Tzadik

Tzadik is dedicated to releasing the best in avant garde and experimental music, presenting a worldwide community of contemporary musician-composers who find it difficult or impossible to release their music through more conventional channels. Tzadik believes most of all in the integrity of its artists. What you hear on Tzadik is the artists's vision undiluted.

Link to home page : Tzadik

CDs:

Artist: Ben Goldberg

Title: What Comes Before

Ben Goldberg, John Schott, Michael Sarin. 1998

Artist: New Klezmer Trio

Title: Melt Zonk Rewire

Ben Goldberg, Dan Seamans, Kenny Wollesen. 1995

Artist: New Klezmer Trio

Title: Masks and Faces

Artist: New Klezmer Trio

Title: Short For Something

with Ben Goldberg, clarinet

Label Number: 001

Artist: Eyvind Kang

Title: 7 Nades

Label Number: 7013

Artist: David Slusser

Title: Delight at the End of the Tunnel

Composer, performer, one of the foremost sound designers on the West Coast, the mad genius of David Slusser has enhanced the films of David Lynch, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and the music of John Zorn, Mike Patton and Angelo Badalamenti.

Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as 1950's mood music, industrial demos, early musique concrete and beer commercials, Slusser takes us on an exotic trip through his insane sound world via sound effects, theremins and other rare electronic instruments that either have been or should have been long forgotten.

David Slusser
Chris Ackerman
Ralph Carney
Johannes Mager
Tom Nunn
Len Paterson Randy Porter
Dave Scott
Dan Seamans
Dale Sofia
Annelise Zamula

Label Number: 7024

Artist: Mike Patton

Title: Burt Bacharach : Great Jewish Music

A double-CD collection of Tzadik artists and special guests paying tribute to one of the great geniuses of American music.

Burt Bacharach's compositions explode the expectations of what a popular song is supposed to be. Advanced harmonies and chord changes with unexpected turnarounds and modulations, unusual changing time signatures and rhythmic twists, often in uneven numbers of bars. But he makes it all sound so natural you can't get it out of your head or stop whistling it. Maddeningly complex, sometimes deceptively simple, these are more than just great pop songs: these are deep explorations of the materials of music.

Modern jazz greats (Wayne Horvitz, Bill Frisell, Joey Baron, Dave Douglas, Medeski Martin & Wood), rock luminaries (Robert Quine, Lloyd Cole, Mike Patton, Marc Ribot, Kramer, Yuka Honda, Robin Holcomb) and experimental stars (Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Elliott Sharp, Shelley Hirsch) shed new light on a highly original and inspiring composer/arranger who brought the lessons he learned from bebop and Darius Milhaud to the world of pop music.

This is the first installment in Tzadik's Great Jewish Music series, which pays tribute to some of the greatest composers of our time.

Label Number: 7114-2

Artist: John Zorn

Title: Elegy

Label Number: 7302

Artist: Jose Maceda

Title: Drone and Melody

This is the second Tzadik release of music by one of the most original and under-appreciated composers of the twentieth century. With his passing in 2004, several of his most passionate musical collaborators have been continuing Maceda’s legacy and they come together here to present his most ambitious and greatest large scale work—Strata. Beautifully recorded In Manila at the University of the Philippines directed by Maceda’s long-time collaborator Ramôn Santos and Mills College colleague Chris Brown, this is a long awaited follow-up to the seminal Gongs and Bamboo release from 2001. Also included are two beautifully recorded pieces for western instruments from Maceda’s last decade—Sujeichon for five pianos based largely on Korean court music, and Music for Two Pianos and Four Percussion Groups. Another essential release by this maverick compositional master.

Personnel:

Up Contemporary Music Players
Ramôn P. Santos: Conductor

The Mills Performing Group
Steed Cowart: Conductor

Label Number: 8043