Tres Momentos describes a section of the infinite spiral, in which disorder and structure, the sacred and the profane, life and death are mutually dependent. Drone sounds connect three composed moments for string orchestra. The composition's lyrical tones contrast with multi-layered noise elements, which ultimately dissolve into a waltz. With this release, Sven Helbig departs from his previously preferred rigorous tonal harmonies, and the electronic components become more prominent. With the cover artwork, Sven Helbig quotes the 3,000-year-old Chinese oracle of I Ching. The trigram stands for the universal, the eternal and for creative power. Imagine a blend of classical music, experimental electronica, and a certain catchiness found in pop - Sven Helbig definitely has an ear for captivating melodies. Together, with his well-trained classical composing technique and a sure hand for electronic sound creation, he builds touching musical landscapes. Through the last year, his concerts inspired audiences at the Barbican Center London, Manchester Camerata, Reina Sofia Madrid, Volksb�hne Berlin, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg as well as the Enescu Festival Bucharest or Dresden Music Festival. Now, Sven Helbig is on tour with his Forrklang Quartet presenting new compositions and chamber music versions of his well-known pieces.

John Metcalfe, who arranges songs for big names such as Coldplay, Simple Minds and The Pretenders, has produced albums with Peter Gabriel and has been touring for decades as a member of the Duke Quartet. Now he releases his debut album on the Neue Meister label. Metcalfe has always been surrounded by music. As a child, he would listen to his father sing opera, before a love of Kraftwerk and Joy Division led to a stint as a drummer in a high school band. But it was a move to Manchester that really accelerated his development as an artist, and led to him finding his true calling. Joining cult band The Durutti Column, then signed to legendary label Factory Records, brought him into the orbit of Tony Wilson and the Ha�ienda, formative events that would help foster his renegade spirit. Unimpressed with the strictures demanded by the classical recording industry, Metcalfe persuaded Wilson to launch the ground-breaking Factory Classical Label, aimed at unearthing exciting - and unconventional - new British talent. It was here that Metcalfe found a home, and the group that would come to define his musical career; the Duke Quartet. For nearly 30 years, they've existed at the vanguard of contemporary British music, innovating and delighting in equal measure. As a solo artist, Metcalfe explores electro-classical soundscapes and the boundaries between genres. His finely tuned compositions are neat yet grand in scale, both in terms of sound and the conceptual ideas underpinning them. Absence, the fifth record to bear his own name, is something of a departure for Metcalfe, framing bold images and themes with some of the most conventional song structures he's ever employed. But it's also his most affecting, deconstructing a subject he's been interested in since his childhood in New Zealand: Dealing with loss.

Lilith's Lullabies is a transformative album, taking the listener on a journey that fully explores that "other side of your consciousness." Some songs really are lullabies, beautifully flowing odes that caress your brain and ease the senses. Others have a brightness and energy that's impossible to resist. Together, they make Lilith's Lullabies a thoughtful, contemplative listen, and mark a new chapter in the rise of one of the most talented contemporary composers currently at work. "I used simpler melodies, and harmonies and rhythms which are naturally less complicated, in order to achieve a more accomplished narrative structure, but there's a deeper meaning to this album which happens on the level of sound design. It's important to invite listeners to just enjoy the music, but if they are interested they can dig and find things for themselves", says the composer. Born in Minsk, Belarus, Marhulets has been surrounded by music since he was an infant. Encouraged by his father - his first teacher and role model - he excelled at oboe and piano; he played his first concert at five, and was accepted to the prestigious Minsk College of Music just one year later. He toured and performed with some of the most renowned orchestras in the country, but an adolescence spent focusing on traditional classical music left him restless and creatively unfulfilled. Abandoning the instrument that had been his life, he moved to Germany in 2000, immersing himself in composition and the underground experimental music scene.

Countless umbrellas, pils of jumble and two grand pianos stacked one upon another found in Erik Satie's apartment after his death were the inspiration of this new release. Pianist Tamar Halperin and producer Guy Sternberg strip down Satie's compositions into individual voices, play them on various instruments and stack the pieces on top of each other. Their goal is to find out what Satie's music would sound like, were it composed in modern times. Halperin and Sternberg want to reflect Satie's influence on the various generations of artists that followed him. Satie was a composer who blurred the lines between Classical Art music and non-classical, popular styles.

American composer Trevor Kowalski's latest album, "The Twilight Glow," marks an eagerly anticipated addition to his diverse and intricate discography. Known for his serene and dreamy soundscapes as well as his sophisticated classical compositions, Kowalski continues to explore a range of themes and moods with his new collection. For the album's title track, "The Twilight Glow," Kowalski has taken the exceptional step of transcribing the sheet music himself, underscoring the significance of this piece within the collection. The album features a variety of arrangements, including solo piano, a full score for performance suites, and parts for horn and strings, showcasing a rich orchestration that suits various musical preferences. An EMMY-nominated composer, Kowalski's work remains a testament to his mastery of blending classical influences with contemporary soundscapes. "The Twilight Glow" is available now for listeners who appreciate finely crafted musical compositions.

Francesca Guccione's new album, The Geometry of Time, is a captivating fusion of her rich Sicilian heritage and the stunning landscapes of her homeland. Drawing deeply from Sicily's beauty and cultural depth, Guccione masterfully weaves these influences into her music, resulting in an evocative and immersive auditory experience. Guccione's album is a harmonious fusion of orchestral instruments, voices, synthesizers, and sophisticated audio samples. The result is a poetic and ethereal sound that transports listeners to a realm of their own. Her use of a diverse array of instruments, from digital and analog synths to samplers, in tandem with traditional ones like violins and piano, underscores her versatility and groundbreaking approach to music composition. Guccione's music is not just deeply intertwined with film, but often directly inspired by cinematic themes. The tracks in The Geometry of Time resonate with the mood and emotion found in movies, making it a perfect accompaniment for both the silver screen and personal introspection. In The Geometry of Time, Francesca Guccione continues to push the boundaries of musical expression, offering a unique blend of tradition and modernity that is both timeless and contemporary. This album is a testament to her artistic vision and celebrates the intricate interplay between culture, nature, and sound.

Brothers Sebastian and Daniel Selke's music can be likened to an exercise of memory retrieval. All of their four albums explore and pay tribute to their past; growing up in East Berlin in the final decade of the GDR. At it's core, the duo's music can be heard as a dialogue between siblings about their shared upbringings and experiences, a conversation given form through Sebastian's cello and Daniel's piano keys, in the fusion that becomes CEEYS. In 2017, the duo also founded Q3 AMBIENTFEST, a three-day happening for neoclassical and experimental music, which seeks to explore the cultural and musical impact of East German heritage. But the memories rescued through their music are far from only historical, they are foremost emotional recollections. Their 2018 album, W�NDE was as much about the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and it's implications in society, as it was about the thin walls that separated the brothers at home, and through which they heard each other practicing their instruments when young. The same can be said of their latest album HIDDENSEE, which speaks both of a physical place - the picturesque East German island in the Baltic Sea - as well as a place and time of spiritual importance for the brothers. As East Germany opened itself in the 90s, the two brothers would find themselves traveling out of their homeplace to the rest of the world, and while grateful for their newfound freedoms, they would also come to miss their childhood Eden. The duality of east and west, novelty and familiarness, is also thoroughly explored through CEEYS' musical style, which merges influences from the luminaries of classical music such as Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, with the lesser known artists of East Germany and the contemporary musicians Sebastian and Daniel were exposed after the fall of the wall.

How do things come to life? This is a question that German composer, electronic producer, and classically trained piano virtuoso Johannes Motschmann has been contemplating since a health scare three years ago; he had bleeding on the brain. Sat in a doctor's office looking at an angiography of his head, he was "quite shocked" by the rendering of the blood flows creating patterns and shapes. But the images also provided inspiration. "Right then, I wanted to make music about the starting point, about how music appears. So this record is about bringing concepts and ideas to life." It's a unique, compositional approach to electronic music that has led Motschmann to several ground-breaking albums and a raft of acclaimed performances all over the world, latterly alongside Boris Bolles and David Panzl as the Johannes Motschmann Trio. 2016's "Electric Fields" via Neue Meister, which matched classical flourishes with beautiful moments of electronica, typified his creative processes - "New sound spaces inspired by electronic music, but produced 100% by hand," is how he described it - something he repeated for "Lifestream". "The concept of 'Lifestream' has many meanings," he says, "and if you spell it differently - with a v - that's pretty much what we do when we perform live. The idea of creating a lifestream also means to instantly create, right there on the stage; not working with loops, not working with samples. So most of it is really done with our handcraft, in the moment," explains Motschmann. Conceived as a narrative arc, "Lifestream" itself reflects the natural cycle of all things - from birth to death, from 'Craving', a euphoric, glimmering track that contains the DNA of the whole album to 'Grave', a track about weightlessness and "a space that I would not want to describe in detail." It's also, explains Motschmann, something of an epitaph, the haunting piano and mournful strings providing a peaceful - and fitting - coda to the record and the life contained within.

Is it a love story? Undoubtedly. Is it a play about the strange relationship between people and their computers? Likewise (after all, among other things, quite a few annoying spam emails are given musical honors in it). Is it experimental literature? Indeed, at least in part, because one of the actors from the Oulipo circle of authors around Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec is involved in it. Is it film music for an abstract film with letters instead of actors? In a way, that too. When musician and composer Pascal Schumacher, typographer Michel Welfringer and writer Ian Monk join forces to write variations on CTRL (control? the control key? the sounds C, T, R, and L? the letters?) for the ensemble United Instruments of Lucilin, a kind of controlled loss of control is preprogrammed.

Marina Baranova creates several tracks following the steps of the Cosmic Calendar, starting with the Big Bang - Ending with the final creation of the earth Baranova presents her own compositions on the piano, additional tracks with strings, electronic elements and more

The UberBach album is a collection of compositions by the Munich-based composer Arash Safaian on themes by Johann Sebastian Bach. Safaian starts off with various pieces by Bach- chorales, orchestral works, organ and clavier music- and works with them to create five concertos for piano, vibraphone and chamber orchestra. Arash Safaian’s musical partner is the internationally acclaimed pianist Sebastian Knauer. Sebastian Knauer writes of this project: “When I heard the first example of UberBach, I was enthusiastic about the project at once. The virtuosity of the piano part, the melodiousness of the compositions and the closely woven sound made a deep impression on me. I imagined I was listening to Bach and yet it sounded too modern for the original.” He called his long-time musical partner, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the very next day and organized the recording. Arash Safaian is an artist, composer, and producer. He is the son of artist Ali Akbar Safaian, an important representative of Iranian modernism. Born in Teheran, he grew up in Bayreuth, where he was exposed to Richard Wagner’s operas at an early age. Alongside his interest in music, painting and sculpture shaped his childhood and youth. He has made his mark as a composer with orchestral works, ensemble pieces, film music and operas. He currently lives and works in Munich.

Iskandar Widjaja just doesn't line up with the image of a musician on the classical music scene. As the ambassador of a new generation he simply can't be pigeonholed as representing this or that genre. He connects worlds: as soloist with internationally renowned ensembles, and equally as a performer at mass-media events like Miss World or Miss Earth, the Milan EXPO or Paris Fashion Week. He has long been a TV star in East Asia with regular television appearances, commercial advertising contracts and "trending topic" status on Twitter. In his new project Mercy, Iskandar Widjaja presents a broad musical spectrum with a closely interwoven thematic structure, summing up his achievement to date and opening a new phase of his life. Mercy begins with an improvisation on the composition "River Flows In You" by the South Korean pianist Yiruma. The British composer Max Richter, whose habitual field of operations is the electronic, ambient and film score scene, contributes the title track "Mercy". A quiet, almost meditative work for piano and violin, it is framed by congenial segments with works by Arvo Part and Johann Sebastian Bach. Long-time friends and associates - like the Italian electronic music artist Giordano Franchetti, who created a sound synthesis with NASA "space sounds", or pianist Friedrich Wengler, whom Widjaja has known since his schooldays -accompany him on his new album. The greatest challenge proved to be the piece "Eneril" in which the vocal part was taken by Mongolian singer Urna Chahar-Tugchi, who grew up in a shepherd family in the grasslands of Ordos. The result is a track that is Iskandar Widjaja all over: wandering between worlds, never without a homeland, being at home everywhere. The release of Mercy on the Berlin Neue Meister label lays the foundation for an international concert tour in the late summer and fall of 2018.

Musicians Clemens Christian Poetzsch and Sven Helbig had known each other for years. They met in 2008 at Dresden’s conservatory, where Helbig taught drums and Poetzsch studied the piano. Soon enough they would be playing in the same Jazz trio, jamming to Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus every Sunday at the city’s famous Blue Note Club. But following their years in Dresden, the two lost touch. For ten years both would go their separate ways pursuing their distinct musical identities; Helbig delving deeper into orchestra and genre blurring music and Poetzsch developing his solo piano work. That was until 2019, when Helbig decided to invite his old jazz mate onboard a special project, “For a very long time I thought about the right interpreter for my music, and with Clemens I found the ideal combination of technical skills, feel for sound and musical background,” he explains, “We both share a passion for the extravaganzas of the piano gods, but also for the unique aesthetics that jazz pianists bring to the instrument, and we can also get lost in electronic music from the ambient and experimental world.” All ten pieces for the album were selected by Helbig from his previous three albums. The German musician has become known for his sound which fuses elements of classical and electronic music. The selected pieces embody this versatility, some being written for a string quartet, others for the orchestra and some for the choir. Although the scores were written down, transposing such vastness into solo piano tunes meant that there was so much that Poetzsch could play with, “No one has the same pace, the same rhythm, the same sense for details and what you can do with them - in music as in life,” says Clemens.

In the ever-evolving landscape of contemporary classical music, composer Henning Fuchs emerges as a trailblazer with his latest release, Cocoon. This musical odyssey composed by Henning Fuchs, beckons listeners to transcend the conventional and embark on a reflective journey through a unique blend of neo-classical and world music. Fuchs, once the assistant to the renowned Max Richter, brings his cinematic expertise to the forefront, crafting compositions that invite introspection and meditation. The core of this auditory adventure lies in Fuchs' ability to marry neo-classical elements with world music nuances. Drawing inspiration from his contemporary Irish abode, the album introduces rare traditional instruments, resonating with the sounds of a place that has become a muse for the composer. The result is a rich tapestry of tones and textures that transport the listener to an otherworldly realm where time seems to stand still. Collaborating with a talented ensemble of musicians, Fuchs enlists the skills of Katie O'Connor (Violin), Aoife NíDhornáir on (Violin/Viola), Paula Hughes on (Cello), Kieran Moynhihan (Flute), Aisling Ennis (Harp), and Martin Schärer on percussion. Each instrument becomes a storyteller, contributing to the album's narrative and enhancing its emotive depth.

Adding another layer to this sonic journey are the guest vocals of Uzo Nwanaga and Lisa Lambe. Their voices intertwine seamlessly with the instrumental arrangements, creating moments of sublime beauty and emotional resonance. Cocoon becomes a collaborative effort, an immersive experience that transcends the boundaries of conventional genres. As you delve into the tracks, there's an undeniable sense of being cocooned in the intricate melodies and thoughtful compositions. Fuchs' creation becomes a sanctuary, encouraging contemplation and reflection. It's an invitation to explore the uncharted territories where classical and world music intersect, challenging preconceived notions and offering a haven for those seeking a deeper connection with the music. The album is an auditory tapestry that encourages listeners to let go of expectations, immerse themselves in the soundscape, and emerge on the other side with a renewed perspective on the boundless possibilities of musical expression.

Introducing the debut solo album, "Phaethon, Becalmed," by Ben J. Connolly - a member of Berlin's alternative pop band, ALL THE LUCK IN THE WORLD. This project draws inspiration from the Greek myth of Phaethon, who sought to prove his parentage by driving his father's Sun Chariot across the sky, inadvertently causing ecological chaos and meeting a tragic end.
Collaborating with Echo Collective on strings, Ramon Lormans on tuned percussion (Stargaze), and Andrew Dickinson on vocals (Dt. Oper), the album comprises 17 pieces that intricately weave together to narrate Phaethon's tale. The instrumentation includes piano, strings, synths, and electronics, creating a calm and relaxed musical atmosphere.
The album unfolds like a story, with interwoven themes marking each chapter of Phaethon's journey. The diverse musical palette captures the essence of the myth, offering a tranquil and immersive listening experience. "Phaethon, Becalmed" invites listeners to explore the narrative through a blend of classical and contemporary elements.
This project goes beyond a mere musical release, offering a thoughtful exploration of myth and storytelling through sound. It's a unique opportunity to engage with a rich tapestry of emotions and experiences.