This double album with compositions from the last two decades offers an insight into the diverse musical soundscape of Joël-François Durand. From Mirror Land (2005) to Geister, schwebende Geister... (2020), Durand’s work shows a unique development characterised by his use of microtonality. The poetic dialogues of the Fernando Pessoa-inspired Quatuor à cordes No. 2: Cantar de Amigo (2020) and Durand’s ongoing exploration of microtonal spaces in La descente de l’ange (2022) reveal a dynamic and transformative universe of this extraordinary composer.
[spotify | buy from KAIROS]

Composer Osnat Netzer releases her debut recording, featuring performances by Ensemble Dal Niente in full ensemble and chamber settings, saxophonist Geoffrey Landman, Mivos Quartet, flutist Eric Lamb, violist Michael Hall, pianist Marianne Parker, and the ~Nois saxophone quartet. Netzer's music engages with various abstract concepts, including cognitive linguistics and the experience of physicality.

"Ebullient, pensive, whimsical, and mysterious by turns, Osnat Netzer’s new music presents a multifaceted and deeply riveting gestural world."
-- George Lewis

[ New Focus Records | Bandcamp ]

This is a Bandcamp exclusive pre-release of South African composer Andile Khumalo's "Tracing Hollow Traces," a collection of his vibrant chamber and solo works from the last fifteen years. A full physical and digital release will follow in Spring 2024 with liner notes by South African musicologist Martin Scherzinger. Khumalo's music fuses influences from spectralism to the music of his home country to jazz, integrating literary sources and engaging with issues of concern in contemporary society. The dynamic results are heard here in energetic and committed performances by Ensemble Dal Niente, Argento Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, and selected soloists and chamber musicians.

[ listen on bandcamp ]

Chris Fisher-Lochhead's Wake Up the Dead features performances of his bristling scores by Ensemble Dal Niente, JACK Quartet, Quince Ensemble, and bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward. Fisher-Lochhead conjures vibrant musical ecosystems by managing timbral diversity and alternate approaches to development and structure.

“On the deliciously gnarly opening piece “stutter-step the concept,” a multi-pronged, contrapuntal feast of jagged stops and starts, striated timbres, and fleeting harmonies is elucidated with impressive precision and energy by Ensemble Dal Niente…The piece wends and winds its way through constantly morphing phrases, shifting sonic perspective like a Calder mobile.” —Peter Margasak, The Best Contemporary Classical Music on Bandcamp, November 2023

[ New Focus Records | Bandcamp ]

Three concerto-like works by Jeffrey Mumford are offered on his newest recording for Albany Records, including Becoming, written for Dal Niente pianist Winston Choi (Watch Dal Niente’s performance here). In his music, Mumford cultivates rich connections between the aural and the visual, creating intricate, profoundly expressive music directly influenced by the people with whom he works over his long career. Noted soloists Christine Lamprea (cello); Winston Choi (piano); and Christine Wu (violin) are joined by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kazem Abdullah; Ensemble Dal Niente conducted by Michael Lewanski; and the Chicago Composers Orchestra conducted by Allen Tinkham.

[Apple Music | Spotify | Albany Records]

This portrait of composer Anthony Cheung brings together recordings by Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Musikfabrik, and Ensemble Modern. In The Natural Word (2019), written for Ensemble Dal Niente, Cheung sets music to film captions and film clips representing non-dialogue sounds, ambient sounds and descriptions of music (with the assistance of Tristan Cook in editing the accompanying film). These include the sounds of foghorns, thunder, wind, and electronic machinery, as well as affective captions such as [orchestra playing tender melody] or [melancholy theme playing].

buy from Kairos

What Jeff Parker, LJ White, and Murat Çolak—three otherwise very different musicians—seem to share are practices that span or genre-defy in ways that are often pretended to but rarely achieved. In every piece on this album, some number of pre-existing pop, trance, film music, musique concrète, or other elements have been transformed into music written for Ensemble Dal Niente. This album shares DNA with projects like Dal Niente’s 2016 collaboration with Deerhoof in that each of these composers has mined their own practices and inspirations to come up with something utterly new.

Buy from Sideband Records | Bandcamp | Tidal

(New Focus Recordings)

These are pieces that Dal Niente performed in the 2020-2021 season, in the midst of a global pandemic. We programmed and performed these streaming concerts, none of which had a live audience, for many reasons: in order to keep making music; in order to explore and deepen our relationships with composers that inspire us; in order to get our musicians paid in a time when it was hard for musicians to do their work; and in order to to do what we feel what art must always do: reflect and interpret the world around us.

Bandcamp | iTunes

(New Focus Recordings)

On this recording of new repertoire for harp, Ben Melsky of Chicago’s Ensemble Dal Niente (along with colleagues flutist Emma Hospelhorn, guitarist Jesse Langen, clarinetist Katie Schoepflin Jimoh, percussionist Kyle Flens, and soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett) present several new works written by composers in their closely knit community that establish the instrument as an ideal vehicle for contemporary aesthetic exploration. Through extended techniques on the instrument, as well as vocalizations, alternate tunings, and experiments with open form notation, these works engage with the leading edge of compositional experimentation through the lens of one of music’s oldest, and most ubiquitous, instruments.

Bandcamp | Amazon

George Lewis (b. 1952) combines an astonishing level of creativity with trenchant critiques of many traditional conceptions about experimental music. The four compositions on this album reference a wide range of ideas, from rhetoric in Ancient Rome to actor network theory, and the album's eponymous composition finds its grounding in the concept of the "assemblage," (or agencement in French) a pragmatic, material, non-teleological approach to composition.

Buy from New World Records | iTunes | Amazon
 

Composer Mikel Kuehn, a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, writes music that is deftly structured, exquisitely orchestrated, and imbued with an ideal balance between deep pathos and intellectual rigor. Heard here in performances by Chicago based Ensemble Dal Niente, Flexible Music, percussionist Gregory Beyer, guitarist Daniel Lippel, cellist Craig Hultgren, and BGSU Saxophone Ensemble, and with in depth liner notes by flutist/composer/new music icon Harvey Sollberger, Kuehn's music takes the high modernist tradition as a starting point, creating works of rich depth that reward repeat listenings.

Buy Direct | iTunes | Bandcamp | Amazon

Balter / Saunier features works by composer Marcos Balter and Greg Saunier, drummer for the band Deerhoof. Deerhoof and Dal Niente first crossed paths in 2012 when they shared a bill at Chicago’s Millennium Park. The two groups bonded instantly over their shared sensibilities and began work towards Balter / Saunier, an intricate intermingling of styles that captures each group at its most adventurous.

iTunes | Bandcamp | Google Play | Amazon

Diligence is to Magic as Progress is to Flight is a collaboration between Katherine Young and Austin Wulliman. Dal Niente performs on Movement IV which is scored for scordatura violin solo and chamber orchestra.

iTunes | Parlour Tapes+ | Google Play

Chris Wild, Dal Niente cellist and Lead Artistic Coordinator, collaborates with fellow ensemble members Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, Gregory Beyer, Mabel Kwan, and Austin Wulliman on works by Marcos Balter, Eliza Brown, Daniel Dehaan, Andrew Greenwald, Chinary Ung, and Claude Vivier.

iTunes | Google Play | Amazon

Dal Niente accompanies Ryan Muncy on Franco Donatoni's Hot for solo tenor and sopranino saxophone and ensemble.

iTunes | New Focus Recordings |

Without Words is the first portrait album of composer Aaron Einbond and the debut full-length CD by Ensemble Dal Niente.

iTunes | Carrier Records | Google Play