Plain Songs: “Love Comes Quietly” (after Robert Creeley) is a haunting piece for pipe organ, performed by organ virtuoso Carson Cooman on the C.B. Fisk Opus 139 organ, Harvard Memorial Church.

Garland writes about the music:

“I wanted to write a piece for organ that would be intimate and mostly quiet, emphasizing the nature of the organ as a wind instrument capable of long, sustained tones. I wanted the musical textures to be open and transparent, rather than dense and massive. I also had in mind smaller historical organs and their music.

“The reference to the poet Robert Creeley is relevant to the above-mentioned goals. I greatly admire the simplicity and clarity of his poetic language; its lucidity and how it rarely strays from the directness of popular, vernacular speech. I wanted to emulate those qualities in my music to the extent it was possible: to transfer the music of his poetry into the language of my music.”

Peter Garland is a composer, world traveler, musicologist, writer, and former publisher (Soundings Press) whose music is informed by his well-traveled ear and strong sense of personal vision. He studied with Harold Budd and James Tenney and maintained long friendships with Lou Harrison, Conlon Nancarrow, Paul Bowles, and Dane Rudhyar. As a musicologist, he has focused on Native American, Mexican, and Southwestern American musics and 20th-century experimental composers of the Americas, championing the work of  Revueltas, Partch, and Nancarrow long before their music became fashionable and regularly programmed.

Carson Cooman is an active composer and performer. As an acclaimed concert organist he specializes in the performance of contemporary music—and more than 300 compositions by over 100 composers have been written for him by such composers as Kyle Gann, Jennifer Higdon, Jo Kondo, Robert Moran, Howard Skempton, and Linda Catlin Smith. His organ performances can be heard on a number of CDs and more than 6,000 recordings available online. As a composer, Cooman has written hundreds of works—from solo instrumental pieces to operas to orchestral works to hymn tunes—which have been performed on all six inhabited continents, in venues that range from Carnegie Hall to the basket of a hot air balloon, and have appeared on over forty recordings. Cooman is also a writer on musical subjects, producing articles and reviews for a number of publications. He is currently Research Associate in Music and Composer in Residence at Harvard’s Memorial Church.

“Carson Cooman is one of the most versatile and active musicians of our time. Pianist, organist, composer, and improviser, he is excellent in every field.” —Music and Vision

“Cooman’s success as a composer for the organ is due in large part to his innate understanding of the instrument as a performer.” —American Record Guide

“Carson Cooman is a nimble, nuanced, and eloquent advocate.” —Choir & Organ

An album of two recent works by Michael Byron: This Is the Hour to Know the Precise Moment Somewhere Else, for string quintet (string quartet plus a second viola), and Alone in the Treasure Room, for piano quintet (string quartet plus piano). The performers include violinists Pauline Kim Harris and Conrad Harris, members of the Flux Quartet, and pianist Aron Kallay.

Michael Byron’s music, which tends to be harmonically rich, rhythmically detailed, and virtuosic, is often praised for its ability to create uniquely dense constructions out of relatively limited means:

“Byron creates maximalist effect out of minimalist means.” (ClassicalNet)

“One is reminded…of the mobiles of Alexander Calder, which are both fixed and moving. And, like Calder’s work, Byron’s music is immediately comprehensible and beautiful, while it remains experimental.” (San Francisco Bay Guardian)

“Byron’s music, like Ligeti’s, is instantly recognizable, perceptually challenging, beautifully proportioned and deeply satisfying.” (Paris Transatlantic)

“Byron’s music dances with tremulous iridescence.” (Julian Cowley, The Wire)

Prophecies of Fire (2023), scored for a quartet of percussionists (playing bass drums, timpani, tenor drums, tam-tams, and orchestral bells), is a perpetual acceleration canon: unbroken streams of rhythm inexorably rising in pitch and growing brighter, always seeming to get faster while never quite arriving.

“My earliest musical awakening was as a drummer. From rock bands to playing timpani in a symphony orchestra, my deepest physical connections to music have been through percussion…. Now, in my 70s, I’ve returned to the place where I began.

“The musicians should surround the listeners, enveloping them in a maelstrom of tones and timbres, dynamics and velocities—like the wildfires and superstorms, the turbulent seas and waves of heat now rising all around the earth. But beyond any metaphorical associations, Prophecies of Fire is a celebration of the elemental power of sound itself to touch, to move, and perhaps even to transform human consciousness.” (JLA)

Prophecies of Fire is performed by the celebrated red fish blue fish percussion ensemble, led by Steven Schick.

 John Luther Adams is a Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning composer who lived for many years in Alaska, where his work derived much of its unique character from the landscape and weather of the Great North. Some years ago, he moved from Alaska, living in various desert and mountain areas in South and Central America—places that also inspired and found expression in his music. He currently resides in rural New Mexico. He is a long-time associate of the Cold Blue label; his music has appeared on nine previous Cold Blue CDs, including Darkness and Scattered Light, Houses of the Wind, Arctic Dreams, Everything That Rises, and the Grammy-nominated Lines Made by Walking.

“John Luther Adams . . . one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century.” — Alex Ross, The New Yorker

“His music becomes more than a metaphor for natural forces: it is an elemental experience in its own right.” —Tom Service, The Guardian

“His music perfectly echoes the landscape he loves: impersonal, relentless, larger than human scale, yet gorgeous, a quiet chaos of colors, suffused with light.” —Kyle Gann, Chamber Music Magazine

Blue photographs collects a few dozen of the many aphoristic piano pieces Fox has written during the past 30 years. Performed by the composer.

“One of the striking qualities of Jim Fox’s compositions is that you can still hear them inside you long after the music is over.” —Wadada Leo Smith

“This is music that sounds like it was made in that California of cool northern beaches or the Mojave Desert as seen in the stark intimacy of Joshua Tree or even the remembered despair of the landscape around Donner Pass. This is a music of honesty, seductive and delicate yet strong and dark.” —Daniel Lentz