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Mariel Roberts

“Trailblazing” cellist Mariel Roberts (Feast of Music) is widely recognized as a deeply dedicated interpreter of contemporary music. Recent performances have garnered praise for her “technical flair and exquisite sensitivity” (American Composers Forum), as well as her ability to “couple youthful vision with startling maturity”. (InDigest Magazine). Roberts' work emphasizes expanding the technical and expressive possibilities of her instrument through close relationships with innovative performers and composers of her generation. Her passion for collaboration and experimentation has led her to premiere hundreds of new works by both emerging and established artists.

Roberts has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across four continents, most notably as a member of the Mivos Quartet, Wet Ink Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Ensemble Signal. She performs regularly on major stages for new music such as the Lincoln Center Festival (NYC), Wien Modern (Austria), Lucerne Festival(Switzerland), Cervantino Festival (Mexico), Klang Festival (Denmark), Shanghai New Music Week (China), Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), and Aldeburgh Music Festival (UK). Roberts has been featured as a chamber musician on recordings for Innova, Albany Records, New World Records, New Amsterdam, Carrier Records, New Focus, and Urtext Records.

Mariel has released two solo albums, "nonextraneous sounds" and "Cartography", to critical acclaim. About "nonextraneous sounds", New York's WQXR radio wrote: “By playing a program this well-curated, with this much confidence, precision and good old-fashioned muscle, Roberts is not so much "making a statement," artistically speaking, as she is sounding an alarm. Listeners should come running.”

“There was some hand-wringing in recent years over the future of new music, going something like this: With no dominant musical paradigm to rebel against, will today's young composers lack a certain edge? Won't they lose focus, now that eclecticism is the order of the day? Cellist Mariel Roberts's solo debut, "Nonextraneous Sounds," demonstrates that any such anxieties were, to put it mildly, misplaced. The music on this disc, by a range of rising young composers, is nothing short of gripping from the first note to the last, and it's thanks largely to the intense focus of these highly individual musicians.” WQXR

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Album Review

Anna Webber: Shimmer Wince

Read "Shimmer Wince" reviewed by John Sharpe


There is often an underlying rigor to the work of Canadian saxophonist and flautist Anna Webber, be that inspiration from the digital world on Binary (Skirl, 2016), her investigation of multiphonic intervals on Idiom (Pi, 2021) or contemporary classical percussion repertoire on Clockwise (Pi, 2020). On Shimmer Wince, she derives her compositions from her study of Just Intonation, a system which many believe offers a more “pure" way of tuning and allows greater timbral and sonic possibilities ...

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Ludovica Burtone: Sparks

Read "Sparks" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


È un debutto discografico davvero significativo, questo di Ludovica Burtone, violinista friulana di formazione classica con un diploma in composizione del Berklee College of Music e un ottimo curriculum di collaborazioni con jazzzisti statunitensi e internazionali. Inciso a New York con un ensemble comprendente un quartetto d'archi e ritmica, più alcuni ospiti di rilievo (Melissa Aldana, Sami Stevens), il percorso musicale colpisce e affascina per la padronanza con cui Ludovica unisce le varie fonti d'ispirazione.

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Album Review

Anna Webber: Shimmer Wince

Read "Shimmer Wince" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Some mechanical wristwatches have clear faces which allow the owner to observe the inner workings of the marvelous object. It is a wonder just how the timepiece utilizes its mainspring and gear train to drive the harmonic oscillator which keeps near perfect time. The same can be said of composer, saxophonist and flautist Anna Webber's investigation into unique tunings using the overtone series known as Just Intonation (JI). It is an ancient system based on the natural vibration of physical ...

Album Review

Henry Threadgill: The Other One

Read "The Other One" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala


Giunto sulla soglia delle ottanta primavere, Henry Threadgill non lascia sbiadire la propria splendida vitalità creativa. Lo ha fatto quest'anno sia con la pubblicazione dell'imperdibile autobiografiaEasily Slip into Another World, che con una nuova realizzazione discografica, The Other One. Pure questa imperdibile, si colloca tra i lavori che lo hanno visto impegnato esclusivamente come compositore e direttore dell'ensemble, non in qualità di strumentista e solista, sulla traccia dei precedenti Old Locks and Irregular Verbs, del 2016, e Double ...

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Album Review

Henry Threadgill: The Other One

Read "The Other One" reviewed by John Ephland


Listening to Henry Threadgill's music, the bobbing and weaving doesn't maintain a continuity but can jump from one strand to another, one scene to another, as in a dream. It is tonal and not, just as dreams are, perhaps, rhapsodic or unkempt, the story or plot being as tangible, fungible as a summer breeze. Much is made of Threadgill's chamber-music esthetic. And rightly so. It is “so chamber music precise it must all be premeditated, right?" asked the ...

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Album Review

Henry Threadgill Ensemble: The Other One

Read "The Other One" reviewed by Troy Dostert


Now that Henry Threadgill has begun receiving the accolades he has long deserved--the Pulitzer Prize he won in 2016 for In for a Penny, In for a Pound (Pi Recordings, 2015) being just the most prominent example--it is impressive to find him still relentlessly stretching himself as a performer and composer. Since his first forays into the jazz avant-garde in the 1970s, the maverick multi-instrumentalist has always made music that challenges listeners in exciting ways, but it is his uncanny ...

Album Review

Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant avec folie à quatre: Séances

Read "Séances" reviewed by Vic Albani


Nel peculiare universo del “jazz obliquo" contemporaneo il bassista Trevor Dunn, ben conosciuto a chi approda spesso sulle spiagge del signor John Zorn, esiste da sempre un ben conosciuto e mai ben definito mondo di ricerca complessa e collegata ai mille meandri della mente umana. Racconta dunque Dunn che nella Francia del XVIII secolo esisteva una setta di cristiani, considerata eretica dai compagni servi di Dio, chiamata i Convulsionari di Saint-Médard. Dopo la morte di un amato diacono, ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Shimmer Wince

Intakt Records
2024

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The Other One

Pi Recordings
2023

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Sparks

Outside in Music
2023

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Séances

Pyroclastic Records
2022

buy

Idiom

Pi Recordings
2021

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Mutual Aid Music

Pleasure Of The Text Records
2021

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Secours Meurtriers

From: Séances
By Mariel Roberts

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