Ravel grew up in Paris during la belle epoque, the thirty-odd years prior to 1914 when Paris was the unquestioned artistic center of the world. The fin de siecle years saw him enter the Paris Conservatoire. He was an immensely gifted youth, and one by one his early compositions began to show a real mastery of conception and execution-before the 1800s were out, he had produced such assured works as Habenera, Menuet antique, several fine songs, and Pavane pour une infante defunte.

On this release composer Anthony Cheung releases an inventive, beautifully crafted collection of chamber works featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble, Spektral Quartet, and Atlas Ensemble, as well as soloists Winston Choi, Maiya Papach, Claire Chase, and Ernest Rombout. Anthony Cheung is a composer and pianist. His music has been commissioned by the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, New York Philharmonic, and many more. From 2015 to 2017, he was the Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow of the Cleveland Orchestra. The recipient of a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, he has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP, and first prize in the Sixth International Dutilleux Competition. As a performer and advocate for new music, he codirected the Talea Ensemble from its founding in 2007 until 2017, performing as a pianist and serving as artistic director. Anthony received a BA from Harvard and a doctorate from Columbia University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Chicago.

Bhajan is a free-wheeling yet meditative four-section work for electric violin and live electronics, which one critic described as “a pas de deux between violin and electronics,” was written for and features noted new-music violinist Robin Lorentz. Nicholas Chase has headlined festivals in Europe and the US as a composer, performer, and improviser, His interactive, site-specific composition NOVA: Transmission was exhibited as part of the Whitney Biennial in New York and his Ngoma Lungundu opened the New Music+ Festival at the Jana ek Academy, Czech Republic. He was an inaugural Composer Fellow at the 2011 international Other Minds Festival in San Francisco and in 2015 was honored by the International Center for Japanese Culture, Tokyo, Japan.