Guitarist Daniel Lippel releases a new version of Steve Reich’s iconic Electric Counterpoint. In collaboration with South African born ethnomusicologist Martin Scherzinger, Lippel approached the piece through the lens of its roots in Central Africa, specifically the traditional music of the Banda-Linda tribe, from which Reich borrowed material for the canonic theme of the opening movement. Guitarist Daniel Lippel, called an “exciting soloist” (New York Times), “precise and sensitive” (Boston Globe) has carved out a unique and diverse career that ranges through solo and chamber music performances, innovative commissioning and recording projects, and performances in diverse contexts. He has premiered more than fifty new solo and chamber works, many written for him, recording several on the independent label he co-founded and directs, New Focus Recordings. Lippel has been a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) since 2006 and Flexible Music since 2003 and has been a guest with many other ensembles including the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New York New Music Ensemble, New York City Opera, Either/Or Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, and counter)induction.

Loadbang, a unique New York based ensemble of bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, baritone voice, has been energetically expanding the repertoire for their instrumentation since their formation in 2008. Their new release and the works on it pay tribute to the biological organ that generates the sound for these four instruments, the lungs. Beyond the title, the works by composers Alex Mincek, David Brynjar Franzson, Reiko Fueting, Alexandre Lunsqui, and Scott Worthington engage with breath, wind, and air as it passes through the instruments in conventional ways, but also through whispers, clicks, and extended sounds, creating a beguiling sound world that constantly inhales and exhales.

Flexible Music is: Haruka Fujii: percussion Dan Lippel: guitars Tim Ruedeman: saxophones Eric Huebner: piano Hout- Louis Andriessen Flexible Music- Nico Muhly Around the Bend- John Link Closing Time- Ryan Streber Sustenance Variations- Orianna Webb Throw Down or Shut Up- Vineet Shende 'The quartet known as Flexible Music derives it's name from the title of the Nico Muhly piece that the group plays on it's new disc. Like that score, the program's other works by Louis Andriessen, John Link, Ryan Streber, Orianna Webb, and Vineet Shende take percussion, piano, saxophones, and guitars through fascinating textural, rhythmic, and coloristic terrain. The results are varied and vital, a feast of intimate musical possibilities. The disc's springboard is Andriessen's beguiling Hout, which has been recorded by several other ensembles. Dutch for 'wood', the piece is a canon that finds the instruments chasing each other at pell-mell speed, occasionally stopping in their tracks amid the hypnotic activity, sensual gestures and group exclamation points. Muhly's Flexible Music is exactly that. Inspired by video games, it's energy is relentless, with swirling, punching ideas momentarily relaxed with lyrical lines. In Link's Around the Bend, something surprising is always lurking, from exotic tambourine sighs to quickly shared fragments, dreamy piano lines and sudden outbursts. An electric guitar broods in Streber's Closing Time, which is animated through saxophone flights and feisty interaction. Tidbits emerge from hushed moments, and the saxophone and guitar have extended solos before the music fades away. The aura veers from the frisky to the still in Webb's Sustenance Variations, whose punchy chords and confrontational episodes find a keen balance amid lines of haunting poetry. Shende pays homage to James Brown in Throw Down or Shut Up, whose vigorous activity includes vocal grunts, riffs, shifting rhythms and a sassy finish. The members of Flexible Music are undaunted by the repertoire's formidable demands. Haruka Fujii (percussion), Eric Huebner (piano), Timothy Ruedeman (saxophones), and Daniel Lippel (guitars) appear to relish the sense of discovery that these composers have invested in their captivating creations.'- Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone August 2009 '... Flexible Music, a young and vigorous New York City-based quartet. Aggressiveness, virtuosity, and seamless ensemble playing are obviously Flexible Music hallmarks, and these strengths are revealed immediately with a blistering account of Louis Andriessen's Hout, the piece that one imagines was the catalyst that brought the quartet together. While calling any work a tour de force may seem terribly cliche, it's really the only term that aptly describes Hout. It's a relentless piece, beginning with what seems like a never-ending canon at the 16th note.

Grammy-winning ensemble Third Coast Percussion releases their newest recording of two landmark works by acclaimed French composer Philippe Manoury. Manoury's work is aligned with the modernist French tradition as articulated by Pierre boulez; his music is imbued with values shared with the world of research and marked by ambitious instrumental challenges. His works has been particularly informed by his expertise in electro-acoustic composition and real-time interaction between acoustic instruments and computer generated sounds. In these two remarkable acoustic works, Le Livre des Claviers and Metal, Manoury explores the rich world of tuned keyboard percussion instruments, a category he broadens to include low pitched Thai gongs and a fascinating set of six homemade instruments called sixxen, originally imagined by pioneer Iannis Xenakis. Xenakis specified some sonic parameters for sixxen, but gave no specific instrument designs. Notably, pitch is not a fixed parameter in the design specifications for sixxen, so it is up to the performers to build instruments that create an engaging pitch landscape. The sixxen works, therefore, are shaped by Manoury's compelling rhythmic writing and elegant sense of contour, and a listener might be tempted to muse on ways the piece would sound different, or the same, with another set of sixxen. While Xenakis' use of these instruments was somewhat brutal, in Manoury's hands, they also display a ritualistic, etheral side, sounding occasionally like clanging church bells from the worship house of an exotic theology. Two movements for thai gongs and marimbas, a marimba duo, and a vibraphone solo represent the rest of Le Livre des Claviers, containing precise, demanding music that nevertheless avoids the kind of dramatic resistance often associated with writing of this complexity. The dynamic between the rigors of the mallet percussion movements of Le Levre des Claviers and the sixxen movements amounts to a kind of refraction of Manoury's vision through a distorting lens, particularly as it pertains to pitch. Present throughout all of these movements and in Metal is a natural, unencumbered flow underlying Manoury's phrases, even in the most virtuosic passages. This is, of course, a testament to Third Coast's well documented expertise, but also suggests that an affect of detached effortlessness may be shared with or influenced by his work in the realm of computer music. Perhap sit is consistent with Manoury's role as a researcher - a detached observer nevertheless infused with a sense of wonder.

Fernando Benadon has a rich background as a composer, saxophonist, improvisor, and scholar. He brings this experience to his most recent recording project, delight/delirium, particularly to the final two tracks, Búgi Wúgi and Rhythmensional, both of which engage with the boundaries between improvised and notated music in interesting ways. For Rhythmensional, Benadon recorded an improvised drum solo by acclaimed Cuban jazz drummer and composer, Dafnis Prieto. Benadon then composed a through composed piece to be performed along with the recording of Prieto's solo - essentially turning Prieto's improvisation into fixed media. As a scholar, Benadon has had an enduring interest in the field of "microtimings", which investigates the aspects of time in a performer's performance that go beyond notation, particularly as they relate to different styles. By recording Prieto and then placing his playing at teh foundational level of the piece, in a sense, Benadon has frozen the microtimings in the improvisation while guaranteeing microvariation in the rhythmic realization of the score by the live performers playing along with Prieto's track. Búgi Wúgi consciously goes in the opposite direction, achieving the looseness of ealry jazz piano masters Earl Hines and Bubber Miley adn the post-modern sensibility of contemporary experiemental improvisors like Ethan Iverson and Vijay Iyer by keeping the left hand steady and meticulously notating improvised "sounding" material in the right hand. Cotxes in inspired by the visual imagery of Barcelona, as this unique quartet of sax, vibes, harp, and piano spin out lush, impressionistic harmonies through notated lines that again sound improvised. delight/delirium opens with materal that perhaps could be improvised, but reveals itself clearly as a fully through composed piece when we hear tightly coordinated unisons between clarinet and piano near the on eminute mark. Nevertheless, the work often falls forward like an improvisation, with a sense of structure that is less oriented towards managed development of material than it is towards a journey whose changes of directions are suggested each moment anew. Cosmicomics is the odd man out aesthetically on the recording, not only because it is the only large ensemble work, but also because it inhabits a more conventionally composerly sound world. The work ebbs and flows between the gently pulsating, impressionistic chords of the opening and more explosive moments that bristle with orchestral color. Cosmicomics is a more direct look at Benadon's material palette apart from his engagement with exploring the subtle boundaries between improvised and notated music.

Acclaimed Armenian born violinist Movses Pogossian releases here his performance of the full set of Bach's iconic Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. Pogossian's soulful and thoughtful version strikes an ideal balance between various approaches to Bach. He incorporates the best characteristics of historically informed performance alongside aspects of the expansive, violinistic style associated with 20th century readings. His deep understanding of the structure of these works provides the foundation for the entire recording, elucidating the genius craft behind the fugues, the elegant harmonic architecture of the slow movements, and the brilliant "fortspinnung" or "spinning out" of motivic and episodic material in the fast movements. His approach is influenced by close work with György and Márta Kurtág, whose essential insights on Bach and music in general have inspired legions of wonderful musicians the world over. Pogossian is Professor of Violin at UCLA and can be heard as a soloist and chamber musician worldwide, as a champion of new compositions and virtuoso performer of works in the traditional canon. Proceeds from sales of this recording are going to support two organizations: Music for Food in Boston and the Lark Musical Society in Glendale, CA.

Mivos Quartet is one of today's most adventurous ensembles. For their newest release, Garden of Diverging Paths, they feature three new works by American-based composers Andrew Greenwald, Taylor Brook, and Kate Soper. These compositions are diverse and bold, and throughout the duration of the album the ensemble achieves a wide range of textures, harmonies, techniques, and infinite possibilities.

Martin Scherzinger is a South Africanborn composer and media theorist, who works on and engages with the music of Africa. African Math is an album of piano trio music that "Africanizes" these western instruments (flipping the typical appropriation of indigenous instruments on it's head). Piano, violin, and cello are used as conduits for material originally intended for mbira, or kalahari, or Ugandan xylophone. Underlying the layer of transcription, Scherzinger highlights and delights in the rich musical mathematics which exist at the core of so many musical traditions in Africa.

On this release composer Anthony Cheung releases an inventive, beautifully crafted collection of chamber works featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble, Spektral Quartet, and Atlas Ensemble, as well as soloists Winston Choi, Maiya Papach, Claire Chase, and Ernest Rombout. Anthony Cheung is a composer and pianist. His music has been commissioned by the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, New York Philharmonic, and many more. From 2015 to 2017, he was the Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow of the Cleveland Orchestra. The recipient of a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, he has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP, and first prize in the Sixth International Dutilleux Competition. As a performer and advocate for new music, he codirected the Talea Ensemble from its founding in 2007 until 2017, performing as a pianist and serving as artistic director. Anthony received a BA from Harvard and a doctorate from Columbia University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Chicago.

Pianist Mabel Kwan releases the premiere recording of Georg Friedrich Haas' Trois Hommages, a beguiling work for two pianos tuned a quarter tone apart and played by one performer. Dedicated to Steve Reich, Gyorgy Ligeti, and Josef Matthias Hauer, Haas' expansive work deconstructs stylistic elements of prominent modern compositional aesthetics as well as the central association the piano has with equal temperament and its impact on music history. Chicago-based, Austin-born pianist Mabel Kwan performs with the new music collective Ensemble Dal Niente, the improvising group Restroy, and as one half of the synth duo Mega Laverne and Shirley. She has commissioned and premiered new works for piano and clavichord which can be heard on her solo albums. She has performed nationally and internationally, including concerts at Ravinia, Millennium Park, the Library of Congress, and the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. Mabel is a 2017 3Arts awardee.

“American Romantics III” is the third volume in a project initiated by conductor Reuben Blundell after he discovered several scores of previously unrecorded works by 19th century American composers through the Fleischer Collection. The composers represented were either native born or recently immigrated. Blundell leads the Philadelphia area Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra on this recording of premieres, some of which draw on Americana melodies while others reflect the prevailing Central European compositional style of the day. The Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1946 to provide music for the First Presbyterian Church of Lansdowne. By 1951 the orchestra had become Lansdowne’s community orchestra. One of the most distinguished community orchestras in the world, the LSO performs a regular season of five concerts at the Upper Darby Performing Arts Center, and other various projects. Led by its sixth music director, Reuben Blundell, the orchestra continues its traditions of musical excellence, service to the community, and promotion of area talent.

Violinist Josh Modney presents this release highlighting his remarkable versatility as a performer, collaborator, and improviser. The album is elegantly cohesive across the entire program, as concerns with alternate intonation systems, experimental approaches to timbre, and intensely collaborative work connect the pieces. Moreover, tying the collection together, from Braxton to Bach to Modney’s own powerful improvisations, is Modney’s focused virtuosity and a laserlike attention to sound and the details of the means for producing and shaping that sound. One hears this immediately in the first bars of the opening work by longtime Wet Ink Ensemble colleague, Sam Pluta. We hear not just a generic violin scraping sound along the string, instead we hear a whole vocabulary opening up inside this technique of sound production, a language Modney manipulates with as much subtlety of expression as we hear in his just-intoned performance of Bach’s timeless Ciaconna. Josh Modney’s improvisations demonstrate the sophisticated vocabulary he has developed for his work in this context. In his own words, “This way of working with material- allowing riorous investigations into sound to be the spark that illuminates a deeper path toward form, expression, emotion, language- represents an ethos that permeates all of the works on the album.”

Saxophonist Ryan Muncy releases a recording highlighting the increasingly important and vibrant role of his instrument in today's avant-garde repertoire. Featuring performances of works by Donatoni, Aperghis and Czernowin, with such notable performers as flutist Claire Chase and violist Nadia Sirota, this CD engages with and breaks through the saxophones previous limited associations, pointing the way to a new arena of exploration for the instrument.

Classical Music

Classical Music

DUO Stephanie & Saar’s third release on New Focus Recordings, The Art of Fugue, is the first ever complete piano duo recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s final enigmatic work. The duo performs the work’s different movements as either four-hand, two piano or solo piano works. Bach never specified the instrumentation of the work and this new version is a kaleidoscope of textures and colors, a probing journey that seeks answers and illumination. Dated 1748, some scholars see The Art of Fugue as an academic endeavor by an aging master paying tribute to the fugue, which was by then falling out of fashion. Others consider the work as a sort of “Da Vinci Code” of numerology, puzzles and musical coding. The mystery of Contrapunctus 14, notable for both the inclusion of Bach’s name as a theme and for its unfinished state adds to the mythology and cult status that surrounds the work.Bach found fugues to be a source of endless creativity. The Art of Fugue, a collection of fourteen fugues and four canons, is an exploration of the full spectrum of contrapuntal possibilities, all derived from one monolithic theme in D minor. From a purely technical standpoint, Bach’s compositional prowess is in full display as he employs inversion, retrograde, augmentation, diminution, multiple fugue subjects, mirroring and canonic writing- all while creating an intense and emotionally gripping musical experience. Bach was a deeply devout Lutheran, and while Th Art of Fugue has no direct religious connotations, the work’s reverence for “musical math” and the severity of the techniques used are in line with Bach’s devotional output. Bach’s need to exhaust as many possibilities of permutations from one theme is in essence a quest to find meaning, an unending spiritual journey reaching towards the divine.

In 1917, French composers Louis Durey, Georges Auric, and Arthur Honegger formed the Nouveaux Jeunes under the aegis of Erik Satie which, in 1919, with the addition of Germaine Tailleferre, Francis Poulenc, and Darius Milhaud, became Les Six. Durey’s work has been relatively unexplored compared to his five colleagues. Pianist and Durey scholar Jocelyn Dueck’s efforts have gone a long way toward righting that historical imbalance. Along with several critically acclaimed vocalists, she presents here this wonderful collection of recordings of several of succinct and rich art songs, in performances from unpremiered manuscripts. Jocelyn Dueck is known for her new music interpretations on the New York City circuit, premiering and commissioning works by composere Eve Beglarian, Lisa Bielawa, Tom Cipullo, Corey Dargel, Matthew Schickele, Daniel Felsenfeld, Judd Greenstein, John Glover, Daron Hagen, Gabriel Kahane, Libby Larsen, and more. She was a collaborator on the Billboard Chart-topper Five Borough Songbook, as well as its newly released second volume in 2017. She has served on the faculties of the Manhatten School of Music, Julliard, NYU, and Mannes: The New School for Music.

Fairy Tales, Folklore, & Fables or, Every Ogre is Unique At a time when children are bombarded with images that leave nothing to the imagination, it feels right to play a role in the centuries-old oral tradition of storytelling; listening to stories let's children make their own images. Add music to that (and let it tell it's own, parallel version of the tale) and you have the makings for something pretty interesting. The Philadelphia-based children's music and storytelling troupe Auricolae has performed for thousands of students throughout the Northeast. Audience participation and playful musical dialogue are hallmarks of the presentations and our aim is to introduce young people to the language of music through the telling of stories. The distinct palette available in music for violin, cello and narrator is quite versatile and has led composers down very different paths. In particular, the role of narrator changes depending upon the piece. Sometimes in dialogue with the instruments, other times it is completely separate and, occasionally, it even becomes an instrument in it's own right. The CD begins with Ferdinand the Bull, Munro Leaf's classic story about a peace-loving bull who, resisting the pressure of his peers, prefers to "smell the flowers" over fighting. Curiously, the story was written during the Spanish civil war and was banned in Spain after right-wing groups called it 'subversive." English composer Alan Ridout's (1934-1996) musical setting demands daunting virtuosity from the violinist. Eric Sessler (b.1969) had the inspired idea to compose multiple endings for The Rascally Rogue of the Beanstalk (a.k.a. Jack and the Beanstalk). All three additional endings are included on this recording following the original version of the piece. Robert Capanna's (b. 1952) unique take on Rumpilstilskin treats the narrator as an equal partner in the music-making. Employing sprechstimme, a technique first used by Schoenberg, the narrator weaves complex rhythms in and out of the violin and cello lines. An Adventure at Grannies by Gwyneth Walker (b. 1947) is a musical dramatization of 'Little Red Riding Hood' in which the instruments assume several character roles and play musical motifs to highlight the text. The Klezmer work Prince Rooster by David Yang (b. 1967) is based on a 19th Century Chassidic folk tale by Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav about a young man with a unique problem and a doctor with a unique solution. Finally, Three Little Pigs was written by Daniel Dorff (b.1956) and contains quotes and references not only to other classical works but to the rhythm of the text itself ("not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin...."). Artistic Director and narrator for Auricolae David Yang is a viola player who has collaborated with members of the Audubon, Borromeo, Brentano, Lark, Muir and Tokyo String Quartets, amongst others. He is also Artistic Director of the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival and founder of the Philadelphia Viola Society and Director of Chamber Music at the University of Pennsylvania. Unholy offspring of a Chinese landscape photographer and Jewish yenta from Brooklyn, David lives in Philadelphia with his daughters, Eliana and Alessandra.

Australian composer Joseph Franklin's The Horror of the Avant-Garde(s) is a concerto for piano (Mark Hannaford) and percussion (Satoshi Takeishi) soloists and 13 players that far exceeds the expectations of the genre. Integrating several modes of improvisation within a fully structured framework and a polystylistic musical language, the work was premiered in Melbourne in an interdisciplinary presentation, incorporating butoh dance theatre, visual art, and culinary "horrors." Franklin has created a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk for our collage-shaped era, and this release celebrates it's US premiere in 2026.

This release is a survey of music by American composers, and is a mixture of premieres and first recordings of new transcriptions for the clarinet. Featuring works from composers Robert Beaser, Joseph Schwantner, Lukas Foss, Marti Epstein, Derek Bermel, and David Gompper, this album evokes the image of Americana. While these composers typically air on the side of modernism, these particular works draw out the expansiveness, nostalgia, and optimism of traditional American compositions. Michael Norsworthy is an in demand soloist with a unique voice on the clarinet. He has gained praise all over the planet, and has premiered over 150 new works. David Gompper has worked as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer all over the world. He has been Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa since 1991.

Initiated by Hunter College’s conductor Reuben Blundell, this project features premiere recordings of turn of the century works for string orchestra. The works included on this album are by composers such as Carl Busch, Horatio Parker, Arthur Foote, and many more. Reuben Blundell conducts the Gowanus Arts Ensemble for this recording.

The critically acclaimed Jack Quartet perform four new works by the Áltavoz Composers, a group of Latin American composers who have emigrated to the U.S. and Europe. Felipe Lara, Jose-Luis Hurtado, Mauricio Pauly and Jorge Villavicencio Grossman are all dynamic compositional voices working in the modernist tradition; their works are heard here in the context of one of the most challenging and revered trajectories of the classical canon, the string quartet repertoire. "explosive virtuosity." (Boston Globe) "viscerally exciting." (New York Times) "thrillingly vital." (New Yorker)

In WAM, British composer Michael Finnissy plays with various elements of "musical culture" - rearranging and re-contextualizing old "classics", writing chamber music without traditional synchronicity, and allowing performers the freedom to reorder their pages of music. Through this deconstruction of classical conventions, Finnissy creates music that is endlessly surprising and wide-ranging in it's emotional character.

Composer Wang Lu releases "An Atlas of Time," her second recording on New Focus, featuring two large ensemble works performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP). The album title, also the title of the opening work, provides an apt metaphor for Wang Lu's work; her integration of Eastern and Western influences into her compositional style is less about a fusion of styles as it is about tapping into a cartography of her own personal memory and experiences. In this sense, Wang Lu works with "found sounds" that resonate within her own psyche but obliquely reference larger cultural touchstones.

Scott Miller's Tipping Point chronicles a long collaborative relationship between him and Minneapolis based new music ensemble, Zeitgeist. The members of Zeitgeist have regularly acted as a musical proving ground for Miller's explorations, particularly those combining acoustic instruments with interactive-electronic effects. From the opening measures of the title track, Miller's approach to integrating acoustic instruments into an electroacoustic environment is apparent. The tipping point Miller refers to may well be the edge at which we can no longer identify where the acoustic instruments end and the electronics begin. Funhouse dives immediately into this ambiguity, as snarling bass clarinet multiphonics mimic and later become absorbed into the carefully crafted noise world of the electronics. Pure Pleasure's percussive rhythms are manipulated timbrally as well as sent swirling around the stereo field in passages of spatialized virtuosity. Featuring soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw, Forth and Back's haunting minimalism suggests the slow evolution of a mind at work as it gains understanding over a puzzling paradigm: none other than time itself and our ability to transcend it through union with another. Mr. Miller is currently the President of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS).