While touching on the work of musical innovators, such as Erik Satie and John Cage, Hauschka reimagines the potential of the prepared piano for the 21st century – a technique that involves inserting objects between the instrument’s strings or onto its hammers to expand its sonic and operative possibilities.

His forthcoming album, Philanthropy, will be released on October 20th on City Slang.

Bertelmann — whose extraordinary score for All Quiet On The Western Front won an Oscar in 2023 — uses his work not only to move people, whether emotionally or physically but also to provoke. No one sounds like the Düsseldorf-based Hauschka, which he quite reasonably celebrates on Philanthropy by revisiting past habits. “I really loved how I worked in the beginning,” he smiles. “I wanted to connect with the time I first started.” Most of the record was recorded alone on his piano in his studio, beginning in the summer of 2022, though Bertelmann never restricts his use of his instrument to its keys. Throughout the album, he employs a Turkish davul drum and, more prominently than ever, synthesizers, not least a bass synth. There are also contributions from cellist Laura Wiek, violinist Karina Buschinger, and Múm’s drummer Samuli Kosminen.

In the four years between 2019’s A Different Forest and the forthcoming Philanthropy, Bertelmann’s score for All Quiet On The Western Front was part of a major rush of productivity precipitated by the success of 2016’s Oscar-nominated collaboration with Dustin O’Halloran on the score to Garth Davis’ Lion. He and O’Halloran have since worked on several projects, most recently the Kate Winslet-starring Ammonite. Bertelmann’s catalog now includes almost 50 film and TV scores, with 2018’s Patrick Melrose, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, again nominated for a BAFTA, which in turn led him to work again with its director, Edward Berger, on All Quiet On The Western Front.

An occasion for celebration and reflection, Philanthropy is a carefully considered but jubilantly improvised response to recent years, with its philosophically inclined but approachable and compassionate creator at the peak of his compositional powers.

Sontag Shogun official site | Sontag Shogun on Facebook | Sontag Shogun on Instagram
 
Sontag Shogun is a collaborative trio that makes use of analog sonic treatments in harmony with nostalgic solo piano compositions to depict abstract places in our memory. Textures built from organic materials such as sand, slate, boiling water, brush and dried leaves, both produced live in performance and recorded to weathered 1/4″ tape warm up the space between lush piano themes. All of which is abstracted coolly in the reflective digital space of treated vocals and a live-processed feed from the piano. Bringing us back, like a faded passing scent or any natural emotive trigger, but to where? The wordless journey there will inevitably be more revealing than the destination itself. 
 
Ian Temple, piano
Jeremy Young, tapes, oscillators, objects & surfaces
Jesse Perlstein, laptop, field recordings, voice
 
Sontag Shogun has shared the stage with notable artists such as Hauschka, Mountains, Julia Kent, R. Luke DuBois, Aki Onda, Tom Carter, Alexander Turnquist, Matana Roberts, Chris Forsyth, Sam Shalabi, Noveller, Erik Friedlander, Patrick Higgins, thisquietarmy and many others. Beyond mounting several successful tours across the US, Canada, Europe, Japan and China, the trio has performed at festivals including the New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1, Mono No Aware Film Festival, Jue Music and Arts in Shanghai, and their commissioned film/video work has been shown at You Are Here in Canberra, The Others Fair in Torino, Singapore International Film Fest, Seattle International Film Fest as well as Bumbershoot, Los Angeles Shorts Fest, Washington West Film Fest, and XV Concurso Encuentros De Arte Contemporáneo in Alicante among others.

itsnotyouitsme on New Amsterdam Records | istnotyouitsme on Bandcamp

ITSNOTYOUITSME was formed in Harlem, NYC in 2003. Members Grey McMurray and Caleb Burhans met while attending the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. They played in various musical settings together while in school, including a large improvising group called Dialects, heavily influenced by ambient, free-jazz and post-rock musics. Grey and Caleb moved to New York soon after and formed itsnotyouitsme as a means of continuing the aesthetic and objectives of Dialects. In order to create a large sound with the new stripped-down instrumentation, they began using looping devices, which play a significant role in performance as well as in the compositional process. Along with their own material, itsnotyouitsme has since performed works by composers ranging from J.S. Bach to Philip Glass.

The duo has released four acclaimed albums on New Amsterdam, walled gardens (2008) and fallen monuments (2010), everybody’s pain is magnificent (2011), and This I (2013). They have been called “gently mesmerizing” (Time Out New York), and “lush and evocative” (The Very Short List). walled gardens was listed as one of the best CDs of 2008 and regarded as “meltingly beautiful” by the New York Times.