Percussionist Greg Stuart releases "Subtractions", featuring solo works by Sarah Hennies and Michael Pisaro-Liu that reframe virtuosity, inviting vulnerability and dialogue into the context of brilliant performative display. Through his collaboration with both composers, Stuart draws analogies with the politics of agency and democracy in how their dialogue was established, embedding respect for the performer's body and preferred modes of expression into the compositional process.

Greg Stuart is a percussionist whose work draws upon a mixture of music from the experimental tradition, the Wandelweiser collective, improvisation, and electronics. His performances have been described as “a ghostly, gorgeous lesson in how close, concentrated listening can alter and enhance perception” (The New York Times).

Departure Duo (Nina Guo, soprano and Edward Kass, bass) releases their debut recording, "Immensity Of," including works by Katherine Balch, John Aylward, Emily Praetorius, and György Kurtág. By featuring three works written for them alongside the work that formed their duo (the Kurtág) the virtuosic and adventurous duo calls attention to the precedent as well as the potential of this unique instrumentation that connects two poles of register and expression. Committed to performing repertoire written specifically for soprano and double bass, Departure Duo seeks to show the incredible variety of styles and sounds possible from such a combination. Departure Duo also commissions and performs new works to expand the repertoire for the “high-low” partnership.

Flutist Jennifer Grim releases "Through Broken Time," a collection of works at the intersection of Afro-Modernism and post-minimalism, by composers Tania León, Alvin Singleton, David Sanford, Valerie Coleman, Allison Loggins-Hull, and Julia Wolfe. Together with pianist Michael Sheppard, Grim performs these multi-dimensional works with characteristic precision, virtuosity, and expressive power. Hailed as “a deft, smooth flute soloist” by the New York Times, flutist Jennifer Grim has given solo and chamber performances throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. For over twenty years, she was the flutist of the award-winning Zéphyros Winds and the New York Chamber Soloists. She is a frequent guest artist with the Boston Chamber Music Society, Alpenglow Chamber Music Festival, Ensemble Flageolet, and has performed with such renowned ensembles such as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, American String Quartet, and with members of the Takacs Quartet and St. Lawrence Quartet.

Composer Mikel Kuehn releases his second recording on New Focus, "Entanglements," featuring three electro-acoustic works alongside ensemble music that highlights his cultivated approach to character, structure, and alternative notation. Featuring performances by Deborah Norin-Kuehn, Conor Nelson, Thomas Rosenkranz, Daniel Lippel, Nuiko Wadden, Marianne Gythfeldt, Doyle Armbrust, Kenneth Cox, Henrique Batista, Yu-Fang Chen, and Mei-Chun Chen, this album of Kuehn's work zeroes in on his powerful ability to examine dynamic sonic relationships from many angles.

loadbang releases their fourth album on New Focus, this time featuring centerpieces by Heather Stebbins and Chaya Czernowin as well as music by ensemble members Jeffrey Gavett and Andy Kozar. New York City-based new music chamber group loadbang is building a new kind of music for mixed ensemble of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. Since their founding in 2008, they have been praised as ‘cultivated’ by The New Yorker, ‘an extra-cool new music group’ and ‘exhilarating’ by the Baltimore Sun, ‘inventive’ by the New York Times and called a 'formidable new-music force' by TimeOutNY. Creating 'a sonic world unlike any other' (The Boston Musical Intelligencer), their unique lung-powered instrumentation has provoked diverse responses from composers, resulting in a repertoire comprising an inclusive picture of composition today. In New York City, they have been recently presented by and performed at Miller Theater, Symphony Space, MATA, and by the Look and Listen Festival; on American tours at Da Camera of Houston, Rothko Chapel, and the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State University; and internationally at Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), China-ASEAN Music Week (China), the Xinghai Conservatory of Music (China), Shanghai Symphony Hall (China), and the Musikverein (Vienna, Austria).

Composer Wang Lu's debut full length recording opens with a sonic portrait of a late afternoon in the life of a Chinese city park, with pre-recorded sounds of conversations layered on top of ephemeral gestures in a mixed instrumentation ensemble. It is the perfect opening of a recording featuring the music by an artist whose ears and mind are always open and always observing with fascination the interface between life and music. Wang Lu is wonderfully adept at painting a scene through sound, using several small gestures that heard together add up to a unique world unto themselves. The ensemble writing that follows throughout the album is often virtuosic and also often tongue in cheek, displaying a dry humor that is refreshing. Throughout the album we hear more interspersed "found sounds" from the Chinese urban environment, creating an expressive world that is both quotidian but also indicative of endearment and a touch of nostalgia. Wang Lu's music is dynamic, colorful, and expressive, drawing from influences that reflect her background without being defined by them. Hers is an important compositional voice for the current generation of contemporary music artists who are shaping the scene, and we should expect to hear much more beguiling music from her in the upcoming years.

Violinist Nicholas DiEugenio and pianist Mimi Solomon release their second recording on New Focus- a chronicle of their commissioning project, Unraveling Beethoven. The duo approached several composers, Tonia Ko, David Kirkland Garner, Jesse Jones, Robert Honstein, and Allen Anderson, and asked them to write works that are inspired by Beethoven's Violin Sonatas. The duo writes: “We’ve asked these composers to pull on a “loose thread” of Beethoven’s and reweave it. Originally intended to be included in a cycle of five concerts consisting of two Beethoven sonatas paired with one new work, we have been inspired by our work with these five wonderful composers, as well as many of the listeners at the premieres of these various works, to send these new pieces out into the world together on one album,s tanding apart from (but very much in relation to) Beethoven. In this way, one could consider these new works as distinct, unique mushrooms, having nonetheless all sprouted from the same Beethovenian mycelium.”

Rome Prize winner and New Orleans native Christopher Trapani's latest recording is in part inspired by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on his home town. Trapani found himself reaching towards the music of the deep South, particularly Delta Blues, and exploring ways to incorporate stylistic elements into his own work. The other works of the album reflect a similarly voracious approach to style, drawing variously from aspects of Turkish music, Conlon Nancarrow, Bob Dylan, and Hank Williams, Trapani displays a deft hand at exploring a wide range of aesthetics while preserving a rigorous approach to integrating them into his work. Performers include Talea Ensemble, Longleash Trio, pianist Marilyn Nonken, and JACK Quartet. Christopher Trapani writes: “Home is the pull of a tonic chord. Home is the warm glow of consonance, radiating through a hissing layer of noise. Home is a worn and familiar sonority, the drone of loose strings. A loop back to the downbeat, a refrain falling into place after another meandering verse. Take a few steps away, then circle back. Home is a vector from confusion to clarity, a ship sailing into harbor, a phonograph needle spiraling inwards…”

Austro-Italian violinist Olivia de Prato has been an active performer in New York City's contemporary music community since moving there in 2005 As a member of critically acclaimed ensembles, the Mivos Quartet, Ensemble Signal, and Victoire, de Prato has been involved in commissioning, premiering, and recording countless new compositions, with a range of figures spanning the diverse landscape of new music. Streya is a document of some of that work, with a program of six beguiling pieces by figures from Manhattan School of Music faculty member Reiko Futing to avant-garde improviser extraordinaire Ned Rothenberg to Mannes School of Music faculty and composer/songwriter/bandleader Missy Mazzoli. The works and performances herein display de Prato's versatility as well as the flexible reach of programming in today's New York concert community. Samson Young's 'Ageha. Tokyo' deftly merges extended violin timbres with electronics and places the listener in a futuristic tech landscape. Lowrie's 'Streya' contains some of the most conventional violin music on the album. Ned Rothernberg leans on his background as a free jazz clarinetist to generate a through composed piece that retains a sense of spontaneity. The remaining works utilize multi-tracking possibilities, sampled keyboards, delay and distortion, and quality writing. This is all violin for a new age.

As their name suggests, contemporary music duo New Morse Code (cellist Hannah Collins and percussionist Michael Compitello) prioritize communication in their performances. Their new recording, Simplicity Itself, is a document of their wonderful balance between instrumental brilliance, programming acuity, commissioning zeal, and warm performance style. The album begins and ends with works by Boston-based composer Robert Honstein, whose individual approach to minimalism involves a playful approach to shifting phrase lengths and subverting rhythmic expectation through displacement. The duo is joined here on the opening track, Patter, by guest violinist Katie Hyun, and in a display of New Morse Code’s versatility and open minded approach, Collins joins Competello on mallet percussion for the final track Unwind, a contemplative study in polyrhythm. Tonia Ko’s Hush operates more gesturally, and her style is at times reminiscent of the type of sound painting and economy of materials one hears in the work of George Crumb. There is plenty of complexity in the works on this recording, but by naming the album Simplicity Itself (taken from the Virginia Woolf text in Ko’s work) New Morse Code seems to suggest that deep within this music is an underlying ground of fundamental elements that is a source of connection. For a group dedicated to communicating through a new “code,” the message of joy on this recording reads loud and clear.

This ambitious debut release by Cleveland based saxophone duo Ogni Suono (Noa Even and Phil Pierick) explores new works, all written for the group, that extend the range of their instruments to include singing, speaking, and a beguiling vocabulary of breathing and vocal sounds. Working closely with an elite group of contemporary composers, Ogni Suono joins many other virtuoso wind instrumentalists and ensembles at the vanguard of instrumental and extended technique. These musicians are crafting a new body of work that embraces once disparate corners of contemporary performance practice- the conventional technical demands of complexity scores; the specialized vocabulary of multiphonics, key clicks, and other percussive techniques, and the performative elements of spoken, sung, and intoned vocal sounds. Formed in 2009, Ogni Suono is committed to expanding the repertoire for saxophone duo by collaborating with living composers and offering diverse and adventurous programming to new audiences. Strong advocates of music education, Ogni Suono often pairs performances with master class, workshops, and outreach programs on a variety of topics.

Resounding Earth is a new work by Augusta Read Thomas written for University of Notre Dame resident ensemble Third Coast Percussion exploring the rich and evocative sound world of bells. The release includes two discs, one an audio CD, the other a DVD of Third Coast's poised performance.

Chicago based ensemble a.pe.ri.od.ic’s inaugural release “more or less” presents three recent ensemble works by Swiss composer Jürg Frey. Frey is a long time member of the Wandelweiser Collective, a group of composers devoted to introspection and contemplative expression. Jürg Frey’s three works for mixed ensemble, “More or less normal”, “Canones incerti” and “60 Pieces of Sound”, move meditatively through shifting sonic landscapes. a.pe.ri.od.ic is a natural match for this repertoire. Founded in 2010, the group's repertoire centers on notated experimental music.

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.

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.