Taking it's inspiration from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steven Millhauser's story, "The Barnum Museum," Schrader's new album explores the dark corners of the dusty halls of the imagination, uncovering wax figures, anatomical oddities, marvels of prestidigitation, and forgotten coin-operated fortune tellers.

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Founder and long-time faculty member of the Percussion Program at CalArts, John Bergamo (1940-2013) was a composer and performer at the forefront of the exploration of the timbral possibilities of percussion music. Forging the vocabulary of bowing, harmonics, and unconventional mallets into a body of solo and chamber works, Bergamo, who performed and recorded extensively, also significantly expanded the percussion repertoire. Tim Patterson, percussionist and student of Bergamo, presents an authoritative and authentic compendium of his teacher's most significant works.

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Composer Andrew Violette's tenth album for Innova Recordings arrives from over the broad horizon, to reveal a wealth of strange stories and images of it's tumultuous voyage. At least, this is the best we can surmise. This album arrived bundled with a scrawled note from the composer himself, quoting Michelangelo and waving good bye as he set off from the Island of Cythera. "Violette's new sound world is simultaneously restless and strangely comforting." Frank Oteri, New Music Box.

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Bookended by two works of Lou Harrison, Karen Gottlieb's Music for Harp is a tribute to four mid-20th c. San Francisco Bay area new music composers: John Cage, Wayne Peterson, Dan Reiter and Mr. Harrison. Both individually and as a group, the compositions reflect elements from the cultures of Southeast Asia, India, "The Silk Road", and Europe. Ms. Gottlieb has performed with the SF Symphony for more than two decades as second harpist. In addition, Ms. Gottlieb is Principal Harpist for The SF Contemporary Music Players and performs regularly with other Northern California new music groups.

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Featuring a star-studded cast of international musicians, EPHEMERA is the debut album of Guggenheim- and Rome-Prize-winning composer Jesse Jones. From sonic portraiture of the pagan god Abraxas, through a microtonal setting of Lamartine’s languid prose, to the solitary verse of Edgar Allan Poe, EPHEMERA presents a cross-section of Jones’s most personal and introspective music. Performed expertly by American soprano Sharon Harms, Germany’s famed ensemble recherché, New York’s Argento Chamber Ensemble, pianist Xak Bjerken, and guitarist Kenneth Meyer, EPHEMERA delivers a stunning glimpse into Jones’s relationship with the numinous. Intended as an artistic reflection of the fleeting, ephemeral nature of mortality, EPHEMERA engages concepts of spirituality, love and loss, unity and discord, depression, and redemption. The opening track bespeaks the struggle of birth and a striving toward the divine; the title track distills memory of the composer’s mother into a shimmering kaleidoscope of musical metaphor; the album’s keystone (Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses) alludes to issues of piety versus apostasy, while the fourth track creates a playful foil to the album’s mostly-serious nature; the final track delves into the inner psyche through the lens of Poe’s poetic imagery.

When pipa player and composer Gao Hong has a potluck, the guests include a couple of Grammy winners, one of the nation’s foremost Arabic music authorities, and a healthy helping of string instruments.Featuring two original compositions by Gao and collaborations on both new and traditional songs, Pipa Potluck – half studio/half live concert – stirs up a warm and nourishing multicultural meal on pipa, banjo, fiddle, slack key guitar, oud and regular guitar.Ms. Hong is currently on the Carleton College music faculty and is Guest Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

Rural tradition meets hi-tech in this pairing of extremes by master improviser, Esther Lamneck. Both provocative and mesmerizing, her agility on this underappreciated folk instrument is without equal. When interfaced with live electronic processing, furthermore, she surely reaches sonic territories where no one has gone before. Six electroacoustic composers, from Italy to Brazil, and her home base in New York, have collaborated with Lamneck on this journey. The tarogato is a single reed woodwind instrument with a hauntingly beautiful sound. It is originally a folk instrument from the regions of Hungary and Romania whose music has been handed down aurally; references to folk art and gypsy melodies are woven throughout this album. The instrument provides a rich sound, full of harmonics, and Lamneck has managed to extend the range by an octave. Because it does not have the extensive key mechanism of a clarinet or saxophone, there are many glissandos and otherwise impossible techniques available. Lamneck explains, "In this album, Tarogato Constructions, each composer has designed a musical world which reacts to what I play by triggering electronic sounds which then influence the direction of my improvisational composition. All of these musical environments have propelled me to use the extreme sonic possibilities of the tarogato." The New York Times has called Esther Lamneck "an astonishing virtuoso." She has an active career as a soloist and is the director of the Woodwind program at NYU.

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Eric Stokes was a “musical citizen” in the Twin Cities for almost forty years, teaching in the Music School at the University of Minnesota from 1961 after having studied there under Paul Fetler and Dominick Argento. Eric has been variously described as a crusty eccentric, wonderfully humorous, very healthy and resourceful American composer of gentle, witty, lyrically accessible music, with a taste for folkloric Americana and a “Whitmanesque” ear. This collection of chamber music, delightfully performed by some of those closest to him, shows his range and deep respect for performers and listeners. The works are as fun to play as they are to hear, and bring to mind the affable collegiality and the pragmatic purpose of his musical life. There are echoes of Charles Ives, Henry Brant, John Cage thrown into the mix of lyrical whimsy and solid recital craft. Song, poetry, music for special occasions, friendly offerings, audience participation, and educational twists all take center stage in this album; as much a tribute to Eric’s living gifts as it is a reminiscence of a bygone day.

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