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.

AGP1-154 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

CALLING ALL AGP PARTISANS: I'd love to include any or all of the following out-of-print CDs in the AGP. If you have one or more and would be willing to make and upload FLAC files, I'd be most grateful. I can walk you through any part of the process you're unfamiliar with. Scans of the CD booklets would be appreciated as well, if you're set-up to make them. 

A generous AGP partisan has come forward with a transcription of Janacek's two string quartets by the Gabrieli quartet. If anyone has the recording by the Medici quartet, I'd love to include that one too. I'm also still looking for:

Bartok's 44 Duos for two violins, performed by Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman
Berg's Lulu, performed by (among others) Anja Silja, Christoph von Dohnanyi, and the Vienna Philharmonic  
Hindemith Kammermusiken performed by Concerto Amsterdam

You can readily find my email address at avantgardeproject.org. Thanks!

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With AGP155, we take a break from our nostalgic revue of the early avant-garde to get back to some more mission-critical material. This is the first of three or four more installments in the US Electronic Series, and comprises a transcription of a CRI LP (SD 476) featuring works by Meyer Kupferman. The eletronic parts of these works are recordings with little electronic manipulation by the same performer who plays live in the piece. In track 01 it is piano (Gilbert Kalish) and in track 03 violin (Max Pollikoff). The combination of live and recorded piano in track 01 reminds me in places of the player-piano music of Conlon Nancarrow, and in one part has what sounds like a nod to Charles Tomlinson Griffes. Track 02 has some gorgeous passages, inspired by music the composer played as a child with his father

The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the notes on the back cover of the LP.

01 - The Celestial City [25:11]
02 - The Garden of my Father's House [8:07]
03 - Angel Footprints [18:30]

Equipment used for A/D conversion: Lyra Helikon phono cartridge, Linn LP12/Lingo turntable, Linn Ittok tonearm, Audioquest LeoPard tonearm cable, PS Audio PS2 preamplifier, Kimber PBJ interconnect, M-Audio Audiophile USB A/D converter.

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.