Every time I receive a note from one of our musicians from somewhere in the world, updating us on a new concert, recording project or triumph with new repertoire, I think back to Yarlung’s founding fifteen years and one week ago.  Yarlung received our non-profit public charity status from the IRS on August 7th, 2007. Our mission continues to support musicians at the beginnings of their international concert careers and to support the creation of new music through commissions for some of today’s most exciting composers. 

 Yarlung’s role as an incubator for musical creativity helps musicians and composers triumph despite the odds. The Yarlung community thrives thanks to these creative people, generous board members, executive producers, corporations and foundations who support our mission, and engineers who have designed and built unique equipment to help us capture living breathing musical performances on analog tape, DSD, surround sound and high-resolution PCM digital formats.   
--Bob Attiyeh, August 14th, 2022

Check the "Description Tab" on the Fifteen Years album page for more details about each track and the albums on which they appear: https://www.yarlungrecords.com/product/yarlung-records-fifteen-years/

Yarlung Records: Fifteen Years

“You need to meet Kate,” Patrick said, “and I think you should record her.  Kate not only performs in concert halls around the world, but she’s a lightning-smart academic at Curtis Institute researching and lecturing regularly on Central and Eastern European composers close to her heart.”  Katelyn Bouska is both American and Czech.  She was born in the United States, but spends many months a year performing and lecturing in Prague.  In fact, she is concluding a concert and lecture tour in the Czech Republic as I write these notes.  As Kate explained during our first phone call, the project took shape during her darkest days of isolation during the coronavirus pandemic.  She missed her family, her students and friends and her live performances in front of living breathing audiences.   To use the time productively, Kate revisited composers she wanted to explore and realized many of them shared a common theme.  They were refugees, or they barely survived, or didn’t survive, and the fact that they were women at the cutting edge of the contemporary music scenes in their various environments made their situations even more difficult.  Our earliest composer, Maria Szymanowska, died in the 1830 cholera outbreak instigated by Russia’s invasion of Poland under Tsar Nicholas I.  One of our younger composers, Ludmila Yurina, fled her home in Ukraine and found refuge first in the United Kingdom and then Germany after Russia’s invasion in February of 2022 by President Vladimir Putin. 

Executive Producers: Evan Flaschen and Patrick Trostle
 
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen & Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio
Steinway Technician: Kathy Smith
Cooper Bates Photography
Graphic Layout: MikeDesign
  
Kate and the Yarlung team give special thanks to the generous people who underwrote this recording.  Thank you so much.
 
Patrick Trostle
Evan Flaschen
Raulee Marcus
Skip Victor

Album booklet: https://storage.googleapis.com/yarlung_public/pdf_booklets/Women-and-War-and-Peace-YAR54460.pdf   

For more information please visit www.yarlungrecords.com

Katelyn Bouska: WOMEN and WAR and PEACE

GRAMMY® Award winning Yarlung Records celebrates its 10th Anniversary and continues to bring fresh musicians to the classical music world using minimalist audiophile recording techniques to deliver sound as close to living performance as possible. Yarlung engineers these albums in concert halls famous for their acoustics such as Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Yarlung uses analog tape and high resolution digital media for CDs made with special alloys, high resolution digital downloads, and 180 Gram vinyl LPs, mastered by Steve Hoffman and Bernie Grundman.

It is the quality of the music and the talent of Yarlung’s musicians that have enabled our success.  Yarlung wants the presentation to be like a clean window, which does not distract from the beautiful “view” on the other side.  An example of this was Antonio Lysy at The Broad: Music from Argentina, which won our first GRAMMY Award and was ranked in The Absolute Sound as one of the 40 Best recordings of all time. 

Two of the reasons people support Yarlung are the strength of our mission and the quality of our product.  Despite Yarlung’s small size, reviews in North America, Europe and Asia recognize Yarlung’s importance as one of the highest quality record labels in the world today.  Thanks for your support during Yarlung’s first decade! We look forward to the future.

Bob Attiyeh, producer
www.yarlungrecords.com

Yarlung Records 10th Anniversary

Alessandro Piccinini - Chiaccona in partite variate
from Ciaramella Dances on Movable Ground
Yarlung Records 96819 
performed by Ciaramella

http://www.yarlungrecords.com/index.html#ciaramelladance

Piccinini: Chiaccona In Partie Variate

Yarlung Records - The First Seven Years
Yarlung Records 96821

In an age when even music has become disposable, Yarlung Records flies in the face of convention, making a bold commitment to produce artisanal, hand-crafted recordings, showcasing an extraordinary  range of musical repertoire, performed by some of today's most exciting and charismatic young artists.
Utilizing an intimate one-take recording strategy, precise (and minimal) microphone placement 
and no post-production fidgeting with the sound - Yarlung's sound will up new paths for your musical discovery and enjoyment. 
We invite you to join us in a “New Golden Age” of recording with Yarlung Records.

Tracks:
1. Sanz: Jacaras  			
2. Beethoven: String Trio in C Minor, Op. 9, No. 3: II. Adagio con espressione
3. Jason Barabba: String Trio: III. Anamnesis
4. Mahler: Ruckert-Lieder: No. 7. Liebst du um Schonheit (version for voice and orchestra)
5. John Adams: Doctor Atomic: Am I in Your Light
6. J.S. Bach: I. Overture (Partita) in the French Style in B Minor, BWV 831 (excerpts)
7. J.S. Bach: XI. Echo (Partita) in the French Style in B Minor, BWV 831 (excerpts)  
8. Lutoslawski: Grave (version for cello and piano)
9. Lou Harrison: Canticle No. 3
10. La Spagna (arr. A.K. Gilbert for shawms and sackbuts)
11. Schifrin: Pampas
12. Badal Roy: Calcutta Sunrise
13. Stucky: Pinturas de Tamayo (arr. for violin and piano as Tres Pinturas): I. Musicas dormidas
14. Kupferman: Distances
15. J.S. Bach: Cello Suite No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1009: I. Prelude
16. Ravel: Sonatine: III. Anime (arr. D. Tywoniuk)

http://www.yarlungrecords.com/index.html#7years

The First Seven Years

Frédéric Chopin: Nocturne in C-Sharp Minor, B. 49, Op. Posth

Sufi Dhikr

Mark Louis Lehman: Valse Noire (Live)

J.S. Bach: Overture in the French Style, Op. 2, BWV 831 (Excerpts): XI. Echo

J.S. Bach: Overture in the French Style, Op. 2, BWV 831 (Excerpts): I. Ouverture

Calcutta Sunrise (Live)

Yuko Mabuchi: Missling Miles (Live)

Katelyn Bouska’s Yarlung debut album “Women and War and Peace” (catalog number) YAR54460 includes Ivana Loudova's Prague Imaginations: Five Pieces for Piano.

Kate describes how Loudová’s music “illustrates a sensitivity to musical space and refined textures. In none of her compositions is this sensitivity and musical evocations more clear than in her musical snapshots of her beloved Prague. Pražské imaginace (Prague Imaginations) is an auditory stroll through the city, capturing both the immediacy of its present but also the city’s complex past. She embeds the sounds, images and history of the city into this music, the city's tolling bells and iconic towers, the mysterious carillon strains of Loreta Monastery and even the folklore of Charles Bridge.

“Prague stands as a living monument to Czech people. One sees symbols of Czech national survival everywhere. A ten-minute walk takes one past the New Town Tower, site of the first Prague defenestration in 1419 during the Hussite wars, to the Church of Cyril and Methodius where one can still see bullet holes where Czech resistance fighters held their last stand against the Nazis. And just around the corner, Charles Bridge and Castle Hill towering above it. One can just make out the side tower, site of the third Prague defenestration starting the 30-Years War in 1630s, and also the quiet ‘fourth’ defenestration where Jan Masaryk died from a mysterious fall out of a window
during the Communist era. Ivana Loudová loved and gave her life to this city and nation, and her memory and music remain one of the Czech Republic’s greatest monuments.”

Album booklet: https://storage.googleapis.com/yarlung_public/pdf_booklets/Women-and-War-and-Peace-YAR54460.pdf
For more information please visit www.yarlungrecords.com

Women and War and Peace 44 16

Ivana Loudova - Prague Imaginations Five Pieces for Piano

Katelyn Bouska’s Yarlung debut album “Women and War and Peace” (catalog number) YAR54460 

Ruth Schönthal was born in Hamburg to Jewish Austrian parents in 1924, studied composing at the conservatory in Berlin when she was five, escaped Nazi Germany before the war, and died in New York in 2006. Ruth wrote this musical diary, an unpretentious memoire, during the last decade of her life.  She captures public events in her life, children at play, her wedding, even a telephone call shattering the silence, as well as her inner world of passion, anger and finally peace as her final movement envisions her death while reliving important memories from her life.  

Schönthal wrote of her compositional style: “there's a lot of variation and metamorphosis in the way my things are developed so that nothing ever comes back the same.  Everything gets influenced and transformed, like in life itself.   No recapitulation comes back as it was.  My music is very volatile in its emotions. It always comes in different shapes.  I like to juxtapose contrasting things as if they were the other end of the same thing.  A conversion from the beautiful to the ugly or vice versa.  That kind of aesthetic philosophy for which I have chosen my vocabulary to express these things.  Dissonance, consonance, metric-time, sense-time, expressive, melodic, romantic, lyric, sometimes anger.  As far as emotions are concerned, they always go through the whole gamut.  It's not placid.”

Kate writes “Five-year-old Schönthal entered the Sternsches Konservatorium in Berlin studying piano and composition, their youngest student.  This auspicious beginning deteriorated swiftly in Nazi Germany.  Ruth remembered hearing people in the streets singing the Horst Wessel Lied which became a Nazi national anthem of sorts, including the words ‘Already millions are looking to the swastika full of hope.… Soon Hitler flags will fly over every street.… When Jewish blood will spurt from our knives, then things will be twice as good!’ In 1935, Ruth was expelled from the conservatory because she was Jewish.  She survived the ensuing years because her family escaped to Sweden until the family was forced out in 1941 as part of new restrictions on Jewish refugees.  Never safe and never settled, Ruth’s family moved first to Japan, then the USSR and Mexico.  Finally, Ruth received a visa which enabled her to study at Yale University in 1946.  She remained as a self-proclaimed ‘composer in exile’ in the United States for the rest of her life.”

Ruth used a gruesome parody of the melody of the Nazi Wessel song for a commission in 1996 to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall.  About her commission she wrote of the “contrasting elements—the beautiful-ugly, tension-release, good-evil… opposite ends of one and the same thing. They have a magnetic attraction towards each other; they are never static. I deliberately combine the good old with the good new, because of my background and because I believe that every revolution throws out the baby with the bathwater.”

Album booklet: https://storage.googleapis.com/yarlung_public/pdf_booklets/Women-and-War-and-Peace-YAR54460.pdf   For more information please visit www.yarlungrecords.com

Ruth Schoental - Fragments from a Womans Diary

Katelyn Bouska’s Yarlung debut album “Women and War and Peace” (catalog number) YAR54460 includes some of Szymanowska’s mazurkas, and her monumental “Fantaisie.”  

For more information please visit www.yarlungrecords.com 

From Kate’s album liner notes:  
On our second track, Kate plays her own arrangement of several Mazurkas (numbers 3, 12, 8 and 17) by Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831). Kate feels special affection for Szymanowska as the first professional female piano virtuoso.  Kate expands that Szymanowska “was a pianist who rose to the highest level of virtuosity, fame and influence.  Critics praised the strength of sound, her singing tone, and her delicate balance between lyricism and virtuosity.  She described herself as largely self-taught. As a child of eight, her parents engaged a few private tutors for her.  But regular music instruction, such as any man with her talent would have received, was refused her.  Szymanowska combined extraordinary natural talent, determination and her astute understanding of audiences to make a living as a traveling virtuoso performer, decades before Ferenc Liszt or Clara Schumann would popularize the phenomenon.  

“In addition to her concertizing and composing, Maria served as an important link in the development of 19th-century Polish music at a time when her country had all but disappeared.  Her entire life was overshadowed by the partitioning of her country by neighboring Russia, Prussia and Austria.  The third and final partition, in which Poland disappeared from the map, occurred in 1795.  Szymanowska was six.

“She and others would keep the country’s rhythms alive in their music, in the vibrant rhythms of her mazurkas, the lyrical sensitivity of fantasy with its dramatic burst of fire and polonaise rhythms.  She wrote in both the traditional ‘feminine’ genres for the salon (as in the mazurkas), and full-blown stage concert works full of musical weight and bravura as in evidenced by her Fantasie in F Major on track 3.

“After returning to Poland from a series of concerts in London, Maria expanded upon the iconic genre of nocturnes later made ubiquitous by Chopin, and imported a Broadwood piano (a name  later dear to the hearts of Beethoven lovers as well) which offered an increased palette of color and resonance. She set the stage for many of Chopin’s innovations a few decades later.  The final months of Maria’s life were overshadowed by the November Uprising in Warsaw, crushed by the Russian invasion which enabled the sweeping cholera outbreak that killed her in 1831.”  

Album booklet: https://storage.googleapis.com/yarlung_public/pdf_booklets/Women-and-War-and-Peace-YAR54460.pdf

Marie Szymanowska - Fantaisie

Maria Szymanowska - Mazurkas

Katelyn Bouska’s Yarlung debut album “Women and War and Peace” (catalog number) YAR54460 includes Caroline Shaw’s “Gustave Le Gray”

“Gustave le Grey” takes inspiration from the darkroom exposure of a photograph, hinting at depths before they are actually visible.  The work sounds like Caroline Shaw at the beginning and end, but slowly evolves in the middle section into Chopin’s famous Mazurka in A Minor before concluding with more keyboard writing that is completely Caroline’s.   Chopin took powerful inspiration from Maria Szymanowska as Kate describes later in these notes, and Gustave le Grey therefore offers us handsome bookends for this album, and in the process demonstrates how current all of these women composers remain.    One of Kate’s students at Curtis brought Gustave le Grey to study with Kate shortly after the work was published ten years ago.  Katelyn writes “My student described it to me as musical photography, slowly evolving, taking shape and emerging from the musical shadows before dissolving again at the end.  

“This is the magic of our art form – its suspension of time and texture and place, giving the listener and performer alike each their unique experience.  For me, when I began to prepare Gustave le Grey for concert myself, I was captivated with how it distorted and played with time.  My own time on stage, Caroline’s time in the frame of the piece, and the Chopinesque tension between his exquisite rubato and the strict dance rhythms of the Mazurka.  

“Hypnotic, repeating gestures of the opening pushes time to a standstill as simple shapes arise around the acoustic space, and then begin to inch forward.  Raw and primitive gestures stand in stark relief to the gilded beauty of Chopin’s phrases.  In the opening, Caroline writes to the performer in the score: ‘like a photograph slowly developing on wax paper.’ A few lines later, a new gesture like ‘an expensive Hermés silk cravat’ gradually ‘becomes a bit maniacal, freely-spinning off into their own time and world.’  

“Chopin’s Mazurka develops and decays in the center of the work, a simple melody emerging deeply in the bass register of the piano.  Caroline’s introduction proceeds slowly and firmly anchored, with rich openly-spaced harmony, ‘solid and simple like the Appalachian foothills.’ This solemn stability marks the end’s beginning as well.  Soon follow more musical fragments including a simple chorale, ‘a linen hymn.’ The opening hypnotic theme returns, ‘like the fragmented hem of a song from a long time ago.’ Gustave le Grey ends with a handful of final repeated chords, ‘dry, as if spoken,’ and Caroline’s piece, all fourteen minutes, departs as simply as it began.  But in the process of playing it, I realize that I have changed.  Seated at the piano, my center of gravity has somehow shifted slightly and I face a new direction, grounded and ready for more.”

Album booklet: https://storage.googleapis.com/yarlung_public/pdf_booklets/Women-and-War-and-Peace-YAR54460.pdf   For more information please visit www.yarlungrecords.com

Caroline Shaw, Gustave Le Gray

Pekka Kuusisto/Joonas Ahonen: Symmetria Pario – Creation

For this new chapter in our exploration, Russell and I reached out to two of the finest musicians in their fields, superstar Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto and firebrand contemporary virtuoso pianist Joonas Ahonen who often perform together in concert. Joonas is also Finnish, but lives in Vienna. We commissioned six composers to write works for Pekka and Joonas exploring wide-ranging ideas about the cosmic beginning of things.

Executive producer Russell Ward spearheaded this recording and generously underwrote Yarlung’s six new commissions, performed and recorded so eloquently by Pekka Kuusisto on violin and Joonas Ahonen on piano. Russell is my friend and coconspirator in all things quantum, and he asked me and our musicians and composers to explore various stories about the moment of creation through music. Russell hears music even in the computer-generated blips and bleeps captured as digital data (and expressed with note values) from experiments in quantum physics such as conducted at CERN in Switzerland.

Weroon Weroon
We end our album with Yarlung’s first commission from Hnnh Kendll. Ms. Kendall graciously wrote Weroon Weroon (My God My God) in honor of Pekka Kuusisto for this recording. The title comes from Martin Carter’s poem written in 1954. Since finishing Weroon Weroon, in late 2021, its musical ideas have inspired more of Hannah’s compositions. We look forward to this evolution in coming years. Hannah wrote Weroon Weroon for cuffed violin; the score indicates detailed instructions for preparing the instrument with three aluminum dreadlock cuffs. Hannah offers the following text from 
Psalms 8: 3-4 to introduce the work:


Russell Ward executive producer
Recording: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio
Steinway Technician: Kathy Smith

Symmetria Pario Creation 88 24

9. Weroon Weroon, Hannah Kendall

Pekka Kuusisto/Joonas Ahonen: Symmetria Pario – Creation

For this new chapter in our exploration, Russell and I reached out to two of the finest musicians in their fields, superstar Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto and firebrand contemporary virtuoso pianist Joonas Ahonen who often perform together in concert. Joonas is also Finnish, but lives in Vienna. We commissioned six composers to write works for Pekka and Joonas exploring wide-ranging ideas about the cosmic beginning of things.

Executive producer Russell Ward spearheaded this recording and generously underwrote Yarlung’s six new commissions, performed and recorded so eloquently by Pekka Kuusisto on violin and Joonas Ahonen on piano. Russell is my friend and coconspirator in all things quantum, and he asked me and our musicians and composers to explore various stories about the moment of creation through music. Russell hears music even in the computer-generated blips and bleeps captured as digital data (and expressed with note values) from experiments in quantum physics such as conducted at CERN in Switzerland.

Cura
Pekka premiered Cecilia Damström’s Cura on July 9th with pianist Tiina Karakorpi three weeks before our recording sessions. Damström wrote it in 2020 for the covid-delayed wedding of Leena and Antti Ihamuotila. Cecilia knew Pekka wanted to record this work with us and gave us this additional gift. Cura reflects loss and misery during Covid, almost as a memorial, while taking heart in the coming joy and healing nature of the new relationship it was written to celebrate. This reminds me of one of the most famous “wedding gifts” ever written, Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, which premiered at the Pitti Palace in Florence for the wedding of King Henry IV of France and Maria de Medici in October of 1600. Both Cura and Euridice grapple with enormous loss and the eventual triumph of music and transformed love.


Russell Ward executive producer
Recording: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio
Steinway Technician: Kathy Smith

6. Cura, Cecilia Damström

Pekka Kuusisto/Joonas Ahonen: Symmetria Pario – Creation

For this new chapter in our exploration, Russell and I reached out to two of the finest musicians in their fields, superstar Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto and firebrand contemporary virtuoso pianist Joonas Ahonen who often perform together in concert. Joonas is also Finnish, but lives in Vienna. We commissioned six composers to write works for Pekka and Joonas exploring wide-ranging ideas about the cosmic beginning of things.

Executive producer Russell Ward spearheaded this recording and generously underwrote Yarlung’s six new commissions, performed and recorded so eloquently by Pekka Kuusisto on violin and Joonas Ahonen on piano. Russell is my friend and coconspirator in all things quantum, and he asked me and our musicians and composers to explore various stories about the moment of creation through music. Russell hears music even in the computer-generated blips and bleeps captured as digital data (and expressed with note values) from experiments in quantum physics such as conducted at CERN in Switzerland.

Symmetries
Clarice Assad, whose stepmother Professor Angela Olinto teaches quantum physics at the University of Chicago, opens our album with Symmetries. Clarice’s work expresses her vision of the earliest fractions of moments after the Big Bang in six through-composed movements, Spin, Inertia, Energy, Space, Time and Momentum. As when listening to this music by all the great composers Pekka and Joonas recorded on this album, one does not need to know anything about science or even the inspiration behind these works to enjoy this music. Clarice’s work proves this instantly upon hearing. 


Russell Ward executive producer
Recording: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio
Steinway Technician: Kathy Smith

1. Symmetries, Clarice Assad

Nathan Ben-Yehuda: The Power of the Keyboard

My friend Gary Hollander introduced us to Nathan Ben-Yehuda, a piano virtuoso in his twenties. Nathan grew up in Southern California, but attended the Royal Academy of Music in London before earning his Master’s at Juilliard. Nathan’s performance in Belgium’s Queen Elizabeth Competition in 2021 impressed me. Among the works he performed for the jury, Nathan chose Oliver Knussen’s Variations Op. 24
for piano, which Knussen wrote for Peter Serkin. I followed each phrase of these variations with rapt attention and realized that if Nathan could interpret a work like this with unique power and magic, just about anything he played would transport me as a listener.

Nathan writes:
“The works on this record have played a powerful role in my growth as a musician. Many of these pieces changed how I thought about music and shaped who I am as a pianist. I am grateful to be able to share my inner world with you through this recording. These pieces take inspiration from similar sources, and these composers often drew energy from each other’s creative output.”

Nathan pursues a fulltime solo concert career but also plays with Astral Mixtape, an innovative
crossover quartet writing new works and reimagining classics from Monteverdi to Rimsky-
Korsakov, and playing with ideas and thematic material from Sigur Ros to Radiohead and Four Tet.
Nathan plays piano and synthesizer, Misha Vayman performs on violin and computers, Michael
Siess plays violin, and Juan-Salvador Carrasco performs on the cello.

Goddess Gardens features an intoxicating “mixtape” of snippets from Scheherazade and Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending, as well as more recent fare.


Executive Producer: Randy Bellous
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio

The Power of the Keyboard 88 24

6. Goddess Gardens, Astral Mixtape

Nathan Ben-Yehuda: The Power of the Keyboard

My friend Gary Hollander introduced us to Nathan Ben-Yehuda, a piano virtuoso in his twenties. Nathan grew up in Southern California, but attended the Royal Academy of Music in London before earning his Master’s at Juilliard. Nathan’s performance in Belgium’s Queen Elizabeth Competition in 2021 impressed me. Among the works he performed for the jury, Nathan chose Oliver Knussen’s Variations Op. 24
for piano, which Knussen wrote for Peter Serkin. I followed each phrase of these variations with rapt attention and realized that if Nathan could interpret a work like this with unique power and magic, just about anything he played would transport me as a listener.

Nathan writes:
“The works on this record have played a powerful role in my growth as a musician. Many of these pieces changed how I thought about music and shaped who I am as a pianist. I am grateful to be able to share my inner world with you through this recording. These pieces take inspiration from similar sources, and these composers often drew energy from each other’s creative output.”

Maurice Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit 

In Gaspar’s third movement, Scarbo, Ravel reveals this same compositional skill. I see our little goblin as terrifying, but playful, perhaps unaware of just how sinister he can be to those he torments. His scuttling about in the dark, his demonic whispers and fearsome transformations are just games for him. When I play Gaspar, I try to keep the lighter side of these games in mind, up to the moment when the horror is so great it envelops the music completely.


Executive Producer: Randy Bellous
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio

2. Gaspard de la nuit, Maurice Ravel

Nathan Ben-Yehuda: The Power of the Keyboard

My friend Gary Hollander introduced us to Nathan Ben-Yehuda, a piano virtuoso in his twenties. Nathan grew up in Southern California, but attended the Royal Academy of Music in London before earning his Master’s at Juilliard. Nathan’s performance in Belgium’s Queen Elizabeth Competition in 2021 impressed me. Among the works he performed for the jury, Nathan chose Oliver Knussen’s Variations Op. 24
for piano, which Knussen wrote for Peter Serkin. I followed each phrase of these variations with rapt attention and realized that if Nathan could interpret a work like this with unique power and magic, just about anything he played would transport me as a listener.

Nathan writes:
“The works on this record have played a powerful role in my growth as a musician. Many of these pieces changed how I thought about music and shaped who I am as a pianist. I am grateful to be able to share my inner world with you through this recording. These pieces take inspiration from similar sources, and these composers often drew energy from each other’s creative output.”


Joseph Haydn: Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI, 40 

Haydn’s humor becomes almost slapstick in the brief Presto second movement. I was lucky to hear Paul Lewis perform this piece at Tanglewood, and I was thrilled with how he managed to use this sonata as a finale to his program, inciting laughs and elation in the audience even while he was playing. I told him afterward how much I enjoyed that piece particularly, and he said something to the effect of “Oh yes, it's some real Tom and Jerry stuff!” This piece represents essential Haydn for me: the composer successfully portrays naive exuberance with eloquent means.


Executive Producer: Randy Bellous
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio

1. Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI, 40, Joseph Haydn

Aditya Prakash was born in Los Angeles and grew up in India and the United States, but with his busy international concert schedule he is rarely home in Tamil Nadu or California for long periods. Crossover and global music fans might know Aditya best from his jazz-infused Karnatik blend on his Aditya Prakash Ensemble 1 releases such as Diaspora Kid or from his concerts on National Public Radio.

But as adventurous and “crossover” as Aditya’s successes may be, they have always been firmly anchored in the classical Karnatik musical tradition of South India. Initially, Aditya suggested Yarlung work with him and his ensemble in the jazz and crossover global music genres, but by the end of our first conversation, Aditya confessed that his greatest desire was to honor and further explore the classical tradition with a purely acoustic recording focusing on some of his favorite ragas.

Raga VI: Ragamalika alapana, Brindavana Saranga (Soundararajam)

Soundararajam is another masterpiece by Muddusvami Dikshitar. Similar to Vatapi in Hamsadwani, most performers present this song today with myriad changes from the original. This version follows the exact notation in the SSP. It feels transcendent and sublime to experience the simplicity and stillness of each note. To introduce this song, there is an improvisation known as an alapana (free of a time cycle and rhythmic accompaniment) in various ragas.


Thanks to Aaron Egigian, we were able to make this recording using the beautiful natural acoustics in Samueli Theater at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa on August 1st, 2022. Aditya and his musicians gave a live concert with this same repertoire in the hall on July 31st.

Executive Producers: Diane and Craig Martin
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio

Aditya Prakash: Karnatik Roots 88 24

6. Ragamalika, Brindavana Saranga

Aditya Prakash was born in Los Angeles and grew up in India and the United States, but with his busy international concert schedule he is rarely home in Tamil Nadu or California for long periods. Crossover and global music fans might know Aditya best from his jazz-infused Karnatik blend on his Aditya Prakash Ensemble 1 releases such as Diaspora Kid or from his concerts on National Public Radio.

But as adventurous and “crossover” as Aditya’s successes may be, they have always been firmly anchored in the classical Karnatik musical tradition of South India. Initially, Aditya suggested Yarlung work with him and his ensemble in the jazz and crossover global music genres, but by the end of our first conversation, Aditya confessed that his greatest desire was to honor and further explore the classical tradition with a purely acoustic recording focusing on some of his favorite ragas.

Raga V: Brindavani, Khamas (Thillana)

This is a purely instrumental piece even though such “modernism” is atypical for a Karnatik vocal recital. The violin and the mridangam combine two different compositions based on two different ragas. By linking the occasionally similar phrases and notes of two very different sounding ragas, a uniquely cohesive sounding composite raga takes shape.


Thanks to Aaron Egigian, we were able to make this recording using the beautiful natural acoustics in Samueli Theater at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa on August 1st, 2022. Aditya and his musicians gave a live concert with this same repertoire in the hall on July 31st.

Executive Producers: Diane and Craig Martin
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio

5. Raga Brindavani, Khamas

Aditya Prakash was born in Los Angeles and grew up in India and the United States, but with his busy international concert schedule he is rarely home in Tamil Nadu or California for long periods. Crossover and global music fans might know Aditya best from his jazz-infused Karnatik blend on his Aditya Prakash Ensemble 1 releases such as Diaspora Kid or from his concerts on National Public Radio.

But as adventurous and “crossover” as Aditya’s successes may be, they have always been firmly anchored in the classical Karnatik musical tradition of South India. Initially, Aditya suggested Yarlung work with him and his ensemble in the jazz and crossover global music genres, but by the end of our first conversation, Aditya confessed that his greatest desire was to honor and further explore the classical tradition with a purely acoustic recording focusing on some of his favorite ragas.

Raga IV: Kiravani

This piece is a confluence of four different improvisational styles: virutam singing (using poetry and raga together), kalpana swara as in our first track, then tanam (rhythmic but non-cyclical singing using the words “ta nam” in different formations), and finally niraval. The seamless blend morphing from one style of improvisation to another is rarely done in Karnatik music.


Thanks to Aaron Egigian, we were able to make this recording using the beautiful natural acoustics in Samueli Theater at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa on August 1st, 2022. Aditya and his musicians gave a live concert with this same repertoire in the hall on July 31st.

Executive Producers: Diane and Craig Martin
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio

4. Raga Kiravani

Aditya Prakash was born in Los Angeles and grew up in India and the United States, but with his busy international concert schedule he is rarely home in Tamil Nadu or California for long periods. Crossover and global music fans might know Aditya best from his jazz-infused Karnatik blend on his Aditya Prakash Ensemble 1 releases such as Diaspora Kid or from his concerts on National Public Radio.

But as adventurous and “crossover” as Aditya’s successes may be, they have always been firmly anchored in the classical Karnatik musical tradition of South India. Initially, Aditya suggested Yarlung work with him and his ensemble in the jazz and crossover global music genres, but by the end of our first conversation, Aditya confessed that his greatest desire was to honor and further explore the classical tradition with a purely acoustic recording focusing on some of his favorite ragas.

Raga III: Shifting Sa

This is an original composition and concept this track offers the most experimental approach to Karnatik music on this album that Aditya has ever composed. The constantly moving tonal center can be destabilizing when singing a raga. The sound of the tambura (drone instrument typical in much Indian music) is a quintessential part of the Karnatik sound and provides the tonal center, which usually does not shift during a performance. Since the tonal center DOES shift back and forth in this there is no tambura in this song. Instead, the violin provides the tonal center. Modal jazz fans will recognize a strong contemporary influence in Shifting Sa.


Thanks to Aaron Egigian, we were able to make this recording using the beautiful natural acoustics in Samueli Theater at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa on August 1st, 2022. Aditya and his musicians gave a live concert with this same repertoire in the hall on July 31st.

Executive Producers: Diane and Craig Martin
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio

3. Raga Shifting Sa

Aditya Prakash was born in Los Angeles and grew up in India and the United States, but with his busy international concert schedule he is rarely home in Tamil Nadu or California for long periods. Crossover and global music fans might know Aditya best from his jazz-infused Karnatik blend on his Aditya Prakash Ensemble 1 releases such as Diaspora Kid or from his concerts on National Public Radio.

But as adventurous and “crossover” as Aditya’s successes may be, they have always been firmly anchored in the classical Karnatik musical tradition of South India. Initially, Aditya suggested Yarlung work with him and his ensemble in the jazz and crossover global music genres, but by the end of our first conversation, Aditya confessed that his greatest desire was to honor and further explore the classical tradition with a purely acoustic recording focusing on some of his favorite ragas.

Raga II: Hamsadwani

The composition we rendered in this raga is often considered the most famous Karnatik composition, Vatapi Ganapatim. Composed by the prolific Muddusvami Dikshitar born in 1776, this song has been popularized so much over the last century that it has almost gone out of vogue and is no longer performed so frequently.

Many of those earlier versions became very virtuosic and ornate, but  our version is much slower, making it a more refreshingly simple and meditative experience. I expand upon one of the lines and improvise (while keeping the lyrical meter intact) as I develop the melodic content. This style of improvisation is known as niraval. Following niraval I take up kalpana swaras.



Thanks to Aaron Egigian, we were able to make this recording using the beautiful natural acoustics in Samueli Theater at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa on August 1st, 2022. Aditya and his musicians gave a live concert with this same repertoire in the hall on July 31st.

Executive Producers: Diane and Craig Martin
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio

2. Raga Hamsadwani

Aditya Prakash was born in Los Angeles and grew up in India and the United States, but with his busy international concert schedule he is rarely home in Tamil Nadu or California for long periods. Crossover and global music fans might know Aditya best from his jazz-infused Karnatik blend on his Aditya Prakash Ensemble 1 releases such as Diaspora Kid or from his concerts on National Public Radio.

But as adventurous and “crossover” as Aditya’s successes may be, they have always been firmly anchored in the classical Karnatik musical tradition of South India. Initially, Aditya suggested Yarlung work with him and his ensemble in the jazz and crossover global music genres, but by the end of our first conversation, Aditya confessed that his greatest desire was to honor and further explore the classical tradition with a purely acoustic recording focusing on some of his favorite ragas.

Raga I: Jayantasena

The Raga begins by introducing each artist and instrument individually in a short improvisation before we perform together in Raga Jayantasena. I begin by singing a poem in the Kannada language written by the 12th Century female mystic author Akka Mahadevi from Karnataka.

This introduction is completely improvised based on the raga Jayantasena, the only raga composed by Thyagaraja (more formally known as Kakarla Thyagabrahmam) born in 1767 and considered a saint. Following the introduction we launch into Vinata Suta, also by Thyagaraja which praises the god Rama. Following the composition, we improvise briefly on the swaras (solfège) of the raga but return again and again to the main refrain of the song; this is known as kalpana swara singing.



Thanks to Aaron Egigian, we were able to make this recording using the beautiful natural acoustics in Samueli Theater at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa on August 1st, 2022. Aditya and his musicians gave a live concert with this same repertoire in the hall on July 31st.

Executive Producers: Diane and Craig Martin
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen and Bob Attiyeh
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
AKG C24 microphone: Ancona Audio

1. Raga Jayanatasena

Lou Harrison’s magical Canticle No. 3, a concerto for ocarina and percussion, written in 1940 and 1941 opens side A of our LP.  Canticle No. 3 uses the haunting primitive sound of the ocarina and a steel string guitar which contrast alluringly with Harrison’s creative assortment of percussion instruments. Joe Beribak plays ocarina and Derek Tywoniuk plays guitar.  We experimented with our musicians in many different locations for this recording, since we used one stereo AKG C-24 microphone and no mixer for all of our takes on this album.  As Joe reminisced, “some instruments (like tom toms and snare drums) were designed for use with a modern orchestra, while other instruments, like the ocarina and teponaztli [a slit drum made from a hollow log], are ethnic instruments designed to be played in intimate settings. As with everything we did in this Yarlung recording, each challenge gave us a new perspective that enriched the musical experience and made it even more fun.”

The other side of our album contains three pieces for marimba, including Steve Reich’s classic Nagoya Marimbas, written in 1994 and premiered in December of that year in Shirakawa Hall in Nagoya, Japan.  Steve writes that the work is “similar to my pieces from the 1960s and ‘70s in that there are repeating patterns played on both marimbas, one or more beats out of phase, creating a series of two part unison canons. However, these patterns are more melodically developed, change frequently and each is usually repeated no more than three times, similar to my more recent work. The piece is also considerably more difficult to play than my earlier ones and requires two virtuosic performers.” Our two Smoke & Mirrors virtuosi are Joe Beribak and Katy La Favre.  Next follow two tracks from Argentine composer Alejandro Viñao’s Book of Grooves, which Smoke & Mirrors Ensemble co-commissioned, and presents here in their world premiere recording. Eddie Hong writes “When given the opportunity to be part of a consortium for a new marimba duet by Alejandro Viñao, Derek and I were ecstatic.”  Arguably one of the most important composers contributing to the percussion literature today, Viñao writes, “The “groove” or “feel” of a piece is a pattern or sequence that repeats periodically in such a way as to create the desire to move, or dance, or to foot-tap in time with the rhythm.  A groove always attracts percussionists since it can be such an infectious culprit of rhythmic propulsion.”  Viñao establishes his groove at the outset of each movement, but then deviates from it by writing odd meters (adding or subtracting parts of beats) and including surprising interplay between the two parts.  Our two performers on marimba are Eddie and Derek Tywoniuk.  The first of Alejandro's tracks, Colours of a Groove, is released for the first time on this LP.  One can also hear the second track by Alejandro, Dance Groove Drifting, on the Smoke & Mirrors: Vanish CD and associated digital media.  

Please visit https://www.yarlungrecords.com/product/smoke-mirrors-vanish-cd/

Yarlung captured these performances with a single AKG C24 stereo microphone in the glorious acoustics of Zipper Hall at The Colburn School. We recorded each piece in its entirety, live to tape with no editing, to create the most lifelike performance possible. Rather than worry about how the ensemble would perform without the benefit of edits to camouflage mistakes, the members of Smoke & Mirrors loved the idea, embracing our concept that this recording represent a live concert experience. To amplify the signal from the C24, we used microphone amplification by Elliot Midwood. 

This album proudly bears the seal and endorsement of the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society.  

--Diane and Craig Martin, executive producers

1. Steve Reich, Nagoya Marimba

Sophisticated Lady jazz quartet, the debut recording

 September 2014 release
 
Misha Adair Bigos, piano
Gary Wicks, bass
Andrew Boyle, drums
JJ Kirkpatrick, trumpet

 
Yarlung Records did it again. This time it’s their first jazz entry that has golden warmth of a Blue Note from its heyday as well as visceral instruments presence of a Contemporary Records. Recorded in Cammilleri concert hall using only a vintage tube stereo microphone, the sound of the CD is creamy like butter while the texture is so rich that you can easily discern which parts of the drum set the player hits and rubs. The big crescendo on ‘For Andrew’ is mind blowing!
--Mori Shima, Stereo Sound, Japan
 
More jazz records should be like Sophisticated Lady Quartet—relaxed yet focused, tradition-based yet modern, elegant yet conveying a sure sense of swing. The recording is so pure that you almost feel as if you’re eavesdropping on four musicians who seem completely in their element while performing, in a one-take environment, a set that’s evenly split between previously rehearsed arrangements and performances where they had one chance to turn a composition into a memorable piece of music. No splicing or editing here—just a live-in-the-studio recording where the mood, playing and sonics are so solid that that jazz lovers will wish that the mostly-classical label Yarlung wandered over to this side of the street more often.
--Jeff Wilson, The Absolute Sound
 
Recorded in The Brain and Creativity Institute's Cammilleri Hall at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles thanks to Dr. Antonio Damasio
 
Recording engineer and producer: Bob Attiyeh
Mastering engineer: Steve Hoffman
Executive producer: John Pruit
for more information, please contact pr@yarlung.us
Yarlung Records
www.yarlungrecords.com

02 Gone

Bryce Dessner - Circles
Bandoneón virtuoso Julien Labro had met Bryce Dessner several years earlier from a collaboration with Bryce and members of Eighth Blackbird on the movie score for The Two Popes. Julien knew Bryce was a successful American rock musician and guitarist based in Paris, but also recognized Dessner’s stature in the classical new music world and wanted very much to ask Bryce to write a piece for him and Takács. Julien hoped and anticipated that Bryce’s piece would explore a radically different musical language from that which Clarice would pursue in Clash. Circles, our opening track on the album, was Dessner’s fabulous result.

Takacs  Assad  Labro 

1 Circles

Hildegard And Her Sisters celebrates the great composer, mystic, poet, philosopher, scientist, rabble-rouser and visionary abbess Hildegard von Bingen who lived from 1098-1179. She was born 32 years after the Battle of Hastings and 47 years before the start of construction of Chartres Cathedral. But Hildegard sounds cutting edge in pianist Katelyn Bouska's hands, as Kate combines seminal works by Hildegard rewritten (with no holds barred) for solo piano, and other women composers Ruth Schoenthal, Maya Miro Johnson, Sláva Vorlová, Amy Beach and Bouska herself, taking us on a journey through the "Dark Night Of The Soul."

Kate said “I was asked to teach a music history seminar at Curtis, one that was required for all incoming first-year students. In developing these lectures I remembered my own first music history course as a student, a life-changing event that transferred my latent passion for archaeology into music research, “uncovering and preserving bones,” so to speak. One of these musical “bones” is music by Hildegard. Whether I return to this music academically or for personal enjoyment, I feel Hildegard’s inspiration without fail. I spent the next semester teaching and re-discovering this ancient yet familiar world from a professor’s standpoint, enjoying the process as my students experienced it for themselves, sometimes for the first time.”

Yarlung Artists commissioned Maya Miro Johnson to write "bruises paraphrase" for Kate, and Yarlung commissioned Kate to create and reimagine three seminal works by Hildegard herself.

Hildegard And Her Sisters

Canticles of Hieronymus, Ruth Schoenthal

CD 1, track 6 Ropes of Sand, Misha Bigos
Sophisticated Lady Jazz Quartet

DSD release sponsored by exaSound
recorded in The Brain and Creativity
Institute’s Cammilleri Hall, October 2013
from Sophisticated Lady YAR65004DSD1

GRAMMY® Award winning Yarlung Records celebrates its 10th Anniversary and continues to bring fresh musicians to the classical music world using minimalist audiophile recording techniques to deliver sound as close to living performance as possible. Yarlung engineers these albums in concert halls famous for their acoustics such as Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Yarlung uses analog tape and high resolution digital media for CDs made with special alloys, high resolution digital downloads, and 180 Gram vinyl LPs, mastered by Steve Hoffman and Bernie Grundman.

It is the quality of the music and the talent of Yarlung’s musicians that have enabled our success.  Yarlung wants the presentation to be like a clean window, which does not distract from the beautiful “view” on the other side.  An example of this was Antonio Lysy at The Broad: Music from Argentina, which won our first GRAMMY Award and was ranked in The Absolute Sound as one of the 40 Best recordings of all time. 

Two of the reasons people support Yarlung are the strength of our mission and the quality of our product.  Despite Yarlung’s small size, reviews in North America, Europe and Asia recognize Yarlung’s importance as one of the highest quality record labels in the world today.  Thanks for your support during Yarlung’s first decade! We look forward to the future.

Bob Attiyeh, producer
www.yarlungrecords.com

A6 Ropes of Sand

CD 1, track 5 
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Violin Concerto in D Major: Mov II, Romanze,

Nigel Armstrong (violin),
Sir Neville Marriner conducting The Colburn Orchestra
Randy and Linda Bellous, executive producers
recorded in Royce Hall at UCLA,
February 2011
from Nigel Armstrong YAR65007

GRAMMY® Award winning Yarlung Records celebrates its 10th Anniversary and continues to bring fresh musicians to the classical music world using minimalist audiophile recording techniques to deliver sound as close to living performance as possible. Yarlung engineers these albums in concert halls famous for their acoustics such as Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Yarlung uses analog tape and high resolution digital media for CDs made with special alloys, high resolution digital downloads, and 180 Gram vinyl LPs, mastered by Steve Hoffman and Bernie Grundman.

It is the quality of the music and the talent of Yarlung’s musicians that have enabled our success.  Yarlung wants the presentation to be like a clean window, which does not distract from the beautiful “view” on the other side.  An example of this was Antonio Lysy at The Broad: Music from Argentina, which won our first GRAMMY Award and was ranked in The Absolute Sound as one of the 40 Best recordings of all time. 

Two of the reasons people support Yarlung are the strength of our mission and the quality of our product.  Despite Yarlung’s small size, reviews in North America, Europe and Asia recognize Yarlung’s importance as one of the highest quality record labels in the world today.  Thanks for your support during Yarlung’s first decade! We look forward to the future.

Bob Attiyeh, producer
www.yarlungrecords.com

A5 Korngold: Concerto in D Major, II, Romanze

CD 1, track 3 I'm Old Fashioned, (Jerome Kern, arranged by Gary Wicks)
Sophisticated Lady Jazz Quartet
John Pruit, executive producer
recorded in The Brain and Creativity
Institute’s Cammilleri Hall,
October 2013
from Sophisticated Lady YAR65004

GRAMMY® Award winning Yarlung Records celebrates its 10th Anniversary and continues to bring fresh musicians to the classical music world using minimalist audiophile recording techniques to deliver sound as close to living performance as possible. Yarlung engineers these albums in concert halls famous for their acoustics such as Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Yarlung uses analog tape and high resolution digital media for CDs made with special alloys, high resolution digital downloads, and 180 Gram vinyl LPs, mastered by Steve Hoffman and Bernie Grundman.

It is the quality of the music and the talent of Yarlung’s musicians that have enabled our success.  Yarlung wants the presentation to be like a clean window, which does not distract from the beautiful “view” on the other side.  An example of this was Antonio Lysy at The Broad: Music from Argentina, which won our first GRAMMY Award and was ranked in The Absolute Sound as one of the 40 Best recordings of all time. 

Two of the reasons people support Yarlung are the strength of our mission and the quality of our product.  Despite Yarlung’s small size, reviews in North America, Europe and Asia recognize Yarlung’s importance as one of the highest quality record labels in the world today.  Thanks for your support during Yarlung’s first decade! We look forward to the future.

Bob Attiyeh, producer
www.yarlungrecords.com

A3 I'm Old Fashioned

CD 1, track 2 Diego Schissi: Juego de Relojes (Game of Clocks)
Smoke & Mirrors Percussion Ensemble

Sandy Pressman, executive producer
Juego de Relojes commissioned by Carlos and Haydee Mollura
recorded in Zipper Hall at The Colburn School, June 2013
from Smoke & Mirrors: Vanish YAR15195


GRAMMY® Award winning Yarlung Records celebrates its 10th Anniversary and continues to bring fresh musicians to the classical music world using minimalist audiophile recording techniques to deliver sound as close to living performance as possible. Yarlung engineers these albums in concert halls famous for their acoustics such as Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Yarlung uses analog tape and high resolution digital media for CDs made with special alloys, high resolution digital downloads, and 180 Gram vinyl LPs, mastered by Steve Hoffman and Bernie Grundman.

It is the quality of the music and the talent of Yarlung’s musicians that have enabled our success.  Yarlung wants the presentation to be like a clean window, which does not distract from the beautiful “view” on the other side.  An example of this was Antonio Lysy at The Broad: Music from Argentina, which won our first GRAMMY Award and was ranked in The Absolute Sound as one of the 40 Best recordings of all time. 

Two of the reasons people support Yarlung are the strength of our mission and the quality of our product.  Despite Yarlung’s small size, reviews in North America, Europe and Asia recognize Yarlung’s importance as one of the highest quality record labels in the world today.  Thanks for your support during Yarlung’s first decade! We look forward to the future.

Bob Attiyeh, producer
www.yarlungrecords.com

A2 Diego Schissi: Juego de Relojes (Game of Clocks)

CD 1, track 1 
Diego Ortiz: Recercada Ottava 
Ciaramella Ensemble
Arian Jansen, executive producer
recorded in Alfred Newman Hall, June 2011
from Ciaramella: Dances YAR96819

GRAMMY® Award winning Yarlung Records celebrates its 10th Anniversary and continues to bring fresh musicians to the classical music world using minimalist audiophile recording techniques to deliver sound as close to living performance as possible. Yarlung engineers these albums in concert halls famous for their acoustics such as Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Yarlung uses analog tape and high resolution digital media for CDs made with special alloys, high resolution digital downloads, and 180 Gram vinyl LPs, mastered by Steve Hoffman and Bernie Grundman.

It is the quality of the music and the talent of Yarlung’s musicians that have enabled our success.  Yarlung wants the presentation to be like a clean window, which does not distract from the beautiful “view” on the other side.  An example of this was Antonio Lysy at The Broad: Music from Argentina, which won our first GRAMMY Award and was ranked in The Absolute Sound as one of the 40 Best recordings of all time. 

Two of the reasons people support Yarlung are the strength of our mission and the quality of our product.  Despite Yarlung’s small size, reviews in North America, Europe and Asia recognize Yarlung’s importance as one of the highest quality record labels in the world today.  Thanks for your support during Yarlung’s first decade! We look forward to the future.

Bob Attiyeh, producer
www.yarlungrecords.com

A1 Diego Ortiz: Recercada Ottava

22. Kinderszenen, Op. 15 - No. 6, Wichtige Begebenheit (An Important Event)

14. 13 Preludes, Op. 32 - No. 11 in B Major. Allegretto

27. Kinderszenen, Op. 15 - No. 11, Fürchtenmachen (Frightening)

24. Kinderszenen, Op. 15 - No. 8, Am Camin (By the Fire-side)

01. Fantasia in C Minor, K. 475

28. Kinderszenen, Op. 15 - No. 12, Kind im Einschlummern (Child Falling Asleep)

29. Kinderszenen, Op. 15 - No. 13, Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks)

33. Keyboard Sonata in D Minor, Kk. 32 (L. 423)

30. Nocturne No. 21 in C Minor, Op. posth.

16. Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18

Men of Dharamsala
Catalog # YAR70902

The first institution that His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama created in 1959 while establishing his Tibetan government in exile in India was TIPA, the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts.  We created this album in honor of the Dalai Lama's 80th birthday on July 6th, 2015 and to support TIPA and their valiant musicians who struggle to keep Tibetan performing arts alive.  The repertoire includes Tibetan opera, dance and folk tunes, nomad songs from the Tibetan plateau sung in Amdo, and special stage purification dances.  We recorded this album in the auditorium at TIPA in McLeod Ganj, perched above the Indian hill station of Dharamsala.  Monkeys sat on the roof and contributed "percussion" when they felt like it by banging on the roof when they liked something.  They were a frustrating if appreciative audience. 

Joining TIPA musicians on this album are monks of Nechung Monastery, singing special pujas (prayers) unique to this monastery.  Nechung Kuten, the Tibetan State Oracle, encouraged this recording and contributed his Monastery and his monk musicians to the project.  The album opens with a blessing of the environment recorded in the new Nechung monastery in Dharamsala, a prayer to the four lineages of Tibetan Buddhism and a Losar prayer for the New Year.  Tibetan wind instruments, human skull rattles and Tibetan long horns accompany them with vigor. 


Tibetan long horns

Great Eastern Sun (Tibetan nomad song, Amdo)

Yuko Mabuchi moved to the United States from her native Japan only recently, but when she plays American jazz she speaks the language perfectly.  We love Yuko’s sense of rhythm and melody, and her improvising feels like she was born in Detroit or New York City.  Her technique reminds one of some of Yuko’s music idols like Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock and Monty Alexander.  But beyond her talent for traditional jazz, one can also hear flavors of American R&B, Hip-Hop and Blues, which Yuko loved as a teenager.  This album’s associate producer and Yarlung special advisor Billy Mitchell describes Yuko’s playing as “funky from the heart,” and he means that as an enormous compliment.  Yuko was born in Fukui, on the west coast of Japan, north of Kyoto.  She studied classical music and the piano starting at age four, and continued her studies at the AN Music School in Kyoto, where she was a jazz piano student of Kunihiro Kameda.

Yarlung first heard the Yuko Mabuchi Trio at Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood and offered to record their debut album the next day.  This live concert recording session took place in Cammilleri Hall, the same concert venue designed by Yasuhisa Toyota, where Yarlung recorded Sophisticated Lady jazz quartet in 2014.  Jazz pianist and educator Billy Mitchell served as associate producer.

Yuko Mabuchi Trio

Sonas Song (Yuko Mabuchi)

On Green Dolphin Street (Bronislaw Kaper)

Valse Noire (Mark Louis Lehman)

What Is This Thing Called Love (Cole Porter)

Nostos
Tes Mousikes
(The Homecoming of Music)

Cal State University Fullerton
University Singers
Dr. Robert Istad, music director

Tracks:
Excerpts from:

1.  Nunc Dimittis  (Arvo Part)

2. O Crux , Op. 79 (Knut Nystedt)

3. Amazing Grace (Arr. Eriks Esenvalds)

4. Requiem (Howells, Herbert)
	Salvator Mundi						
	Psalm 23						
	Requiem Aeternam					
	Psalm 121						
	Requiem Aeternam					
	I Heard A Voice From Heaven				

5. Media Vita (Michael McGlynn)

6. Spaseniye sodelal, Op. 25, No. 5 (Pavel Chesnovok)	

7. Zapovedi Blazhenstv (The Beatitudes) (Vladamir Martynov)

8. Alleluia, laus et gloria  (Tarik O’Regan)

9. Pseudo-Yoik  (Jaakko Mantyjarvi)

10. Schaffe in mir, Gott, ein rein Herz, Op. 29, No. 2 (Johannes Brahms)

11. My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord (Arr. Moses Hogan)

Nostos Tes Mousikes

Media Vita (Michael McGlynn)

Unknown album (5/12/2020 8:45:52 AM)

All Blues

In an age when even music has become disposable, Yarlung Records flies in the face of convention, making a bold commitment to produce artisanal, hand-crafted recordings, showcasing an extraordinary range of musical repertoire, performed by some of today's most exciting and charismatic young artists.
Utilizing an intimate one-take recording strategy, precise (and minimal) microphone placement and no post-production fidgeting with the sound - Yarlung's sound will up new paths for your musical discovery and enjoyment. 
We invite you to join us in a “New Golden Age” of recording with Yarlung Records.


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