Urlicht AudioVisual News

  • New Release Preview: Fall 2026 through early 2027

    New Release Preview: Fall 2026 through early 2027

    September marks the start of our most ambitious series of new releases yet!

    LATE SEPTEMBER 2026: The newest recording by The New York Piano Quartet — violinist Elmira Darvarova, violist Ronald Carbone, cellist Sam Magill, and pianist Linda Hall — brings together two inexplicably underplayed masterpieces of the romantic era — the piano quartets of Charles-Marie Widor and Amanda Maier — with American eclectic master David Amram‘s Portraits for piano quartet.

    LATE SEPTEMBER 2026: Satori — the first solo album from Berlin-based Irist clarinetist Carol McGonnell, features virtuoso music for clarinet(s) by Steve Reich, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Allain Gaussin, Béla Kovács and Jörg Widmann.

    FALL 2026: Miranda Cuckson reunites with Blair McMillen for their second recording together for Urlicht: Ballads, thirteen works for violin or viola and piano, by Manuel Ponce, Robert Cuckson, Michelle Barzel Ross, Paolo Marchettini, Billy Jim Layton, Quincy Jones (arr. Blair McMillen), Matthew Aucoin, Zosha di Castri, Toshio Hosokawa, Francesco Landini (arr. Blair McMillen), James Primosch, Lili Boulanger, and Coleman Hawkins (after Johnny Green, transcribed by Ethan Iverson).

    FALL 2026: The Urlicht debut of pianist Beth Levin, in a program tha includes Mozart‘s Piano Sonata K331 “Alla Turca”, Mendelssohn‘s Variations serieuses, Wang Xilin‘s atmospheric The Night in a Deserted Village, Ravel’s Menuet antique and an American masterpiece, Peter Mennin‘s Five Piano Pieces.

    FALL 2026: The brilliant, irrepressible Swedish jazz singer Sophie Dunér teams up with New York pianist-composer-improvisor Anthony Coleman for a program of Sophie’s wry, inspied songs: Messed-Up Stride.

    FALL 2026: A world-premiere recording of music for solo violin by composer Jeffrey Mumford, played by Miranda Cuckson.

    FALL 2026: Ethan Iverson teams up with pianist Hiroko Sasaki for a program of four-hands piano music composed and arranged by Ethan, including his Sonata for Four Hands and inimitable realizations of music by Vivaldi and Ravel. Also included: Ethan plays solo piano works by Matthew Guerreri (better known in the blogosphere as Soho the Dog) and James P. Johnson.

    2027: New music by composer Ann Cleare, in a program that includes recordings by Carol McGonnell with the JACK Quartet.

    … and more to come! DEVELOPING…

  • The Chimera interview

    The Chimera interview

    In advance of the CD and digital release of Chimer’as eponymous recording debut, the ensemble has recorded an interview you can watch on Vimeo!

  • Stockhausen’s “Tierkreis” Explained

    Sophie Dunér’s interview with Steve Robinson is live on YouTube – give it a listen!

  • Ethan Iverson Interviews Georg Friedrich Haas

    Ethan Iverson Interviews Georg Friedrich Haas

    Go read Ethan Iverson’s interview with composer Georg Friedrich Haas on Substack – published in advance of a Thursday concert premiere At New York City’s Merkin Hall of Haas’s Annäherung with Miranda Cuckson and Parker Ramsay.
    You can get tickets for the concert here.
    Yu can find links to stream, download, or buy the CD of Haas’s Violin Concerto No. 2 here.

  • Gramophone praises Miranda Cuckson’s all-Haas album

    Gramophone praises Miranda Cuckson’s all-Haas album

    “Haas proposed writing the concerto for Cuckson after one of her performances of [de terrae fine]; in both, imbrications peel away and reshuffle themselves as striking emotional flights. … The nine-movement Second Concerto situates the soloist as a prism refracting the orchestra’s behaviours. … The booklet note names the Berg Concerto as a reference, though Ligeti’s is in the room with us too, in protracted periods of shimmering tension that threaten to split the ensemble in half.”
    – Jennifer Gersten, Gramophone

    Read the full review here.

    Links to listen and download here.

    Buy the CD here.

  • Miranda Cuckson on Georg Friedrich Haas’s Violin Concerto No. 2

    Miranda Cuckson on Georg Friedrich Haas’s Violin Concerto No. 2

    Miranda has published an extended commentary on Georg Friedrich Haas’s Violin Concerto No. 2 that extends the scope of description and analysis in the liner notes that accompany the release on Urlicht AudioVisual. You can read them on her web site by clicking here. You can also download a pdf of the complete notes for the digital/CD release here.

  • “something special”

    “something special”

    “The New York–based Swedish singer Sophie Dunér is rooted in jazz but also studied with Stockhausen (who died in 2007), and found herself focusing on the set of songs during the CovID-19 lockdown. She eventually took the set of songs into the studio, and couldn’t have found a finer accompanist than Steven Beck (credited here as “Steve”—perhaps that’s his jazz name). Beck has worked and performed with Elliott Carter, George Crumb and Pierre Boulez, as well as Dave Soldier and John Zorn. The 12 songs (the album’s 13th “bonus” track is American composer Francis Schwartz’ The Neon Pterodactyl) are brief and full of character, more artful than the verse/chorus structure of generations of popular music, with traits of both the planetary personality types and their mythic representations. Dunér doesn’t overplay the sketches… Beck is heard exclusively on Fender Rhodes, taking tasteful advantage of the ringing upper register and the grumbling lower… the recording — his first time playing a Rhodes — is something special, setting the songs back in the odd, soft rock era from which they came.”
    – New York City Jazz Record
    Available on CD and for streaming/download!

  • Coming in November: Miranda Cuckson Plays Georg Friedrich Haas

    UPDATE: You can download the press release by clicking here.

    The world premiere recording of a major work of one of the world’s most celebrated living composers, Georg Friedrich Haas, will be released worldwide digitally and in CD format on November 21, 2025 on Urlicht AudioVisual.

    Violin Concerto No. 2 was written in 2017 for Miranda Cuckson, with whom the composer has long collaborated, and premiered that year with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov. The present recording features Miranda’s live performance of Violin Concerto No. 2 at Vienna’s legendary Musikverein with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Markus Poschner, recorded in concert on November 24, 2023. It is coupled with her recording of de terrae fine for violin solo.

    Miranda has written, “Georg is one of the great musicians of our time and a warm person and friend. The emotion in his music has meant so much to me since meeting him so many years ago as an ensemble player and playing his music for him – his violin piece ‘de terrae fine’, the US premiere of ‘in vain’, and other works. I’ve since performed ‘de terrae fine’ many times. At the release concert for my album including ‘de terrae fine’, I was beyond thrilled when he told me he wanted to write a concerto for me.”

    Digital release worldwide and US CD release date: November 21, 2025.

    Download the press release here.

     

  • “… bringing to mind Joni Mitchell singing Charles Mingus”

    “… bringing to mind Joni Mitchell singing Charles Mingus”

    “Vocalist Sophie Dunér is a jazz singer with an avant lean; Jay Clayton might be a reference, although the core of Dunér’s sound is richer, more like a professional lieder recitalist. Steven Beck is one of the great NYC new music pianists, and he plays the whole cycle on a Fender Rhodes. The pieces are generally treated like jazz, where they play the melody, improvise, and restate the melody. Dunér has written additional lyrics to the Stockhausen themes, bringing to mind Joni Mitchell singing Charles Mingus.

    “Dunér worked with Stockhausen and he approved of her approach. The final effect is a bit sci-fi cabaret, like the entertainment on a cruise ship on a distant planet as two suns boil off in the distance.”

    – ETHAN IVERSON, Transitional Technology

    Links for streaming, download, and purchase here.

  • ‘songful and fresh’

    ‘songful and fresh’

    “Spalding fits the ‘inimitable’ label that Parnassus’s collection of violinist can claim as a given, and these mostly unpublished recordings (around 1950) are both songful and fresh. … the performances by Spalding and Dohnányi make this well-transferred disc indispensable for all lovers of quality chamber of music memorably performed.”
    – Gramophone, August 2025

    Spalding and Dohnányi in Concert

    Bach: Sonata No. 3 in E major, BWV1016 • Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 10 in G major, Op. 96 • Dohnányi: Violin Sonata in C sharp minor, Op. 21
    Albert Spalding, Ernő Dohnányi

    Schubert: Grand Duo for Violin and Piano in A Major, D574 • Ravel: Vocalise-étude en forme de habanera
    Albert Spalding, Anthony Kooiker

    Recorded ca. 1950
    Produced by Leslie Gerber
    Restored and mastered by Gene Gaudette, Urlicht AudioVisual
    Parnassus PACL96096

    We’re very happy about the press reception to Parnassus’s latest release. CD available from Presto, Amazon, and EuropaDisc – download available from Presto!