Percussion music is likely the oldest there is: the impulse to make sound by scraping, scratching, tapping and striking is primal, one of the first things a child does consciously with his or her hands. Yet, in spite of its primacy to our human experience, percussion is underrepresented in classical music, with a repertory dating back mostly to the 1950's. With her generous triple album Eos, percussionist Patti Cudd demonstrates her commitment to expanding it while opening new doors for future exploration. Cudd commissioned 16 new compositions for the album and the works span a breathtaking variety of approaches from composers including Cort Lippe, Paul Elwood, Per Bloland, Jeff Herriott, Barry Moon and others. The album also features works by Morton Feldman, Brian Ferneyhough and Christian Wolff - the only ones here without the use of electronics. All the pieces make use of electroacoustic and interactive techniques, and many use the software Max/MSP, which was deisnged to offer tools for composers and performers to develop real-time interactive music. The software can track and analyze sound, refracting it and reimaginging it as the performer plays. "By extending the world of physical percussion with virtual computer objects and processes," Cudd writes in the liner notes, "I am excited to enter new sonic and mental territories in the company of these many remarkable composers." Patti Cudd is active as a percussion soloist, chamber musician and educator. She teaches percussion and new music studies at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University.

Brouhaha, the new album by Glass Farm Ensemble founder and director Yvonne Troxler, is far more than an assemblage of her most compelling new chamber pieces-it works the seams where music connects to the world and finds startling connections there. Whether drawing on the natural tones produced by a high-rise building in New York City during a storm (Penn 1), calling on the metaphorical weight of meteorites disguised as common rocks in a small Indian village in the three movements of Shergotty, or incorporating glass bowls into a work inspired by a Swiss musical tradition of rolling coins inside ceramic bowls, Troxler's music doesn't stand apart from the clamor of everyday life but instead embraces and celebrates it.

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Time to Burn ― Judith Shatin’s third solo CD for innova Recordings ― presents a rich cross-section of her acoustic and electronic music. Her music combines vivid timbral hues with perceptually clear forms.

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• A 2-disc collection of varied and diverse works spanning nearly 30 years. • Jospeh Klein’s music reflects ongoing interests in fractal geometry, chaos, systems theory, and literature. His works frequently incorporate theatrical elements. • Klein is on the faculty of the University of North Texas, where he has served as chair of the Composition Division since 1999. • Innova is a label dedicated to releasing material that consistently pushes musical boundaries outward • Album includes 1CD and 1 DVD

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Volti’s professional singers, under the direction of founder and Artistic Director Robert Geary, are national leaders in the discovery, creation, and performance of new vocal music. They are the first ensemble to have won the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music six times. In this recording they introduce 21st-century works they commissioned from American composers of dazzling range and diversity. Volti’s resident composer Mark Winges contributes “Canticles of Rumi,” settings of five poems by the 13th-century poet and founder of Sufism. Seattle-based composer John Muehleisen contributes “…is knowing…”- a musical analogy to Gertrude Stein’s linguistic Cubism. Album closer “Paradise” by Shawn Crouch was originally commissioned by Chanticleer in 2009 and then substantially revised for Volti in 2013. The work is based on the poems of American poet Brian Turner, an Iraq War veteran, whose moving accounts of war are set alongside the poetry of the 12th century Persian poet Hafez. “…undoubtedly the finest collection of new music singers we have.” – San Francisco Classical Voice.

The Heart Revived is composer Lawrence Axelrod’s second album for innova Recordings. This album covers almost two decades of Axelrod’s work, and displays a passionate and emotional range of expression. A notable work on this release is the song cycle “Saisons.” The French poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke is the basis of this work. Axelrod’s colorful orchestration brilliantly supports the soloist’s journey through the seasons. Axelrod’s works have been performed by ensembles such as The Chicago Composers Orchestra, Pinotage, The Lincoln Trio, the Ensemble JungeMusik Berlin, and more. He has performed across the Americas and Europe as both a composer and a concert pianist.

Urban hubs like Brooklyn, Chicago and San Francisco have long been seen as incubators of creative cross-pollination, but since 1971, the Society for New Music has been making the case that cultural and artistic collision and germination can happen away from the city lights. With the release of Music Here & Now - their fourth album on Innova Recordings - once again shows that new music is alive and well in the heart of New York state. Based in Syracuse and comprising of composers and creatives from New York, the Midwest, Peru, china, Mexico and beyond, the Society for New Music is the oldest new music organization in the state outside of Manhattan and commissions at least one new owrk each season from a regional composer. Music Here & Now pulls together works from Rob Deemer, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Gregory Wanamaker, Zhou Tian, Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann, "Doctuh" Mike Woods and Mark Olivier. Encompassing a wide range of styles and influences from Mexican to Peruvian folk music to jazz to classical to the natural world to social and political concerns, the music here stakes a claim to an aural world informed by but not bound to geography or genre. The award-winning Society for New Music, led by director Neva Pilgrim, is comprised of a core of dedicated professionals who live in the heart of New York State, but who are nationally and internationally renowned. Most have performed and recorded together for 15 to 20 years or more. They all bring their passion for new music to the enterprise. Their mission is to commission, permiere and record new works by regional composers; advocate for new music via Fresh Ink on WCNY-FM and its affiliates; provide regional musicians an opportunity to perform the music of their peers; encourage young composers and bring new music to as broad an audience as possible, plus composers-in-residence in the public schools.

Written as a series of companion pieces to each of Bach's celebrated Brandenburg concerti, Axelrod's Six Fantasias were first and foremost an engaging compositional challenge. The very specific combinations of instruments stretched Axelrod's imagination for sound possibilities. They also ended up providing an interesting and surprising addition to his compositional output for chamber orchestra and ensembles.

As any filmmaker knows, one of the most powerful aspects of music is it's ability to construct emotional arcs and guide narrative by purely sonic means. Simultaneously ethereal and concrete, both spectral and textural, Planet X-the debut collaboration between guitarist Erdem Helvacioglu and violist Ulrich Mertin-tells the story of the appearance in the sky of a new heavenly body and follows one hapless explorer's quest to discover what lies at it's heart. Over the course of two years, Helvacioglu and Mertin composed and crafted this project, building up layers of jagged scratching sounds, plaintive melodies, percussive hits, and dark drones. The two artists grounded the sound of the album in strings but also employed unorthodox recording techniques, sophisticated processing algorithms, and multi-tracking to achieve a rich, complex, resonant texture. Throughout, the sound is unmistakably forward-looking, evocative of the project's science fiction themes and redolent of the eerie, sometimes dark feel of sci-fi films like "Alien," "Moon," and "2001."

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Carve is an audacious opening gambit from bassoonist extraordinaire, Dana Jessen, a debut album that blurs the lines between composition, interpretation and improvisation. Punctuated by short acoustic improvisations that foreground the breath and physicality of the instrument, the album presents four new works by American composers Paula Matthusen, Peter V. Swendsen, Sam Pluta, and Kyle Bruckmann. In each, a mix of fixed and reactive electronics create environments for the bassoon to navigate and explore. Sometimes fixed, sometimes open, the structures of the pieces build spaces. Praised for her diverse talents, bassoonist Dana Jessen is highly active as a soloist, chamber musician, improviser and new music specialist. She is the co-founder of the Bay Area reed quintet, Splinter Reeds, and has performed with prominent ensembles including the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Ensemble Dal Niente, Calefax Reed Quintet, Callithumpian Consort, among others.

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