The Avant Garde Project is a series of 20th-century classical, experimental, and electroacoustic torrents digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. This is wild stuff, so check it out if you've never heard this sort of music before. The analog rig used to extract the sound from the grooves is near state-of-the-art, producing almost none of the tracking distortion or surface noise normally associated with LPs. 

AGP1-133 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

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AGP138 presents works by the Romanian composer Ulpiu Vlad. These tracks were professionally recorded, I believe under the supervision of the composer, and made available to me with the approval of the composer by a fellow Romanian who is one of the AGP's most dedicated partisans. All of the objective information I have on the works and the recordings is in the track listing below, but I can also offer my own reactions after listening to these tracks several times. 

This is the sort of music I would want to compose if I were able to compose. It is not atonal, but neither is it obviously tonal in a traditional sense. In Poetica Viselor, temporary tonal centers are established by long-held notes as other lines weave various intervals around them, and there is frequent tonal ambiguity as one tonal center passes away and another asserts itself. Just enough dissonance is produced through the interweaving of lines and competing tonal centers to achieve a truly delicious sound texture. The exploration of shifting tonal centers reminds me on the one hand of an alap movement in a North Indian raga performance, and at the same time of the epochal adagio movement that begins Beethoven's C-sharp minor string quartet. The music in this work is mostly gentle verging on static with occasional outbursts of more chaotic sound. De nunt? is a choral work that unites harmonies that will be familiar to aficionados of Balkan vocal ensembles such as the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir, with vocal textures and techniques such as Luciano Berio used in Sinfonia and other works. The combination is a lot of fun.

The recordings are rich and detailed throughout. More information on the composer can be found at the following sites:

http://www.composers21.com/compdocs/vladu.htm               (English)
http://www.ucmr.org.ro/listMembri.asp?CodP=111&TipPag=comp  (Romanian, with a photo)

I have titled this installment Ulpiu Vlad I not because I have another installment in the works; but, well, a guy can dream.

01 - Poetica viselor (The poetry of dreams), 1 [14:20]
02 - Poetica viselor (The poetry of dreams), 2 [13:42]
03 - Poetica viselor (The poetry of dreams), 3 [17:35]

[three pieces for soloists and instrumental ensemble recorded on tape, 2003]

04 - De nunt? (Wedding songs), 1988, The Madrigal Chorus, conductor Dorel Pa?cu R?dulescu [10:16]
05 - Dincolo de vise VI (Beyond dreams VI), 2006, The ensemble Partita Radicale (Germany) and tape [19:04]

NOTE: To the best of my knowledge, these recordings are not currently available commercially. If you know otherwise, please let me know ASAP, as I do not wish any artists to be deprived of the royalties that they so richly deserve.