This space will offer a seasonal preview of the albums we’re releasing, and will remain relatively static for three/four-month periods. For up-to-date information about the New Amsterdam community, including our recording artists as well as our ever-expanding list of concerts and other events, please visit NewAmsterdamPresents.com.
New Amsterdam Presents has just announced the launch of our first annual fundraiser! We are marking the occasion by giving away tons of amazing rewards, including completely FREE downloads of 5 New Amsterdam Records releases in 5 days (December 5-9). Use the donation app to the right to make your donation today, or head on over to the New Amsterdam Presents fundraising page to read more, watch a video, make a donation, download free music, and more!
FALL 2011: It’s fitting that New Amsterdam Records will launch our third web format in a season that includes releases by two artists whose earlier albums were indelibly tied to the unveiling of our earlier websites. Cellist and singer Jody Redhage, whose 2007 All Summer In a Day was the very first album to be released on our then-fledgling label, has continued to develop her cello/vocal project in the four years since its release. Her new album, of minutiae and memory (August), includes rereleases and rerecordings of two tracks from that earlier album, by Paula Matthusen, and Derek Muro (along with a remastered version of a piece by Anna Clyne), and adds five striking new pieces by Missy Mazzoli, Ryan Brown, Joshua Penman, Wil Smith, and Stefan Weisman. Whereas All Summer In A Day was a wide-ranging survey of vocal and cello composition, reflecting the eclectic selection of composers that Jody chose to commission, of minutiae and memory takes a more focused approach. Every piece on the album uses electronics, and Jody’s voice and cello are frequently pre-recorded and processed back into the electronic mix. The result is an album that coheres around a central set of sounds: Jody’s masterful cello playing and ethereal singing, but also the production of Ben Wittman and Dave Glasser. It’s a new sound and a unique album.
In September, New Amsterdam will release two long-awaited albums: the second studio album and third album overall from the violin/guitar duo of Caleb Burhans and Grey McMurray, itsnotyouitsme, and the debut album from the happily ubiquitous, powerhouse sextet, yMusic (Alex Sopp, Hideaki Aomori, CJ Camerieri, Rob Moose, Nadia Sirota, and Clarice Jensen). When itsnotyouitsme released their debut album (walled gardens) in 2008, it coincided with the launch of our redesigned website, and was one of the albums that ushered in a wave of newfound attention for New Amsterdam. Their new album, everybody’s pain is magnificent, is the product of four years of touring and recording, and is their biggest and most personal effort to date, bringing new forms and modes of expression into the itsnotyouitsme palette. The album expands upon the duo’s previous loop-based work to include a greater breadth of influence, revealing a more ambitious and emotional narrative behind the glowing and warm textures that have become the group’s hallmark.
yMusic’s Beautiful Mechanical is a landmark for New Amsterdam Records, and a fitting match for the group that most clearly lives in both the classical and indie rock worlds: this record is the first to intentionally reach out to composers on “both sides of the aisle”, classical and rock, to form an album that uses yMusic’s formidable and diverse skills to articulate the shared space that they, and the six composers on the album, all inhabit. Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), and Ryan Lott (Son Lux) are mainly known in indie rock circles, while Gabriel Kahane and New Amsterdam co-directors Sarah Kirkland Snider and Judd Greenstein are better-known among classical listeners. But Kahane has a strong singer-songwriter following and Snider’s Penelope charted on the CMJ 200, while Clark, Worden, and Lott have all been commissioned by classical ensembles in the past, so more than anything, this album is simply a part of the strange and wonderful new musical world that we love so much at New Amsterdam.
