Joe Hisaishi started to show his interest in minimal music when he was a student at Kunitachi College of Music, and started his career as a comtemporary music composer. Presentation of MKWAJU in 1981 and the release of his first album “Information”in the following year was the kickoff of his career as a solo artist.Starting with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Hisaishi has produced music for 10 Hayao Miyazaki films. He also composed the music for HANA-BI directed by Takeshi Kitano, Departures directed by Yojiro Takita, Villain directed by Sang-il Lee, The Tale of Princess Kaguya directed by Isao Takahata, What A Wonderful Familly!series directed by Yoji Yamada.

Linda Guo and Manuel Lipstein make their duo debut on this new release. Titled Pas de deux, the programme features five significant 20th-century compositions for violin and cello. Works by Xenakis, Ravel and Honegger reflect the composers’ French roots, while a diverse, forward-looking harmonic language contrasts with such traditional forms as the sonata and passacaglia, the latter in Norwegian Johan Halvorsen’s Passacaglia for Violin and Cello after Georg Friedrich Händel; Austro-Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff’s Duo for Violin and Cello completes the programme.

For this album, Narek Hakhnazaryan has selected works that showcase the characteristics of cello playing: its tonal warmth, emotional depth and versatility. The interplay of original works and arrangements has resulted in a program that sees the cello as a unifying voice - inspired by the figure of the medieval minstrel in Glasunov's Chant du ménestrel op. 71.

This album is her initial solo piece that was recorded in Gent, Belgium in 1999 and is imported from Japan. Known around the world as the most promising and upcoming young artist who has the finest percussion technique and musical skills. This album explores wide ranges of percussion sound by marimba, vibraphone and multi-percussions and her perfect performance covers the signature pieces from Iannis Xenakis, Franco Donatoni, Frederic Rzewski, Joseph Schwantner and Yoichi Sugiyama.

KUNIKO’s fifth studio recording sees the hugely talented percussionist return to the music of Steve Reich, a composer she has championed since her debut recording in 2011. In Drumming KUNIKO delivers a tour-de-force performance of the work which is widely considered minimalism’s first masterpiece. Performing all thirteen parts herself, and adopting the same multi-track approach which was so successful on kuniko plays reich, KUNIKO once again displays the technical virtuosity and flawless musicianship for which she is renowned. This seminal work employs Reich’s trademark phasing technique; subtle changes in timing and timbre cause the soundscape to build through a series of rhythmic loops which gradually evolve to create a wholly immersive experience. After hearing her performance on Drumming Reich commented: 'The result is like a microscopic close up of the piece where all the finest details are heard with amazing clarity'. Drumming sees the award-winning percussionist once again demonstrate the musical intelligence and flair which makes such a captivating performer.

Following the tremendous success of her 2011 album Kuniko Plays Reich, and subsequent recordings of works by the pioneering composer, percussionist Kuniko has established a reputation as one of the foremost interpreters of Steve Reich. Here she has recorded Kuniko Plays Reich II, a bold programme of innovative works which span Reich's artistic career and showcase some of his groundbreaking techniques. Composed in his early thirties, Piano Phase is performed in Kuniko's own mesmerising arrangement for two vibraphones; characteristically Kuniko plays both parts. While Nagoya Marimbas uses some composition tools which Reich popularised in Piano Phase, Four Organs draws its inspiration from the Middle Ages. Closing this riveting recital, Mallet Quartet sees Reich in a more melodically expansive mood, albeit with his trademark tight rhythmic drive and canonic textures.

For her sixth Linn recording KUNIKO has chosen to pay a personal tribute to one of Japan’s most celebrated post-war composers: Akira Miyoshi (1933–2013). Showcasing Miyoshi’s marimba works from the last four decades of the twentieth century, this recording represents a reference collection commemorating the composer’s significant contribution to this repertoire.

KUNIKO's eagerly awaited second album includes world premiere recordings of the percussionist's new arrangements of popular works by contemporary composers Arvo Pärt, Steve Reich and Hywel Davies.

“Portrait is a string of recordings presenting contemporary composers with a unique musical signature. Ludovico Einaudi is one of them. A music that captivates the listener, a sonic landscape to discover!” Angèle Dubeau. Driven by the works of this grand and prolific Italian composer, the internationally renowned violinist shares once again her passion with the excellent musicians of her string orchestra, La Pietà. Angèle Dubeau offers a unique revisit to Ludovico Einaudi’s music, “changing its texture, rethinking its character, while bringing a new sonic dimension.” After three critically acclaimed albums in the Portrait series devoted to Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt and John Adams, Angèle Dubeau delves into another distinctive minimalist universe. She chose 13 works arranged by François Vallières and herself that put in light the multiple facets of the popular composer. His refined and diverse works are present on the soundtracks of various celebrated movies such as Mommy (2014) by Xavier Dolan, Untouchables (2011) by Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, as well as This is England (2006) by Shane Meadows.

"This compact disc presents all the studio recordings that remain from a time when, as a twenty-five year old champion of the avant-garde, I had to seek for every possible occasion of playing the new works of our composers. In those days, they were hounded and ripped apart by ideological critics; now they are recognized as the masters of new music. Audiences today need to realize with how much excitement and trust people discovered and took over the new currents seeping in from Europe through the Iron Curtain. These works represent and symbolize a marvelous epoch of friendship, a time when we came to know new horizons and discovered ourselves in the Soviet Union's huge, heterogeneous spaces." (Alexei Lubimov. May 2003)

Over a period of five years, Swiss directors Norbert Wiedmer and Peter Guyer documented the activity of legendary producer Manfred Eicher, the founder and driving force behind ECM Records, whose advocacy of progressive jazz and of classical composers like Arvo Pärt, Meredith Monk, Valentin Silvestrov, and György Kurtág changed the landscape of contemporary music in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The film Sounds and Silence: Travels with Manfred Eicher was released in 2009 and this 2011 soundtrack album is made up largely of tracks taken from previously released ECM albums that Eicher produced, some from as early as 1980. Most of the pieces are low-key and understated and feature chamber ensembles, although there are several piano tracks and several featuring orchestra or chorus. The album has a mix of selections from ECM's classical and jazz repertoire, and from the label's specialty, the many pieces that lie somewhere in between the two.

The title of ECM's release of works by three composers born in the former Soviet Union perfectly captures the mood of the CD – it is truly mysterious. Although more than half a century separates the first of these pieces from the most recent, they share a sense of otherness that defies easy explanation. The pieces are not so much mysterious in the sense of being eerie (although there are several moments that might raise the hairs on the back of your neck if you were listening alone in the dark); they are unsettling because they raise more questions than they answer.

Estonian composer Helena Tulve (born 1972) is one of the brightest musical lights to emerge around the turn of the millennium. The first collection of her work was a remarkable debut, and its centerpiece, the massive Sula, deserves to be counted among the most monumental and original orchestral works of the first decade of the 21st century. While none of the pieces on this album quite match the impact of that piece, they each reveal a very fine musical intelligence and imagination and an ability to evoke a sense of the unpredictable, primordial processes of nature, particularly in frozen and desolate landscapes. Her works unfold with an organic logic that defies easy analysis but that feels inexorable and true. Each of these pieces lasts about 10 minutes. À travers, for chamber ensemble, and abysses, for flutes and chamber ensemble, do not use large forces, but both conjure up a sense of immense space, and like Sula, sound very, very cold. Much the same is true of Lijnen, which adds voice to the ensemble with aphoristic texts by Belgian poet Roland Jooris that confirm the tone of nature's icy and impersonal power that is evident in the music.

Recorded by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and various soloists and ensembles in churches in Tallinn as well as the Estonian Concert Hall, the five compositions heard on Arboles lloran por lluvia (Trees cry for rain) give deeper insight into the unique sound-world of Estonian composer Helena Tulve, into music that is nourished by both contemporary and ancient currents. Tulve draws upon a wide-range of inspirational sources. She explores the raw fabric of sound and the nature of timbre in both analytical and instinctive ways, in compositions that are unmistakably her own, yet her work is inclusive - here incorporating aspects of Gregorian chant, melody from Yemenite Jewish tradition, and texts from Sufi, Sephardic and Christian mystic poetry. Reyah hadas 'ala (The Perfume of the Myrtle Rises) unites the ensemble of the Gregorian chant and the early music instruments. This is the only work in which Tulve has used a pre-existing melody, a song of the Yemenite Jews. Extinction des choses vues (The Extinction of the Things Seen) is an orchestral piece in which the musical ideas are derived from a text by the Jesuit thinker Michel de Certeau called Extase blanche (White Ecstasy).

Nonesuch Records releases The Art of Instrumentation: Homage to Glenn Gould, by violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra, on September 25, 2012, which would have been Gould’s 80th birthday. The album comprises 11 pieces and arrangements by contemporary composers that quote from or are inspired by works, mostly by Bach, that Gould famously recorded during his career; two Arnold Schoenberg pieces also are drawn upon in one piece.