Showing 1-9 of 9 items.
	Relentless Paintings Improvised rhythms and sounds, composed, performed, and recorded by Mike Vargas between 1985 and 1989. And what variety! Sometimes you're in the jungle, sometimes at Carnival in Brazil, sometimes in a jazz club ... Always evocative, always strong, always dramatic, and wlays unusual and musical. Additional performance by Gray Vargas-Regan (voice). Vargas  =>  CO203  $16.00
	Mike Vargas: Sometimes Mike Vargas, composer, improviser, pianist, percussionist, is known for making music with a particularly broad stylistic range. Though he has performed music from Herbie Hancock to Mozart to John Cage, he has spent the last 25 years developing his own forms of music based on structured improvisation. Here, he presents electro-acoustic soundscapes, a result of re-mixing his own recordings in real time while playing along on acoustic instruments. Compositions are 'Messages 'Adding to the Chatter', 'Ruth and Alien Corn', 'I am a Small Tribe', 'Korea', 'Krosnest Chaklet Krim', and 'applause'. Mike Vargas  =>  MV400  $16.00
	TREE: Still Suspended This is piano music improvised while dancers were improvising in the same space, music that includes dissonance, the sounds of the wooden floor creaking, and occasional electronic details. (sounds like: Aphex Twin, George Crumb, Ryuichi Sakamoto) Mike Vargas  =>  MV401  $16.00
	TREE: Unique Natural Area Spanning over 10 years of work, this album contains often austere statements and colors created by a wide variety of means, from dragging a table across a marble floor in Paris, to placing a microphone in front of a fan and running that through effects. (sounds like: Charles Dodge, Robert Rich, Fred Frith) Mike Vargas  =>  MV402  $16.00
	Love Songs To The Shadow This music represents a rare pairing of two sound worlds, all improvised with no structures, the combination of a voice with 30 years' experience sounding human bodies therapeutically and a classically trained pianist's sensitivity rooted in 40 years of playing. (sounds like Meredith Monk, Joan LaBarbara, Sainkho Namtchylak) Mike Vargas  =>  MV403  $16.00
	Pianos In The Wilderness A set of beautiful solo structured improvised piano pieces by Mike Vargas. The range is great - from lyrical to dramatic, from traditional piano sounds to suprises in sounds made inside the piano - but it's all so musical, sensitive, and beautifully played that it's always a pleasure. Vargas is not only a fine pianist but also a thoughtful artist, and these pieces go beyond the improvising composer's 'familiarity' in piano music and instead find a place 'a little less crowded with evidence of human activity', i.e. wilderness. Vargas  =>  CO204  $16.00
	So, Forth This music by Mike Vargas is wonderfully direct, spare, minimal, including sustained cello notes, the sounds of small objects being sorted and rolled in a container, a kalimba ... The composer notes: "I prefer an abstract landscape that doesn't 'mean' too much, yet feels distinct, substantial and specific." The compositions include 'fog' (1995), 'woodblock' (2001), 'water' (2001), 'slow caxixi' (2001), 'chocolate' (2001), 'crosscurrents' (1998), 'untitled' (1993), 'that just be special' (1998), 'longing' (1998), 'kalimbas' (1998), 'dog' (1985), 'jaw breath' (2001), 'blue shadow blue' (1996), and 'messages' (1983). The performances are by Mike Vargas (all instruments), with Stephen Katz (cello). Vargas  =>  CO196  $16.00
	Whispering The Turmoil Down A collection of sensitive, soft, and mostly spare piano compositions by Mike Vargas. When Vargas composes, he combines 'automatic' procedures with improvisation in such a way that it gives him, as improvisor, ranges within which to be expressive and free while at the same time suggesting combinations that he might not have thought of otherwise. It's one solution to finding a balance between the unexpected and the expressive, and Vargas' result is an unusual musical language in which his personality projects in a lovely and touching way. As Hobart Bell put it, "one feels oneself intimitely in touch with the inspiration of the composer as he conveys with an obvious but unostentatious technical mastery of the instrument his innermost, viz., his musical, self ..." Vargas  =>  CO154  $16.00
	Stripes: Mike Vargas In Concert A series of often virtuoso solo piano etudes drawing upon minimal materials. Vargas' tonal palette is at times modal and at times reminiscent of Messiaen. The materials include repetitive rhythmic figures, runs, trills, dense tone clusters ... Compositions include 'stripes, 1 - 10': 'trills; staccato l/r', 'slow hi mid; octaves low; (+2 hand wander)', 'wagner low mid', 'skipping dbl 3rds; 1 + triad', 'very slow, always pedal, octave/ triad', 'thumbs, w/pulse', 'stagger 3/4 ... rhythms, large silence', 'dbl, cocktail; identical 1,2,3,4 minor tetrads', 'butter, low; release one@time', and '2 stroke, high-ish & low octave'; 'zones w/intention': 'v.dodd', 'peace', 'surrender', and 'dance ... light'; 'descending'; 'growl'; 'zones for imaginary dancing nanc'y: 'no. 1', 'no.2', 'no.3', 'no.4', 'no.5', 'no.6', 'no.7', and 'no.8'; 'stripes, 1 - 10': 'slow, deliberate' l/r alternate 3rds, quick; extreme sep?', 'third l/r plus single (in bass)', 'double octaves', ' mid. pedal play ... atlernate low high', '6/8 low mid; double triplets?', 'oct +5/+thirds within narrow zone', 'pounding', 'nonads, high', and 'grand melody'. Performances by Mike Vargas (solo piano). Vargas  =>  CO179  $16.00
	Showing 1-9 of 9 items.

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