Streamable recordings and scores linked in the "music" section, where possible.
Set
Dana Jessen (bassoon) and Taylor Brook (composition and electronics)
Bassoonist Dana Jessen and composer Taylor Brook team up for a collaborative album length electro-acoustic work, Set, that combines through composed (Songs) and improvised sections. Much attention in the the composed sections is devoted to an exploration of a range of extended techniques on the bassoon that Jessen has cultivated. The improvised sections are framed by guidelines and rules that Brook provided and computer improvisation that accompanies the instrumental soloist. In these ways, the boundaries between composer and performer is blurred.
Harry Partch: The Bewitched / Taylor Brook: Block
Harry Partch / Taylor Brook
Composers Recordings, Inc.
"The Bewitched" was Partch's first work solely intended for dance. Drawing heavily from his deep affection for the music-theatrical performance traditions of Greek theater, as well as those from Africa, Bali, and Chinese opera, Partch conceived of a contemporary American music ritual-theater where musicians not only play, but also function at times as movers-singers-actors. Such is the case of "The Bewitched", where the instruments are the set, in front of (and around) which dancers "dance," but where the on-stage musicians also move and sing.
Taylor Brook's "Block" complements and contrasts "The Bewitched", taking inspiration from an introduction given by Partch at a performance of "The Bewitched" in Chicago in 1957. Brook observes:
“In this introduction, Partch discusses our listening habits, playing on the expression of ‘in one ear and out the other,’ by stating that he wants to create a ‘block between the ears... and when this block is effective all kinds of wonderful things happen: nerve impulses quicken, the adrenal glands begin to secrete their ecstatic hormones, the pancreatic juices begin to ooze.’
loadbang: Plays Well With Others
Plays Well With Others opens with Taylor Brook’s Tarantism in which he sets 16th and 17th century Italian texts on curing the ills resulting from a tarantula bite (this practice was the origin of the tarantella). Brook establishes loadbang as the musician/doctor, with Gavett providing a mix of dramatic narrative context, specific procedural instructions for treatment, and incantations. Meanwhile the strings are assigned the role of the afflicted party. We hear waves of pain and disorientation in dense dissonant string harmonies, the frenzy of ritualistic dancing in cathartic tutti gestures, and the weariness of post-treatment in undulating, creaking harmonics in the work’s final passage.
Virtutes Occultae, Concert Version
Audiovisual production by TIME:SPANS 2021 with support from the Earl Brown Foundation
Star Maker Fragments
Taylor Brook’s “Star Maker Fragments” sets excerpts of Olaf Stapledon’s groundbreaking 1937 novel “Star Maker.” Most notable for the invention of the many-worlds model of the universe, the novel focuses on a human narrator that is transported out of their body to become a disembodied viewpoint that travels through space and time. Brook evocatively renders Stapledon’s descriptions of imaginary societies with his sweeping and transcendentally detailed microtonal lines. Implicitly critiquing the rise of global authoritarianism in both music and text, Brook revels in Stapledon’s empathetic and thoughtfully pacifistic lens.
Open Improvisations
by Marina Kifferstein
This album is a collection of live improvisations, performed via live stream to the Open Improvisations: Online Edition facebook group over a 6 month period (June through December, 2020). They feature solo performances alongside remote collaborations with Brandon Lopez, Taylor Brook, and Alec Goldfarb.
released December 22, 2020
Produced by Marina Kifferstein.
Performers:
Marina Kifferstein, violin, guitar, mandolin, ukulele, toy piano, recorder, voice, various percussion objects, electronics
with
Brandon Lopez, bass (track 4)
Taylor Brook, live electronics (track 6)
Alec Goldfarb, many guitars (track 8)
Apperceptions
Taylor Brook
Ouaricon Editions 2020
Music for human improviser with computer improviser. This album is a duet between myself and a computer; the computer performs with an audio-corpus-based AI improviser of my own design. The software improviser listens and learns by analyzing the incoming sound and then improvises music based on what it has heard. This process can be heard in the music as each track begins with a solo that teaches the improviser how to be musical.
Song for Solo Cello, Canadian Music Centre BC, in partnership with Redshift Music Society Release:
A Howl That Was Also a Prayer
Ekmeles
New Focus Recordings 2020
New York based contemporary vocal ensemble Ekmeles releases their debut album, "A Howl, That Was Also a Prayer," a collection of premieres by Erin Gee, Christopher Trapani, and Taylor Brook that explores innovative territory in vocal writing, notably microtonality and alternate temperaments.
Engage
Joshua Modney
New Focus Recordings 2018
Multifaceted violinist Josh Modney (Wet Ink Ensemble, ICE, formerly of Mivos Quartet) releases an ambitious 3 CD set highlighting his various arenas of virtuosity, from premiere recordings of works written for him by Kate Soper, Eric Wubbels, Taylor Brook, and Sam Pluta, to his Just Intonation interpretation of Bach's luminous Chaconne, to a series of recordings of his laser focused improvisations, both his own material and a work by the eminent Anthony Braxton. Modney is truly a musician's musician, approaching everything he does with precision, commitment, and expression.
Old Fires Catch Old Buildings
Loadbang
New Focus Recordings - 2018
old fires catch old buildings is the third full-length album from ‘formidable new-music force’ loadbang, a quartet comprised of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. It features works by Taylor Brook, Reiko Füting, Paula Matthusen, Angélica Negrón, Scott Wollschleger and loadbang’s own Jeffrey Gavett and William Lang. Much of the music on the record deals with language and communication, and the ways in which those natural human capabilities can break down or flourish in unexpected ways.
The Privacy of Domestic Life
Architek Percussion
Centrediscs - 2018
Recording of Incantation on Architek Percussion's (Montreal) debut album
Streya
Olivia De Prato
New Focus Recordins - 2018
Austro-Italian violinist Olivia De Prato has been an active performer in New York City’s contemporary music community since moving there in 2005. As a member of critically acclaimed ensembles, the Mivos Quartet, Ensemble Signal, and Victoire, De Prato has been invoved in commissioning, premiering, and recording countless new compositions, with a range of figures spanning the diverse landscape of new music...
Virtutes Occultae
Electronic
Ouaricon Editions - 2017
Virtutues Occultae is an album in eighteen sections for six physically modeled virtual pianos, each with a unique tuning in an extended 11-limit just intonation.
In writing this music I used a mixture of traditional composition methods of structuring the music with various harmonies and progressions along with more free writing, collage techniques, and algorithmic composition. The tuning of the virtual pianos extends Harry Partch’s conception of the over-tonality. This album also exists as a six-channel surround sound concert/installation format.
Composed, produced, and designed by Taylor Brook
Mastered by Christopher Botta
Ecstatic Music
TAK ensemble
New Focus Recordings - 2016
Ecstatic Music: TAK Ensemble plays Taylor Brook is the product of years of collaboration between Brook and TAK, and captures the range of Brook’s compositional voice, as well as TAK’s dedication to bold, highly communicative new music.
Produced by David Bird and Taylor Brook
Design by David Bird
Engineered by Patrick Higgins
Mastered by Christopher Botta
Recorded at Futurepast Studio, 11/14/2016 to 11/15/2016
Garden of Diverging Paths
Mivos Quartet
New Focus Recordings - 2016
The Mivos Quartet's newest release features three recent works for string quartet by US-based composers Taylor Brook, Andrew Greenwald, and Kate Soper. Literary elements inspired each work on this album, as the composers drew from figures such as Jorge Luis Borges, the American minimalist artist Carl Andre, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Give My Regards to 116th Street
Kobe Van Cauwenberghe
Carrier Records (2015)
Give My Regards to 116th Street is Belgian guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe’s humble homage to the city where he spent his formative years as a musician. Music from a number of New York based composers features heavily on this album. From the various collisions and malfunctions of Alex Mincek’s Strata, through the clicking rubbing, scraping and popping of Rama Gottfried’s Spindle, to Christopher Trapani’s association of the guitar and various american folk instruments in Really Coming Down, this album explores the different musical approaches of young American composers of Kobe’s generation.
À chacun sa miniature
Quatour Bozzini
Collection QB
À chacun sa miniature is the first disc release by the Bozzini Quartet dedicated entirely to emerging artists. This collection of miniatures was written in 2011 to celebrate the Bozzini Quartet’s studio-lab for the next generation, the Composer’s Kitchen.