Guitarist Ben Verdery and the Ulysses Quartet release an album of music for guitar and string quartet that displays the versatility and accessibility of the combination. With music by Bryce Dessner, Javier Farías, Verdery's arrangement of Leonard Benstein's 1942 Clarinet Sonata, and two works by Verdery himself for electric guitar with quartet, A Giant Beside You presents persuasive and committed performances of several new works that provide new options for concert programming for this engaging and eminently viable instrumentation.

Over the past forty-five years, I have composed many works whose titles point to natural and celestial radiances: galaxy, star, sun, earth, moon, sky, light, dawn, illumination, equinox, summer, etc. One central metaphor of my life's creative work is that of light refracting. Of interest to me, for my work, is to build, sculpt, and compose clean, clear, transparent, translucent, luminous, radiant, shining, resounding, and resonant musical materials. Solstice Ritual for 14 virtuosi shares many of these preoccupations. Solstice Ritual also pays homage to the composers Edgard Varèse and Maurice Ravel, and it celebrates their imagination, joy, love, vitality, soul, energy, great chords and rich chord progressions, resonant orchestrations, tight big-band-like splash-chords, and the sheer beating-heart inner life of their music. I love all of their compositions, and to give just two examples among many, Varèse's percussion writing and Ravel's gorgeous orchestrations have been longstanding sources of inspiration. - Augusta Read Thomas

Cellist Ashley Bathgate releases her third solo album featuring her performance of Steve Reich’s Cello Counterpoint alongside three new works that take advantage of the versatile format of soloist with layered tracks. Composers Emily Cooley, Alex Weiser, and Fjóla Evans wrote works that expand on Reich’s template, exploring harmonic, dramatic, and gestural contrasts. The homogeneity of timbre inherent in works for layered tracks of the same instrument gives the listener a sense they are hearing a hyper-cello; the compositional strategy both echoes studio techniques that are ubiquitous in commercial music while also amplifying more Romantic impulses of extroverted expression and immersive textures.

The structure and motivic material in Fjóla Evans’ Augun is inspired by the traditional Icelandic song, Vísur Vatnsenda Rósu. Evans organizes overlapping motives taken from the traditional song and creates a shimmering, undulating texture, pushing and pulling between dissonant and consonant voicings. The atmospheric quality of the work tells a non-linear story, painting a complex mix of mournful and resolute emotions.

Emily Cooley’s approach to the layered ensemble was to focus on various groupings of the eight celli as they take on shifting roles in the overall texture. She writes of Assemble, “The title describes what I felt like I was doing while composing: assembling a sort of puzzle. Only at the end of the piece do the eight parts truly assemble into one voice. They all play a slow, resonant chorale that fades into silence." The work ventures through moments of insistent pulse, poignant anticipation, and exuberant lyricism, expanding beyond the bounds of mere assemblage.

Upon Wings of Words is a setting of Emily Dickinson for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. Dickinson continues to inspire composers over 130 years since her death, and here it is the tense, springy rhythms of her poems that Read Thomas responds to.

Requiem is a personal piece in Lukaszewski's oeuvre, the individual movements of which are dedicated to his friends and loved ones. At the same time, everyone can relate it to the sphere of their own experiences thanks to the accessibility of the musical language used by the composer, emphasising the intimate, contemplative nature of the piece. It is the harmony suspended between the tonality of the major-minor system and the simplicity of the melody, whose task is to follow the text, which plays a leading role, that are particularly noteworthy. The Mass fits into the tradition of a consoling, comforting requiem, devoid of the threat of the Last Judgment. The colour of the work is perfectly matched by the voices of both soloists, who are able to express every emotion - regret, hope, peace - while leaving the listener space for their own emotional reactions. Despite the definitely religious nature of the composition, you can also interact with it on the level of sincere admiration for the beauty of Lukaszewski's musical language, for an elusive aura between mystery and certainty.

In the dark years of the Nazi-Fascist period, when the light of the end was still far off, Malipiero completed a long-awaited undertaking: an edition of the complete works of Claudio Monteverdi. Its last volume, the sixteenth, came out in 1942 at the height of the war. The edition contained the sacred production that the publisher Vincenti had assembled in the collection Messa a 4 voci et salmi (1650).

Quartetto Sincronie’s choice to include an arrangement of Monteverdi’s Mass, alternating the parts with Malipiero’s work, is yet another example of reinvention-creation that Malipiero would likely have appreciated. In the composers’ poetics, instruments are asked to sing as voices, and so the opposite—voices translated to instruments—is fitting. Philological rigor was, after all, foreign to Malipiero’s worldview. Instead, the composer spoke of his relationship with Monteverdi as a kind of psychic channeling: finding synchronicity within the synchrony of listening, which dissolves the distance of centuries. The Mass for Four Voices is thus split into parts throughout the record, but it remains possible to orient oneself. The cohesion is melodic: there’s a descending tetrachord G-F-E-D at the beginning of the Kyrie that returns in various guises (inverted, diminished, augmented), articulating the contrapuntal fabric of the different movements. The listener can thus follow this pathway, from the Gloria to the Agnus Dei, in a zigzag that turns Monteverdi the sacred “refrain” to Malipiero’s profane cycle of quartets.

Longtime Duke University string quartet-in-residence, the Ciompi Quartet releases "A Duke Moment" featuring three works written for them by Duke composers, Stephen Jaffe, Anthony M. Kelley, and Scott Lindroth. The three works draw some of their inspiration from different sources related to the Duke experience, including the North Carolina countryside and various athletic pursuits.

Composer Reiko Futing releases his fifth portrait album on New Focus, featuring performances by Longleash, Unheard-of//Ensemble, Quartet121, Noise Catalogue, SchallSpektrum, violinists Miranda Cuckson and Doori Na, and pianist Jing Yang. Futing's music engages with temporality, memory, and quotation as tools put in service of using music as a way to explore contemporary moral and spiritual questions.

Que sais-je? is a one-hour composition that explores the life and philosophy of composer Amos Elkana's father, Yehuda Elkana, through music, archival recordings, and visual media. Performed by the Meitar Ensemble, the piece integrates live instrumental performance with multichannel audio and video projections, surrounding the audience with a tapestry of sound and memory.

Ken Ueno's creative approach to composition shares an affinity with the percussion world; there is an underlying spirit of exprimentation, problem solving, and deconstruction as a path to innovation that guides them. This clear eyed perspective on the materials of sound and their possibilities makes percussion music an ideal forum to hear Ueno's work. The works on this recording share an interest in microtonality. Transformation of noise timbres into pitched material, and an investigation of instrumental possibilities.

Composer Ryan Vigil releases an album featuring two of his expansive works for violin and piano. Featuring sensitive performances by violinist Lilit Hartunian and pianist John McDonald, Vigil's music unfolds slowly but navigates a diversity of expression within it's frame.

Sea's Widows: The project There are sometimes encounters that seem to arise by chance, almost on the sly and then turn out to be discoveries, strong and decisive energies, great beginnings liaisons destined to last and to generate something else and to mark our years. The encounters witnessed by this disc are marked by these certainly very special and rare artistic and human paths, where human harmony, professional rigor, passion and musical "carnality" unite my music with the extraordinary interpretative qualities of Maria Perrotta, Alda Caiello, and the Helios Ensemble. Maria and Alda are the driving forces of this work which was born in fact as an ItalianFrench collaboration. I began my first international affirmations in France at the 1991 Avignon Festival, invited by Luciano Berio to compose an opera: L'Histoire de Saint Julien l'Hospitalier. Maria created the driving force of her life and her career in Paris where she prepared recordings of international caliber for Decca. Alda, who has a long history of acquaintances and affirmations with France, a "historic" voice in Europe for the twentiethcentury and contemporary repertoire, sang in my opera Camera Obscura back in 2001 at the Venice Biennale and since then she has become "the voice" of my music. The project was born after a monographic concert held at the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris in june 2021, at the request of the performers themselves and of the beautiful Parisian welcome to this music. The disc includes eight pieces: six first recordings and an absolute premiere written for Maria. In fact I am composing the third volume dedicated to the piano: Sei studi sulla mente e sul corpo. The album also contains the first study La stupeur des gouttes qui rayent la vitre and the second Les sons dans la tête dedicated to Maria.

Composer Michael Hersch adapts the tragedy of Medea from Ovid's Metamorphoses in his new opera for soprano Sarah Maria Sun, the vocal ensemble Schola Heidelberg, and Ensemble Musikfabrik. With librettist Stephanie Fleischmann. Hersch's setting underscores the profound psychological trauma at the heart of the tale with a characteristically powerful, bracing score.

Virtuoso flutist Claire Chase continues her laudable documentation of her multi-year commissioning project, Density 2036, with a 3 CD set of the works from the 2019, 2020, and 2021 iterations. Featuring pathbreaking music for flute, in solo, electro-acoustic, and chamber settings, by Ann Cleare, Wang Lu, Matana Roberts, Liza Lim, Olga Neuwirth, Sarah Hennies, Phyllis Chen, and Pamela Z, "Density 2036: Parts VI-VIII (2019-2021)" represents a landmark addition to the contemporary flute repertoire.

Ars Ludi is a percussion ensemble with variable staff which, since its inception (founded in 1987 by Antonio Caggiano and Gianluca Ruggeri), has embarked on an active artistic itinerary on two interpretative dimensions.On the one hand, the proposition of the contemporary repertoire for percussion, realized with an international concert activity (USA, Mexico, Germany, China, Sweden, France, Spain, Malta, Greece, Turkey, Algeria, Kenya, Scotland and Switzerland in some these occasions has recorded for national radio and television stations.) interpreting composers such as J. Cage, K. Stockhausen, B. Bartok, G. Battistelli, L. Andriessen, E. Varese, S. Reich, W. Duckworth, A. Curran, G. Scelsi, L. Berio,V. Heyn and C. Ambrosini) and encouraging the repertoire of Italian authors with commissions and first performances (L. Ceccarelli, P. Esposito, M. Lupone, L. Bianchini, M. Tadini, M. Cardi, T. Battista, N. Sani, M. D’Amico, C. Boccadoro, M. Dall’Ongaro, F. Filidei, L. Pagliei, L. Gregoretti, C. Galante, A. Solbiati and many others).
This quality of interpretation pushed the leading composers of our time to choose Ars Ludi for their musical research: often the ensemble becomes a coauthor. A fertile interaction that brought the ensemble to enlarge its percussive instrumentation (Ars Ludi often builds its own instruments) and to increase the amount of percussionists, often resorting to their students, or other kinds of artists from Theater, Cinema or even writers, dancers, painters, electronic musicians.
A web of artistic experiences that led Ars Ludi to win in 2022 one of the most desirable awards in the European music scene: the Silver Lion at the Biennale of Venice.

Composer Kay Rhie releases Cereus,  a portrait album of chamber works, two including voice, featuring soprano Leela Subramaniam, Winsor Music and the Aperture Duo. Rhie's music draws on her experience as a South Korean born artist living in Los Angeles, responding to the lived environment in outward ways through text setting and thematic context, as well as inward impacts on her compositional process.

Bologna, Italy based American composer and pianist David Salvage releases Dreams of Love and Travel, works he composed for solo piano that engage with journeys physical, literary, and symbolic. A seven movement suite inspired by Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time occupies a central role in the collection, representing the large structural gesture on the album as it is surrounded by shorter character pieces.

Brooklyn based SydeBoob Duo is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of contemporary performance in repertoire for soprano and flute, bringing their virtuosity to ambitious works that highlight their committment to broad representation alongside the highest aesthetic standards. On this debut full length release, they perform works by Rebecca Saunders, Eric Moe, Anthony Braxton, Ramin Akhavijou, Max Johnson, and Beat Furrer that are both landmark works for the instrumentation and core works that have shaped Sydeboob as an ensemble.

Scott Wollschleger wrote Lost Anthems as part of The 20/19 project, violist Leilehua Lanzilotti's commissioning enterprise. The twenty five minute work is divided into fifteen discrete sections, what Wollschleger describes as "a melodic, song-like structure in search of itself." By titling the works "anthems," Wollschleger invokes a music that is inherently communal and symbolic of something larger than itself; by presenting music that is often introspective, he subverts the bombastic underpinnings of many anthems.

Composer Daniel Strong Godfrey's Toward Light presents three quintets for string quartet and piano, guitar, and cello respectively, showcasing his expressive, finely crafted chamber music. Featuring performances by the Cassatt Quartet with guests pianist Ursula Oppens, guitarist Eliot Fisk, and cellist Nicole Johnson, the works on Toward Light are elegantly balanced compositions, cohesive conceptions that are deeply felt.

Composer Per Bloland newest releaase, Shadows of the Electric Moon, highlights his reliance on fiction as an impetus for compositional inspiration as well as his integration of custom designed electronic software into his work. Featuring Unheard-of//Ensemble, Wild Rumpus, Keith Kirschoff, Bill Solomon, and Stephen Marotto, Bloland's music captures his inventive spirit and keen ear for highlighting subtletlies of instrumental characteristics and developing them within the narrative of a composition.

On Lines and Traces of Desire, composer Mischa-Salkind Pearl collaborates with cimbalom artist Nicholas Tolle on this collection of solo, duo, and ensemble works for the beguiling stringed percussion instrument. These mystical, reflective pieces celebrate the cimbalom's resonant qualities, and honor the eminent composer Gyorgy Kurtag, whose music provided Tolle the inspiration to dedicate himself to the instrument.

The 21st Century Orchestra is a celebration of the evolution of symphonic writing into our current era through the lens of the work of four composers on faculty at Brown University: Wang Lu, Anthony Cheung, Joseph Butch Rovan, and Eric Nathan. Despite their diverse stylistic approaches, they share a decidedly contemporary approach to writing for individual instruments and for contextualizing the modern orchestra, heard in expert performances by one of the premiere symphonies devoted to modern music in the United States, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, led by Gil Rose.

The Massachusetts based Ecce Ensemble, directed by composer John Aylward, releases this composer portrait album of Trevor Weston's chamber music, Remembrances. Weston's music aims to be transformative regardless of aesthetic, and he seamlessly integrates influences from a wide range of sources into his attractive, cohesive musical language.

The CD entitled Contrappassi sees the two protagonists, Leonardo Zunica on piano and Leandro Lo Bianco on electric guitar, engaged in compositions by contemporary authors, with pieces that find poetic-musical inspiration in the fascinating and complex world of Dante. A program with broad musical visions that transport you to an unexpected soundscape, with the two performers who give life to moments and atmospheres of surprising suggestion. The CD's lineup opens with the Sonata n. 1 "DANTE SONATA" for piano by the Danish composer Poul Ruders (born in 1949), a work divided into two distinct movements with contrasting characteristics. The roots of the Dante Sonata are not only linked to Dante's canticles but also to the author's admiration for Liszt's Sonata in B minor. Dante, therefore, seen through the eyes of Liszt. The piece by Ruders is followed by MALEBOLGE for electric guitar and piano TRE CANZONI DI FRANCESCO LANDINI for piano with electric guitar ad libitum by the Italian composer Gabrio Taglietti, a journey that leads to the VIII circle of Hell. Taglietti wanted to alternate his three pits with transcriptions for piano, and in the last case for piano and electric guitar, of as many ballads by Francesco Landini, a composer of the fourteenth century, the genre in which Landini excelled. This singular listening journey ends with a piece by Leandro Lo Bianco, here in the role of composer as well as performer: THREE IMPROVISATIONS ON R. RAUSCHENBERG "DANTE'S INFERNO" for solo electric guitar and electronic devices.