Bang on a Can co-founder Julia wolfe has turned the string quartet world upside down with these hip and innovative works. Ferocious and fresh, Wolfe's quartets, played here in blistering performances by the Lark Quartet, Cassatt Quartet and featuring one of the most-talked-about NYC quartets, Ethel, have been exciting audiences, quartets and critics for the last ten years. Heard ont the stages of Lincoln Centre, the Kennedy Centre and the Other Minds Festival, in the repertoires of the Kronos, Smith, and Mondrian quartets (and others!), hers are some of the most celebrated and performed quartets in the world. Defying classification, Wolfe's music conveys intensity and intimacy, a virtuosity and joy of sound that turns the string quartet into a relentless high voltage vehicle of expression. Beautifully recorded and produced by Michael Reisman. Julia Wolfe's CD, 'Arsenal of Democracy', was released by Point Music/Universal.

Terry Riley's In C is a democratic work in which every player makes his or her own decisions about how often to play the 53 brief motifs of which the score consists.

For it to work each player must listen intently and react instantly. Every performance will sound rather different for that reason, and because any number of players, using any form of melody instrument, may take part.

In two senses this might be regarded as a happy medium of a performance: Riley's own, on New Albion, uses about 30 players and lasts for an hour and a quarter; while Piano Circus on Argo, who use three types of piano, two harpischords and vibraphone, take barely 20 minutes, no doubt partly because because they accommodate Terry Riley's Six Pianos on the same disc. Bang on a Can, with some doublings, use four bowed and three plucked strings, two woodwind, piano and four tuned percussion, and their reading seems neither protracted nor contracted at 46 minutes. Obviously the more players are involved the longer it is likely to take, but by the same token the textures at any given point are likely to be richer. The sound is fairly bassy, and for that reason whenever the doublebass player decides to repeat one motif for a minute or so it is likely to assume something like a soloistic prominence, thus to become less 'democratic', but for the most part the instruments are well chosen to ensure a lively texture and a fluid continuum of change.

In C makes addicts of some listeners, while others cannot bear to listen to it and its unvarying pulse of octave C's for more than a minute or two. I am betwixt and between, not wanting to listen to it very often, but not wanting to be without a recording of it. If there are other listeners of that kind, and I suspect there are quite a few, this betwixt and between performance should suit them very nicely; it is closely, head-ringingly recorded.

-- Michael Oliver, Gramophone

This set includes a DVD of films by Jenise Treuting.

The Passing Measures

Meredith Monk’s MEMORY GAME, as its title implies, is both a look back at a pivotal point in her storied career, and a richly layered portrait of how vocal music, under the guidance of an indefatigable master, can play with our expectations in poignant and compelling ways. Teaming up here with her renowned Vocal Ensemble (featuring Theo Bleckmann, Katie Geissinger and Allison Sniffin) and backed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Monk explores all-new arrangements of never-before-recorded selections from her award-winning sci-fi opera The Games, as well as new versions of several pieces originally released on Do You Be (1987) and Impermanence (2008). What emerges from MEMORY GAME is a suite of songs that flows with a remarkable narrative cohesion, stemming in large part from the composer’s willingness to revisit the past with an insatiably curious eye.

When asked about three of his signature orchestral works — the Grammy-winning Become Ocean, its sequel Become Desert, and the original source Become River (previously unreleased as an official recording until now) — composer John Luther Adams refers to them collectively as “a trilogy that I never set out to write.” Become River, composed for chamber orchestra, was the first of the three, although it began while Adams was working on Become Ocean for the Seattle Symphony. “Steven Schick and I were having dinner together,” Adams recalls, “and I went on at length about the music I’d begun to imagine. ‘So you’re already composing a symphonic ocean,’ Steve said. ‘Maybe for a smaller orchestra you could go ahead and compose that river in delta.’ He had me, and I knew it. Within a week I’d begun work on Become River.” Collected here for the first time, with newly remastered versions of Become Ocean and Become Desert by acclaimed engineer Nathaniel Reichman, The Become Trilogy pays tribute to a magical partnership between Adams, conductor Ludovic Morlot and the renowned Seattle Symphony. As a whole, the music speaks both to the meditative solace of solitude, and the universally shared experience of living, giving and interacting as a citizen of the world.

The ostensible follow-up to So Percussion co-founder and composer Jason Treuting's ambitious work Nine Numbers, Go Placidly with Haste is a multi-movement sonic meditation that actually bears a more distinct connection to Treuting's early work Amid the Noise (2006) - which began as a soundtrack, then morphed into So Percussion's third album, and from there into a communal music-making project that can occur with a flexible number of musicians in almost any combination. Go Placidly takes up that thread and weaves it into a vivid tapestry of moods, styles and genres, from the oddly folk-inflected strains of "1927" (featuring Irish singer and Afro Celt Sound System mainstay Iarla o Lionaird) to the Eno-esque keyboards and electronics of "White Diamond," the frenetic and angular "Build Up," the mournful and stately "Slow Moving Chords" (with singer-songwriter Sam Amidon), the groove-chasing "Four Lines" (with composer and singer Angelica Negron) and plenty more. By turns whimsical, expansive and exploratory, this is new music in the most thrilling and adventurous sense of the word.

Alex Weiser's latest recording, the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-nominated and all the days were purple, is a love letter to New York City. Featuring acclaimed singer Annie Rosen with a seven-piece chamber ensemble, the album comprises two song cycles that explore the city from complementary perspectives. The first cycle, in a dark blue night, features five settings of Yiddish poetry written by newly arrived immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These poems reflect on the city at night — glowing, quiet, majestic.

It's followed by Coney Island Days, told through the recorded memories of Weiser's late grandmother. It features vivid, buoyant adventures about childhood in the bustling immigrant world of Coney Island in the 1930s and 40s — days at the beach, at the family's knish store, at the Russian baths and much more. "My grandmother grew up in Brooklyn spending summers in Coney Island, living with her family in a single room behind their knish store," Weiser says. "Hers was a multilingual world where she was taught English at school, but where her Yiddish-speaking parents could barely understand the language of their new land."

Together the two cycles celebrate the marvel and multiplicity of New York City, through a look at a little-explored chapter of its history.

In producing an update of his Pulitzer-winning 'the little match girl passion,' composer David Lang sought to deliver "...a leaner version of the piece, a more human version, one that emphasizes every breath, and that heightens the individuality of each singer." Featuring inspired performances by singers Molly Netter, Kate Maroney, Gene Stenger and Dashon Burton, as well as the renowned Trio Mediaeval — on the bonus track "I want to live," as well as an updated version of "just (after song of songs)" — this new recording accomplishes everything that Lang set out to explore, opening up fresh vistas of accessibility to a beloved work in modern choral music.

Rakhi Singh is a violinist, music director, curator and composer based in the UK. In 2016 she co-founded Manchester Collective, a progressive group that the BBC describes as "transforming all our perceptions of what a classical music group can be."

"Sabkha" is the first single from Singh's full-length debut album Purnima (coming October 27) — a stirring stream-of-consciousness foray into signal processing and multi-tracking for violin, with Singh's own wordless vocals adding to the hypnotic mood. Purnima, which translates literally from the Sanskrit as "she who is the full moon,” is not only Singh's middle name — it's also a source of spiritual inspiration that has guided her own musical journey on her chosen instrument. Interpreting works by composers Alex Groves ("Trace I"), Emily Hall ("Outshifts"), Julia Wolfe ("LAD") and Michael Gordon ("Light Is Calling"), and augmenting them with unearthly electronic and electro-acoustic textures, Singh creates a haunting dreamworld of melody and sound that doesn't quite emit a completely "classical" aura — but instead suggests an altogether new one.

Premiered online between October and November 2020, Campaign Songs is a collaboration with Kronos Quartet intended to galvanize voter turnout in the upcoming election. Recorded in isolation by each member of the Quartet, the eight short pieces that comprise Campaign Songs were accompanied by specially-made video works touching on racial, climate, and economic justice issues. The pieces, arranged by Michael Gordon, draw from the canon of American patriotic, political, and folk music, including Woodie Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” “God Bless America,” (a campaign song for both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his 1940 opponent Wendell Willkie), “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” (a campaign song for James A. Garfield), “America the Beautiful” and “The Star Spangled Banner.” (Limited edition 7-inch vinyl)

Set in a nightmarish Bardo, a place between death and rebirth, a tormented writer faces down demons of his own making in search of escape. This is the premise of composer David T. Little and poet Anne Waldman’s Black Lodge — a multilayered modern opera that draws on the complex mythologies surrounding artists like William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch), David Lynch (Twin Peaks), and more. A journey into Hell and back, Black Lodge fuses industrial metal and punk with classical string quartet and opera to create something wildly vivid and new.

Deeply challenging, even confrontational, to the classical string quartet format, composer JG Thirlwell's Dystonia is a leap forward not only for listeners, but for musicians as well. Mivos Quartet's fiery interpretation of these five pieces — each in its own way difficult, harrowing, engaging and uplifting — is also a tribute to their dedication, skill and sense of adventure as artists.

"This is bold, insistent music that grabs you and takes you where it wants to go," writes Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon in his liner notes for the album. That sentiment lands with a fury in the recording's central piece "Ozymandias," a not-for-the-faint-of- heart excursion that channels the tension and dread of, for example, Bernard Herrmann's famed Psycho score, but expands on it with the subtle, stately majesty of Bartók and Cage

Hadal Zone, written by composer Žibuokle Martinaityte for bass clarinet, tuba, violoncello, contrabass, piano and electronics, seeks to plumb the lower ranges of these instruments, shaping a listening environment that is defined as much by sound and vibration as it is by the musical intent of the composer. Performed by the adventurous Lithuanian ensemble Synaesthesis, and featuring recorded samples of the San Francisco-based choral group Volti (conducted by Robert Geary), the hour-long work takes its title from the scientific name for the region of the ocean that extends below 6,000 meters, where sunlight can never reach.

Featuring inspired performances by Mammoth Trio (Lisa Moore, Ashley Bathgate and Elly Toyoda) and the NYC-based Contemporaneous ensemble (conducted by David Bloom), David Lang's shade is one of his most poignant and dynamic collaborations — a writ-minimal recording with a wide-open emotional arc that can transport us into spaces that are by turns mournful, meditative and uplifting.

'shade' and its companion piece 'wed' clock in together at a little more than 23 minutes, but the listening experience is rich with the gradual ebb-and-flow sensations of an orchestral concert, or more directly, one of Lang's signature song cycles. The title piece moves through several distinct moods, with the middle section allowing the piano trio to step forward into a shimmering light while the string orchestra, as the composer intended, undulates behind them in shadow. The much shorter 'wed' is a triumph of string arrangement, with conductor David Bloom leading Contemporaneous through a slow-building wave of alternately consonant and dissonant textures, reflecting the tragic and beautiful events that inspired Lang to write the piece.