Called "the composer with the widest range of any of his generation" by critic Kyle Gann, Carl's newest release, Shake the Tree is resonant testament to that range. This set piano works embodies his creative energy and imagination, and even though he considers himself a modest pianist, the keyboard is a playground where he can try out his most radical, whimsical and grand ideas.

Zilzal is the Arabic word for 'earthquake,' and there couldn't be a more fitting word to describe the collision of musical worlds on the debut album by the duo of guitarist Ayman Fanous and violinist Jason Kao Hwang. Beautifully recorded by Sal Mormando and mastered by Grammy winner Silas Brown, these improvisations were performed with no prior musical planning. But Fanous and Hwang have become so well-attuned to each other's gestures, moods, and trajectories that sometimes the music can sound through-composed. Figure and ground give way to each other seamlessly, and at times meld into one and the same. Throughout the recording, Fanous and Hwang employ the full palettes available to them, resulting in a music that is at once orchestral, cinematic, spontaneous, and at all times, visceral. In short, this is contemporary instrumental music of great beauty, depth, energy, and sensitivity. It represents a snapshot of the complexities, richness, anxieties, exuberances, and polyglot accommodations of 21st century American life.'

Violinist and composer Cornelius Dufallo began his "Journaling" concert series in 2009 as a way to document the work of living composers and contribute to a repertoire of 21st century violin music. In 2012, Innova Recordings released Journaling, the first album created out of these concerts and now comes teh follow-up, Journaling 2. Bringing together elements of electronics, extended techniques, chance techniques, and digital interactivity, the pieces here were composed by Kinan Azmeh, Guy Barash, Missy Mazzoli, Raven Chacon, Armando Bayolo, and Dufallo himself. Azme's "How Many Would It Take"draws inspiration from the composer's long visit to his home country of Syria; Bayolo's "Tisch" takes off from Bach's "Toccata in F Major"; and Dufallo's "Reverie" expresses the unpredictable and often contradictory thoughts encountered in dreams. For the past two decades, Cornelius Dufallo has performed and promoted new music, as a soloist and as a collaborator. Dufallo has been a member of several notable ensembles, including the Flux quartet, Ne(x)tworks, and ETHEL. He currently performs as a member of the Secret Quartet. In the performance of his own work, Dufallo was described as "an intensely introspective thinker who is committed to visual communication as he is to the purely musical" by the Washington Post. His work with the musical technology illustrates "how much amplification can expand the isntrument's palette. Far from robbing the violin of its beauty, electronics add textural elements and graduations of timbre that the acoustic instrument cannot approximate" (The New York Times).

The music of Steven M. Miller (1965-2014) is distinguished by it's highly creative use of electronic technologies towards the exploration of novel aspects of sound as sensorial and perceptual phenomena, achieving this through analog and digital processing of prerecorded sound material and algorithmic computer generation of original sounds. An inspired musical improviser, he used these same electronic technologies to do live processing of improvising performers to explore music as a unique form of social dynamic. His music was distributed through multiple CDs; his writings widely published in academic journals, the popular press, and online. He oversaw the development of the Contemporary Music Program at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. Most recently he was Assoc. Prof. Of Sonic Arts at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music at the National University of Singapore. After being diagnosed with ALS, Steven and his family returned to Santa Fe in February 2014, where he passed away eight months later. Between Noise & Silence includes six CDs of Miller's electro-acoustic music. The set also includes a DVD of short films by Michael Saul, with whom Miller had a long and fruitful collaboration. Finally, it includes a tribute CD of new and unreleased music dedicated to Steven's memory, and a handsome 40-page booklet.

This debut solo release from Xenia Pestova follows on the heels of her piano duo recordings of seminal works by Stockhausen and Cage for Naxos Records, and brings together six carefully crafted new works for keyboard instruments and electronics in an intricate and seductive blend of unusual sonorities and shimmering hues. Far from being 'effects' or tools for processing instrumental sound, the electronic identities blend and interact with the acoustic sounds in the same way that complex technologies extend our minds in daily life, becoming transparent and inseparable from ourselves. This project is also a collaboration with photographer and visual artist Veronika von Volkova, whose sensual, dark and dreamlike images are featured on the CD and it's companion book of photography, available directly from the artist.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Home is bassist Eleonore Oppenheim’s debut album. Each track is a different take on the double bass as a solo instrument. The project is part of a long collaborative commissioning embarked upon by Oppenheim in 2006. As a result, works by today’s most original and innovative composers are included. Eleonore Oppenheim has performed and recorded with a great deal of artists and groups, including Bang on a Can, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Signal Ensemble, and plenty more.

The world gets inside of John Gibson’s electronic compositions, one way or another. Whether it’s the scrape of a kitchen knife or the cacophony of a street scene, he brings everyday sounds into his musical orbit. On his new release, Traces, the pieces range from minimal to maximal, combining live instruments with pre-recorded soundtracks and improvised responses from the computer. “Thrum” and “Slumber” take notes played on familiar acoustic instruments and assemble them into hypnotic grooves and atmospheric textures. “Day Trip” draws on heavily processed soundscape recordings from New York’s Chinatown, and “Driptick” orchestrates the clash of incompatible speeds projected by the sounds of dripping faucets and ticking clocks. For the rest of the album, pianist Kati Gleiser, cellist Craig Hultgren, and brass duo Brett Shuster and Michael Tunnell join Gibson in studio recordings of pieces they commissioned. Gibson’s compositions have received performances by the London Sinfonietta, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Seattle Symphony, Speculum Musicae, and at numerous festivals, including Bourges Synthese, Seoul International Computer Music, Brazilian Symposium on Computer Music, and more. He teaches composition for electronic media at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Commissioned by Minnesota’s Black Label Movement dance company, Mary Ellen Childs’ score for Wreck, like many of her works, finds itself grounded in the kinetic movement of the body itself and creates a cohesive whole, even though the dance for which it was written is not a narrative work.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Living Earth Show's debut album, High Art begins with a blues lick gone awry - a hit cymbal and a pitch-bent guitar - and ends with electronics eating themselves. In between, the Living Earth Show crafts an album that stretches the definitions of 'art' and 'popular' music. High Art navigates the traditions of classical, rock and roll, blues and electronic music, stitching them into to a groundbreaking statement on the past, present and future of American music.

Rejecting European modernism in the head modernist's own backyard, and imagining the world without a nose. These are the points of departure for Neil Rolnick's new CD, Gardening at Gropius House. And though the topics sound serious, the music is joyful and uplifting, infused with grooves and sticky melodies, with exuberant and virtuosic writing all around. // in a recent feature on Rolnick at NewMusicBox, Frank Oteri said 'over 30 years he has helped to create a much changed musical landscape in the United States. ' Gardening at Gropius House and Anosmia keep pushing those changes. The title piece, a concerto for violin, computer and ensemble, features the irrepressible Todd Reynolds with members of Alarm Will Sound, conducted by Alan Pierson. The second piece, Anosmia, is a monodrama for three singers (Andy Osmia and the 2 Scents), computer and ensemble, featuring baritone Daniel Cilli and the New Music Ensemble of the San Francisco Conservatory, conducted by Nicole Paiement.