Jeremy McCoyís new album, Dialogues with Double Bass presents a wide-ranging look at the double bass repertoire. The album highlights two particular themes. The primary notion is highlighting the bass as an equal voice in instrumental duos that are diverse and interesting conversations. A second theme is found in the vocal quality of much of the music. Like Bottesini, one of historyís most famous bass players, who earned his living playing in an opera orchestra, Jeremy McCoy is a seasoned member of New York Cityís Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (the orchestraís assistant principal bassist). The influence of great singing can be heard in McCoyís playing, in the way he shapes a phrase and in the varied tonal colors of his sound. McCoyís wide experience as a soloist, chamber player and orchestral musician, and the expressive range of his instrument, finds him right at home in this engaging collection of eloquent dialogues with the double bass.

In the early 19th-century, a rivalry existed between two of Italy's greatest guitarists/composers, Francesco Molini and Ferdinando Carulli. This album features not only the complete Molino works for flute and guitar, but also the Carulli Concerto for Flute and Guitar. Both composers are wonderful, as are these performances. Diversity of styles is a hallmark of Roberto Alvarez’s concerts and recitals. As a matter of fact he feels just as comfortable performing classical, baroque or avant-garde music as well as Celtic, jazz or rock. He has received various international prizes, such as the Diploma of Honor in the Torneo Internazionale di Musica, Concurso Internacional de Música “Paper de Musica” de Capellades, the Ángel Muñíz Toca Award and the Ciutat de Manresa Prize. Born and raised in Singapore, Kevin Loh is a recipient of the Fellowship of the Royal Schools of Music, the 2018 Goh Soon Tioe Centenary Award and the 2010 HSBC Youth Excellence Award for Musical Excellence. He was talent-scouted by The Yehudi Menuhin School via his YouTube channel when he was only 12 years old and was awarded a grant by The Rolling Stones to study at the prestigious music school as their first Asian guitarist.

Elan Sicroff is one of the leading interpreters of the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music, which was the result of a unique collaboration in the 1920s in which the sacred and folk music of the East was arranged for piano. From 1973-75 he attended the International Academy for Continuous Education at Sherborne in Gloucestershire, England, as a student and later as Director of Music. The Academy was run by J. G. Bennett, a leading exponent of the teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. In 1974 Mr. Bennett contacted Mme. Olga de Hartmann, widow of the composer, who introduced Elan to the music that Thomas de Hartmann composed in the classical idiom. Between 1975 and 1979 Elan studied with her and performed many of de Hartmann’s works. In 1982 he made a tour of the U.S., which included performances in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Boston. Since then he has given numerous recitals in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

JOEL BRAUN is Associate Professor of Double Bass at the University of Texas at Austin. As an orchestral musician he has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and the New York City Ballet Orchestra. He participated in over a dozen national and international tours with the New York Philharmonic, including the Philharmonic’s historic trip to North Korea in 2008 under the direction of Lorin Maazel. He has performed under such eminent conductors as Kurt Masur, Jaap van Zweden, Gustavo Dudamel, Riccardo Muti, Herbert Blomstedt, Christoph von Dohnányi, Zubin Mehta, Paavo Järvi, and Alan Gilbert, among many others. He is a former member of the Ft. Wayne Philharmonic and currently serves as Assistant Principal Bass of the Eastern Music Festival Orchestra under the direction of Gerard Schwarz.

On this release, he performs a program of works by Lera Auerbach, J.S. Bach, Caleb Burhans, and Olga Magidenko, alongside an original work.

Composer Eric Richards approached listening as an embodied activity, an amalgamation of the auditory, psychological, and emotional experience we have hearing artistic sound. This album, produced by Andy Kozar and Jeffrey Gavett, features several of Richards's entrancing chamber works performed by Ekmeles, loadbang, Gavett, and Kozar as well as a host of New York based freelancers, and shines a light on a composer whose poetic approach to compositional, observation, and technology has been widely overlooked previously.

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.