It’s up on YouTube. Enjoy!
“… bringing to mind Joni Mitchell singing Charles Mingus”
“Vocalist Sophie Dunér is a jazz singer with an avant lean; Jay Clayton might be a reference, although the core of Dunér’s sound is richer, more like a professional lieder recitalist. Steven Beck is one of the great NYC new music pianists, and he plays the whole cycle on a Fender Rhodes. The pieces are generally treated like jazz, where they play the melody, improvise, and restate the melody. Dunér has written additional lyrics to the Stockhausen themes, bringing to mind Joni Mitchell singing Charles Mingus.
“Dunér worked with Stockhausen and he approved of her approach. The final effect is a bit sci-fi cabaret, like the entertainment on a cruise ship on a distant planet as two suns boil off in the distance.”
– ETHAN IVERSON, Transitional Technology
Links for streaming, download, and purchase here.
The Substacks I regularly read
In reverse alphabetical order by author or (where none is listed) title:
- The World According to Sound
- William White and Joseph Vaz’s Tone Prose
- Mark Weidembaum’s This Week in Sound
- Jeff Tiedrich’s NSFW everyone is entitled to my own opinion
- Yves Riesel’s COUACS.INFO
- Ethan Iverson’s Transitional Technology
- Olivia Giovetti’s Critical Drift
- Ted Gioia’s The Honest Broker
- Rachel Bitecofer’s The Cycle
- Tyler Barton’s Classical Music Weekly
I’ll still be posting here first, but yeah, I’ll be crossposting to Substack.
More praise for Sophie Dunér and Steve Beck!
“Hot new cool jazz release. The Urlicht AudioVisual label has just released a new album by Sophie Duner and Steve Beck featuring Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Tierkreis and Francis Schwartz’s The Neon Pterodactyl. Stunning recordings that are anything but conventional.”
– LMNOP/dONW7/babysue (from their always entertaining new release roundup)
Links for streaming, download, and purchase here.
Critical acclaim for Sophie Dunér’s “Tierkreis”
“Dunér beguiles and draws everyone in.”
– Simon Jenner, Fringe Review.
Read the full review here.
“The centre-piece of the evening was a terrific performance of Tierkreis, Stockhausen’s extraordinary rendering of the signs of the Zodiac into musical emblems, written originally for six percussionists and musical boxes. Dunér and Powell’s exposition was an edge-of-the-seat experience, the singer’s obvious facility with the weird contents of the piece fully on show. She had learnt it with the composer and so has lived a long with time with its Babel-inspired collection of polyglot vocalises. There are other versions of the piece floating in cyberspace but Dunér and Powell make a creditable case for theirs to be canonical.”
– Christopher Woodley, Bachtrack. Read the full review here.
Sophie’s studio recording of Tierkreis is available on CD from Deep Discount and ImportCDs, for download from Qobuz and Presto, and streaming on all major platforms.
What Paul Krugman said…
Playlist [of playlists] for the week of May 26, 2025
I grew up with the LP format, so I still listen far more frequently to “albums” than anything – which should be no surprise, since most substantial classical works are “album”-length. So you won’t be entirely shocked to learn that since playlists are the new albums, my playlist will again consist of playlists.
“Vous avez dit brunettes?” – Les Kapsber’girls (alpha)
Ives: Symphony No. 4 – Dudamel, LAPO (DG)
“Hans Swarowsky dirigiert Johann Strauß II” (Profil)
Jolivet: Suite delphique / Epithaleme – Jolivet, ensemble (EMI)
“Gurdy Hurding” – Renaldo & The Loaf (Klanggalerie)
Falla: Harpsichord Concerto – Puyana, Mackerras, ensemble (Philips)
“Out to Lunch!” – Eric Dolphy (Blue Note)
Boulez: Piano Sonata No. 3 – Wendeberg (bastille musique)
Playlist for the week of May 19, 2025
Catherine Lamb: Curva Triangulus – Ensemble Proton (another timbre)
Ives: String Quartets – Juilliard Qt (Columbia)
“Live IV” – The League of Crafty Guitarists (Possible)
Brahms: A German Requiem [sung in English] – Curtin, Hines, Ormandy, Philadelphia Orchestra (Columbia)
Haydn: Symphony No. 104 – Krips, LPO (Decca)
Sylvano Bussotti: Cinque Frammenti – Hertel, NDR-Chor (DG avant garde)
Roland Kayn: Tanar [electronic music] (Reiger Records)
The funniest thing I’ve seen in a while…
… was made on a tiny fraction of what, say, HBO spends on their consistently solid standup comedy specials – and better than any of theirs in recent memory.
Five rave reviews in Fanfare for one remarkable release
Originally released to celebrate theJános Starker centenary, Urlicht AudioVisual’s all-Zoltán-Kodály, all-Starker release – plus the incomparable violinist Elmira Darvarova (in Kodály’s formidable Duo) – received five reviews in Fanfare magazine, from Henry Fogel, Keith R. Fisher, Jerry Dubins, Michael Vaillancourt, and Colin Clarke, Henry Fogel also interviews Elmira (following his review) – it’s a fascinating read.
It is so enormously gratifying to read this sort of coverage. Even though I was able to track down two excellent LP copies of the Sonata, they both required plenty of restoration TLC at Urlicht AudioVisual’s studio. The recording of the Duo was transferred from a DAT provided by Elmira, and a teeny smattering of digital clicks and a little lighting hum were quickly corrected.
The recording is available for download and streaming on Qobuz and Presto – two services to which I subscribe and that take technical quality seriously.
A side note: Presto’s streaming service is relatively new, and I’ve been mightily impressed by the rollout. I’ve been listening through my studio’s monitors via an Avid D-to-A using the Presto app on my Mac Studio. So far, no lags, no stuttering, no problems, and excellent sound! Sadly, my Samsung smart TV uses a proprietary OS that is incompatible with Android or Linux (I know, should’ve gotten the LG OLED 4k TV), so it’s no surprise that there is no app for it yet – but Presto does have a streaming dongle that I very well may pick up.
It is also streaming on Apple Music Classical, Spotify, and Tidal.
The CD is available from ArkivMusic, ImportCDs, and Amazon,