At the invitation of Edna Michell and Yehudi Menuhin, distinguished composers and performers- friends around the world- dedicated their artistry to the theme of universal compassion through music. This is their tribute; a gift to the world in troubled times. The Compassion Project is comprised of two albums. The first, entitled Compassion: A Journey of the Spirit, features 15 of the Compassion compositions and was released by EMI/Angel in 2001 to critical acclaim. This album is packaged together with Innova’s release of the new second album that includes world premiere recordings of additional Compassion works and a piece written by Lukas Foss for the opening of the 1980 Winter Olympics performed by Yehudi Menuhin with Orson Welles narrating a poem by W. H. Auden. The 24 Compassion works were written for and dedicated to Menuhin and Michell. It comes as no surprise that the violin is central to almost all of the works. In their individual program notes, the composers mention such ideals as international understanding, or the nower of music to bring spiritual strength, or elements of simplicity and innocence. All reflect different responses to the life and humanistic work of a single great man: “Twenty-four styles with a noble theme behind them,” as Michell puts it. Menuhin took great pleasure in this collaborative project, and had plans to record it and to continue performing it with Edna Michell in many parts of the world. She recalls that during a concert when they played some of these pieces in London, only a month before he died, he turned to her as they walked off stage and said “Edna, we must record these pieces now!” He believed the works should be performed together in one program because, as Michell says,” they create a very special ambiance.”

Second Flight presents eight genre-hopping world premieres, some solos, some collaborations. Rudresh Mahanthappa’s I Choose You for two alto saxophones, inspired by Pokèmon battles, draws on the improvisational traditions in both classical and jazz traditions. Eric Wubbels recalls the inter-genre work of Anthony Braxton and Matthias Spahlinger in his saxophone and drumset duo, Axamer Folio, while Annika Socolofsky draws new sounds out of the saxophone and piano with multiphonics, cello bow hair, and an e-bow to evoke the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. Ingrid Arauco approaches Ruby without extended techniques, committing instead to the wide breadth of tonal possibilities characteristic of the saxophone. Felipe Salles combines the call of the Brazilian uirapuru bird with an electronic jazz quartet to create a rhythmic and driving work in conversation with 20th Century classical music. The works are often deeply introspective as well. Joan Tower’s Second Flight expands upon material from her renowned 1981 work for solo clarinet, Wings, while Stephen Rush’s Flying Fancy emerges from his decades-long interaction with Carnatic music. In Spira B, Salvatore Macchia captures moments of live performance and plays them back, foregrounding the interaction and confrontation of the performer with the past. Together, these works are more than the collection of an eclectic musical magpie. Rather the combinations and juxtapositions occupy a space in the cracks between well-trodden places where many of us live, work, and play. Jonathan Hulting-Cohen trained at the University of Michigan under Donald Sinta and is currently Assistant Professor of Saxophone at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is a Conn-Selmer and D’Addario Woodwinds Artist.

My Time is Now features the first ever recording of George Gershwin’s personal Steinway piano from his New York City apartment since it was recently restored by the Gershwin Initiative at the University of Michigan School of Music. Inspired by George Gershwin’s quote, “My people are American, my time is today. Music must repeat the thought and aspirations of the times,” Ms. Lee has created an album to reflect the current times of her generation. The album celebrates George Gershwin with new arrangements of his unfinished tunes as well as premiere recordings of contemporary works by distinguished American composers, Michael Daugherty, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, William Bolcom and Patrick Harlin who, much like Gershwin, incorporate their own distinctly American musical styles. Haerim Elizabeth Lee has been a guest soloist in symphonies with Filharmonie Bohuslava Martinu, Symphony of the Mountains, Orquesta Sinfonica de la Unal, Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra, SNU Virtuosi and Winston-Salem Symphony in North Carolina. Recognized as a bright new star, she was invited to appear in the 38th Kennedy Center Honors concert to recognize Maestro Seiji Ozawa with Yo Yo Ma. She has chosen to work with Alex Brown, Grammy-nominated pianist and composer and Jesse Lewis, Grammy Award-winning producer to compile this historic and timely album.

BABEL fragments concerns itself with enigmatic, evocative musical shards that gesture toward a broken world beyond the destruction. It's concerned with the apparent impossibility of true communication, with the frailty of language, with the frantic search for personal connection as a bulwark against disintegration. "Fracture is the musical equivalent of a box of chocolates, with none of the chocolates being the real sweet, milky pieces. No sir, this is the dark, hard stuff, and if you prefer your candy undiluted and strong that way, Anti-Social Music has a Whitman's Sampler for you." - Pico, Something Else

Moss doesn’t grow under his feet, nor between his ears. Indeed, at a spry 91 years of age, Lawrence Moss is at the top of his game and enjoying an active life of family and prolific composing following 56 years of teaching at Mills, Yale, and the University of Maryland, College Park. His previous innova album, New Paths, pointed out some directions of artistic exploration; now, with New Dawn, he takes us on yet more journeys of promise and possibility. New Dawn is also the title of a tone poem for orchestra based on five Tang Dynasty poems, and if you notice a poetic theme that connects many of the tracks on this album you wouldn’t be far wrong. Dreams by Day and Night is a setting of Li Bai’s poetry, in translations by Moss himself from the original Chinese, and sung by the rising operatic star, Danielle Talamantes. She also sings 4 Haiku for our Time- short poems by Moss on subjects ranging from a kitten’s pawprints on a car windshield to larger questions about the fate of our planet in turmoil. Walt Whitman is represented in two works; Voyagers for chorus and piano, and Grand is the Seen for soprano flute and piano. The remaining works on the album may not have text but are nonetheless rich in allusion. Gamelan for flute and percussion is a colorful take on the traditional Balinese orchestra; De Profundis for piano duet references a canyon in Colorado and a Mass by Josquin; and Ligeti Light alludes to Gyorgy Ligeti’s piano etudes before flying off in its own direction. Moments for cello and piano and Five Bagetelles for solo percussion are more abstract suites where the star performers take us on virtuoso tours and the contrasting moods found along the way.

Aaron Irwin releases Music for Sextet on Innova Recordings, his eighth album, as interactions between kaleidoscopic forms and colors, weaving together melancholy, effervescence, and at times, an anxiety sparked by cataclysmic confusion. The opening track, The Teller and the Tale, begins with an elegiac introduction redolent of an old storyteller. The urgency of the clarinet interplay sets up groupings that form a common thread throughout many of the pieces on this album. A prioritization of rhythm and unity of composition over harmonic movement is the background against which an overarching dialogue between tranquil expression (In Stillness) and the dynamism of accelerated or mechanized life (The Hayflick Limit). Such expression is further explored and transformed with narrative development (Slow Country, In the In-Betweens). The accelerated pace of movement in other songs document the contemporary experience (Love Song, Some Luck). As the album progresses, members of the ensemble begin to pop out like vibrant bursts of color with featured sections, following a progression of individuality and virtuosity from the ensemble members. We are left, however, with color and expression affirming Irwin's belief that art is a respite from an increasingly technological, commercial, and divided world (Boarding House). Critically acclaimed saxophonist, multi-woodwind player, and composer Aaron Irwin is a compelling voice of his generation. Known as a "lyrical alto saxophonist and a compelling original composer" (Steve Futterman, The New Yorker), Irwin is a sought-after commodity in the New York jazz scene. In addition to leading his own groups, Irwin performs with many prominent voices in the jazz and contemporary classical community including Darcy James Argue's Secret Society as well as a host of others. He was featured in Cicily Janus' 2010 book, The New Face of Jazz (Billboard Books), teaches as an adjunct saxophone professor at Towson University in Maryland.

As it approaches its fortieth birthday, it is high time Notus put out its first record. Founded in 1980 and based in Bloomington, Indiana, the choir is known for its commitment to new music and has premiered over 150 works. Five of their commissions are featured here. Of Radiance and Refraction, their debut album, demonstrates the wealth of talent found in the student ensemble led by Dominick DiOrio, as well as the remarkable works written for them by composition teachers at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, some tackling choral music for the first time. The album is anchored by John Gibson’s substantial work for chorus and electronics, In Flight. His music is paradoxically dark and brooding, light and airy, witty and sardonic. While Icarus is already drowning and half submerged in Brueghel’s painting of the same name, Gibson’s first movement paints the entire story: an opening pastoral scene transforms into the movement of melting ‘wing’s wax,’ with Icarus’ death ‘quite unnoticed’ by the surrounding folk. The goldfinch of the second poem is drawn with harmony out of jazz and sound effects reminiscent of white noise, while the third poem’s constellations swim through a more molecular and symmetrical harmonic world. The fourth movement moves toward the most fulfilling cathartic peak on the word “love”- a love which is short-lived, as the emotional crash of the poet is met with music of equal divisiveness. The fifth movement concludes the set with an atmosphere of smog and metal, of stuttering voices and desolate remains.

The title of this release, Triangle of Resistance, is taken from the three-part suite by Miya Masaoka which opens this album. During World War II, under Executive Order 9066, Masaoka’s family was imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp, which was the inspiration for the piece. The final work, Four Moons of Pluto, explores musical intervals like orbits of planets. The detuned bass used for this piece delves into sonic depths that mirror the music of the spheres. Miya Masaoka is based in New York City. She has written works for traditional instrumentations as well as pieces for solo koto, laser interfaces, laptop and video, and sculpture installations. She frequently works with the sonification of data, and has mapped the behavior of plants, insect movement, and brain activity to sound.

Crystal Mooncone (Stephen Rush, Chris Peck and Jon Moniaci) is an electroacoustic band with a psychedelic sensibility, mixing playful interaction with committed listening and melding virtuosic musicianship with a taste for risk. In the ten years they've performed together they've developed a compositional process akin to Zen calligraphy - a blend of spontaneity and precision. The trio plumbs the unknown through this process, honing their collective musical decision-making while still delighting in the unexpected. The result is a rich, textured sound that blends old and new technologies, hi-fi and lo-fi, acoustic and electronic, analog and digital, familiar and unfamiliar, nostaligc and futuristic. Instruments such as piano and flute collide with hardware and plumbing supplies. Whimsical instruments like slide whistles and bike horns take on serious prominence. Crystal Mooncone conjures cinematic landscapes anchored by moments of exquisite sonic detail and musicality. Listening Beam Five is Crystal Mooncone's fifth album. Each member is an accomplished composer and artist in his own right. Rush is a Professor of Music at teh University of Michigan and has performed with Roscoe Mitchell, Pauline Oliveros, Elliott Sharp and more, including orchestral, chamber and solo works on over thirty albums. Peck has a longstanding engagement as a collaborator with contemporary dance and performance companies in Los Angeles, Brussels and elsewhere. He teaches music courses at the global Arts Studies Program athte University of California Merced. Moniaci also frequently collaborates with dance makers. In 2011 he received a New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award for his score for choreographer Beth Gill's Electric Midwife.

Get ready for revelation! Mirror Butterfly: The Migrant Liberation Movement Suite is an epic jazz opera spanning four continents and five centuries. The opera is a tribute to the resistance of migrants to the destruction of ecologies, economies, and cultures unleashed by slavery, conquest, and colonization- in short, a history of capitalism from the point of view of women warriors from Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. A trinity of revolutionary women converge to tell stories of migration, singing a Sermon on the Mount to bring down Babylon. The plot of Mirror Butterfly is inspired by The Story of the Sword, a Mayan parable shared with us by the Zapatista autonomous schools. The story symbolizes the centuries-long Mayan resistance to the conquest and Indigenous genocide through avatars of a tree, a stone, and water. In their story, a sword (representing the conquest) cuts down a tree (Mayan society). The tree transforms into a rock, which is underground and still; but the sword hacks at it and shatters it, though not without damage. Finally, the stone transforms into water, which the sword is unable to resist. The sword rusts and withers away in this eternal elemental. The water symbolizes the flourishing grassroots-organizing of indigenous communities and their allies in contemporary Mexico. The lesson of the tale is that we shall live to see an indigenous-centric Mexico and, indeed, an entire world.

Whether you call it visceral or rockin’, the music of Chicago-based composer Marc Mellits is never less than smokin’ hot. In this album of ensemble works, New Music Detroit (NMD) not only finds the groove, it shakes it.

Born in Sapporo, Japan in 1954, Yuko Fujiyama started playing piano at the age of four. But it wasn't until a summer morning in 1980 standing on a sidewalk in New York's East Village that she found her calling; someone was playing a Cecil Taylor tape and she was transfixed by the piano sounds. That someone was Taylor's drummer, Jerome Cooper, and that moment opened a door for her to the abstract beauty of music. She has been "looking for musical structures" ever since. "Recently, I've been trying to be free from a feeling of linear time. This album, Night Wave, is the result of my long search." Joining her in this quest are three esteemed fellow travelers in the art of improvisation: percussionist Susie Ibarra, violinist Jennifer Choi, and cornet/flugelhornist Graham Haynes: "It was a joy to play with these beautiful musicians. I appreciate Susie for her earthy but sensitive sound, Jennifer for her beautiful melodies, and Graham for his simple and rich expressions." The album weaves a delicate series of colorful musical glimpses, from aggressive and ominous stories to melancholic flashes of freedom and silence. Listen at night, on a sidewalk, or wherever you might like sounds to arrest you.

From Gothic horror to ghostly whispers to Boschian excesses, Anne LeBaron’s music evokes fantastical worlds tempered by excavations of Bach-tinged ruins. Ramping things up, she embellishes Gertrude Stein’s ruminations on money with call bells and ratchets to materialize cash registers in sound, followed by a musical depiction of a fiery sandwich. Topping it all off, she lifts all the words on the spines of volumes forming the first Oxford English Dictionary, transforming them into a whirlwind of utterances punctuated by the letter A, Hobbit, Walrus, and Zythum. Unearthly Delights, a collection of chamber and solo works from the past decade, begins with the unearthly power of the crack in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. As depicted in the initial work, Fissure, the crack widens with renderings of a door harp recording in a haunted mansion blended with a hairbrush strumming piano strings. Meanwhile, the loosely sketched characters Roderick and Madeline play their piano and violin amid gathering doom. With its hellish hedonistic excesses, The Garden of Earthly Delights, a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, jump-started Julie’s Garden of Unearthly Delights. Square-waved multiphonic bassoon tremolos, frogs singing in Julie’s garden, and two live bassoons blast away in the night. Harp and violin solos calm things down. Gertrude Stein questions the role of money; one bassoon returns to conjure a Dammit to Hell sandwich, and the alchemical creation of birds by an Owl-Woman is invoked in a piano solo. A – Zythum tears through bizarre words and even non-words to offer a distinctive history of the OED. Poem for Doreen returns, the languid portrait of a friend performed by two different harpists.

David Kechley’s latest album of orchestra music is a lot easier to listen to than pronounce. It draws from far flung parts of the world, and historical origins, and brings them into a grand compelling vision. The album features two large scale orchestra works recorded with dazzling clarity by the Sudeten Filharmonie in a small Polish town, Walbrzych (most recently in the news for supposedly being the subterranean hiding place of the infamous Nazi gold train.) The first work, ‘Karasuma: A Fast Funk for Orchestra,’ started life as a classroom exercise at the Donisha Women’s College in Kyoto, Japan, here Kechley demonstrated how acoustic musical fragments could be combined in various ways by computer. The work was so successful it was expanded and premiered by the Boston Pops in 1993. The other major work on the album is a symphony exploring various aspects of dreams, ‘Wakeful Visions/ Moonless Dreams.’ Each of the four movements is associated with literary references; from the Old Testament, a haiku by Buson, the Witches’ scene from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and musings on remembrance by Marcel Proust. David Kechley recently retired from teaching at Williams College, Massachussetts. Taken as a whole this is a record of an expansive imagination and an intercontinental achievement.

In 1993, after completing At the Dragons Gate for piano trio, David Kechley initiated a plan to write solo works for performers Doris Stevenson, Joanna Kurkowicz, and Nathaniel Parke. Now the plan has finally come to fruition with all of those works accompanying each other on one album. At the Dragons Gate brings together works seemingly disparate and shows the nuanced threads that connect them. Threads of relationships, time, form, and sonority. Some works are mirrored to each other, while some reference material from one another. All of this forms a compendium of music that has been given tremendous thought over decades of writing. David Kechley began composing as a teen after years spent listening to his composer and music professor father Gerald at the piano. At 19, The Seattle Symphony premiered his Second Composition for Large Orchestra and since then more than 1,000 performances of his work in a variety of genres have been performed by orchestras, Chamber groups and college musical ensembles throughout the United States and abroad. His music draws from 20th Century classics and from vernacular, popular, and ethnic music. Time in Kyoto, Japan, profoundly affected his compositions. His pieces are marked by a distinctive style, but his musical narratives are known for sharp contrasts involving lyricism, virtuosity, and dramatic gesture. Kechleys work has been recognized and applauded by such organizations as the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Born in Seattle, Kechley was educated at the University of Washington, Cleveland Institute of Music, and Case Western Reserve University. He also followed his father into music education, teaching at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, and teaching and chairing the Music Department at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts where he remains professor emeritus.