tune, come and go, and recur, very much as things come and go, and come back once more, like in Beckett's play. To quote the composer: 'The piece obsessively turns over musical fragments which seem to have some remote but uncertain origin.'  Valentin Silvestrov
Silvestrov’s music gives voice to the sense we may all feel of being bereft, left behind by what was once a social culture of sympathy and togetherness. Listening to his Third String Quartet, composed in 2011, we seem to be watching from the dock as a great ocean liner slowly slides away, taking with it our hopes and our dreams. Something of this feeling of being on the sidelines of history may come from the composer’s inheritance as a Ukrainian. Ireland, he notes, is not so far away: 'I believe there is some Irish accent, and some simple melodies, that permeate the whole work and may sound as symbols of this wonderful country, in whose destiny and historical legacy I perceive a close spiritual affinity to Ukraine, my homeland.'
All three works are captured in intense, poignant performances by leading ensembles: Crash (Marthiya) and the Carducci Quartet (Embers; Silvestrov, String Quartet No.3).
Embers releases on 5 March 2021 on CD, iTunes/Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Qobuz and all main digital service providers. It is the world première recording of Silvestrov, String Quartet No.3, Deane's Marthiya and of the string quartet (original) version of Deane's Embers, which has been released previously in its subsequent string orchestra version by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in 2016.
LOUTH CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PROFILE
EMBERS REVIEWS
'Rallying After The Silence', Brendan Finan, The Journal of Music
'Engaging and affecting, it’s a grower ... immaculately produced and designed ... When lockdown eases, I’m Louthward bound.' Graham Rickson, The Arts Desk 'A program of great coherence. ... Superb release from a label we here on our side of the big lake wish to know a lot more soon.' Frédéric Cardin, Pan M 360
LAURA CATRANI SINGS LA CASA AND MADRIGALE BY MICHELE TADINI, RELEASING ON 18 DECEMBER 202028/11/2020 
Ulysses Arts releases Michele Tadini's contemporary vocal works La Casa and Madrigale, with all parts sung by Laura Catrani, and electronic sampling by the composer. Michele Tadini comments:
'La Casa and Madrigale are built substantially on Laura Catrani's voice,: the recordings, sampling and processing of the voice give total life to the sound palette. La Casa (The House) represents our most intimate space, the heart of our existence. Madrigale is a song, of sorrow and hope. At the origins of these pieces there is a broader work: Unheimlich - exiles in their own land, a variable score for sound and image, female voice, percussion, electronics, first performed at Mittelfest, Cividale del Friuli, in 2002.'
UPC: 5054526834538
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