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.”

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.

Transcriptions of works of J.S. Bach for piano four hands by Gyorgy Kurtag, F.X. Gleichauf, and Max Reger.

The title of the album also alludes to the difficult hand crossings that Kurtág requires the performers to implement in his four hand transcriptions, as demonstrated on track one, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit from Cantata BWV 106, where the melody is played entirely with the arms crossed. The whimsical configuration of hand crossings in Gott, durch deine Güte, BWV 600 is visualized in the cover photo of the album. Of the fourteen Bach transcriptions represented here, three are by other important Bach transcribers: Franz Xaver Gleichauf and Max Reger, who represent a crossing of various approaches to Bach transcribing over the last two centuries. Two delightful “encores”, correntes by Girolamo Frescobaldi transcribed by Kurtág, pay homage to one of Bach’s sources of inspiration.

R E V I E W S:

"...a crossing of paths, crossing of minds and inspirations. The music of Johann Sebastian Bach is recast and given new light by one of the most creative living composers of our time, György Kurtág, and one who is obsessed with Bach... the sound is both modern and grand, strange yet familiar, just the thing for jaded Bachians. At the end the Duo throw in two Kurtág arrangements of Frescobaldi at his most delectable." - Laurence Vittes, Huffington Post [3/31/12]

“These well-matched artists found considerable expressive depth in Kurtág’s version of the Sonatina…The rapport between Ho and Ahuvia was readily apparent throughout their portion of the program; their music- making placed added value on elegance and subtlety” – The Baltimore Sun

“The duo gave beautifully understated performances” – The New York Times

When György Kurtág sets out to transcribe Bach for himself and his wife to play on the piano, something special happens: the fragile wit of Kurtág is married to the eternal genius of Bach and, unbelievably, something even greater than the individual parts emerges. Piano duo Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia must feel similarly about them, focusing on Kurtág transcriptions (alongside some of Reger et al.), in their delightful album, Bach Crossings. The performances are a few percentage points short of perfection, but the music isn’t. Bach–Kurtág is a bit like getting God injected into the ears.

– Jens F. Laurson, Listen

Clarinetist Gregory Oakes releases a recording of the complete chamber works for clarinet by eminent German composer Helmut Lachenmann, the first recording including all three together. Of particular interest is Oakes’ and his colleagues’ virtuosic performance of the seldom heard "Trio Fluido" for clarinet, viola, and percussion. Gregory Oakes is an exciting and energetic clarinetist and a passionate champion of the music of our time. From his Carnegie Hall debut with members of Ensemble Intercontemporain and Pierre Boulez to his performances as a member of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Oakes has been praised by critics for his “outstanding performance” (New York Times) and “jazzy flourishes”(Denver Post). American Record Guide says “Oakes is the rare player who has both excellent classical training and a mastery of the otherworldly procedures demanded by non-traditional repertoire,” and Fanfare Magazine lauds the “formidable technical armamentarium at his command.”

Composer and pianist Anthony Cheung writes music that explores the senses, a wide palette of instrumental play and affect, improvisational traditions, reimagined musical artifacts, and multiple layers of textual meaning. Described as “gritty, inventive and wonderfully assured” (San Francisco Chronicle) and praised for its “instrumental sensuality” (Chicago Tribune), his music reveals an interest in the ambiguity of sound sources and constantly shifting transformations of tuning and timbre. Anthony Cheung has been commissioned by Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Cleveland Orchestra (as the Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow), New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, AMOC, and the International Con-temporary Ensemble, with additional performances by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Chicago Symphony Orchestra MusicNOW ensemble, Minnesota Orchestra, Linea, wild Up, and Dal Niente.

West Texas native Stephen Barber began playing piano at age three, taking up guitar at age eleven, and composition at age thirteen. As a teenager, he collaborated with Stevie Ray Vaughn and Christopher Cross, and his band The Electromagnets opened for the infamous Frank Zappa / Captain Beefheart Bongo Fury show at The Armadillo in Austin TX (1975). In his early twenties, he moved to New York City to study composition and orchestration with John Corigliano. As a composer, arranger, and player, he has worked in collaboration with David Byrne, Keith Richards, Josef Zawinul, Willie Nelson, Natalie Merchant, Ornette Coleman, Gilberto Gil, John Legend, T Bone Burnett, Roseanne Cash, Arto Lindsay, Marisa Monte, Bonnie Raitt, Michael Stipe, Jennifer Warnes, Shelly Duvall, Alejandro Escovedo, David Torn, Eric Johnson, PBS, The London Symphony, The Czech Radio Orchestra, Steps Ahead, Tosca String Quartet, and Meridian Arts Ensemble. He was worked on over 250 album, film, and television projects, dividing his time between New York City and Austin, Texas. His works are performed on this new release by Eric Huebner, a versatile pianist known for his performances of 20th and 21st century music. Appointed pianist of the New York Philharmonic in 2012, he appears in over 60 orchestral and chamber music concerts annually with the orchestra.

Sumna is the third solo album of Kivie Cahn-Lipman (founding cellist of the International Contemporary Ensemble, founder of baroque band ACRONYM and HiP Scottish ensemble Makaris, and co-founder of viol consorts LeStrange and Science Ficta). Here he offers first recordings of new cello solos written for him by Daijana Wallace, Édgar Guzmán, and Vincent Calianno, along with a modern classic by Caroline Shaw and a multitracked cello octet by Kaija Saariaho. Cahn-Lipman's passion for early music emerges both in the opening track (a fresh take on H.I.F. von Biber's solo violin Passacaglia, a seventeenth-century masterpiece), and the title track (a commission from Mario Diaz de Leon for unaccompanied viola da gamba).

Michael Compitello's "Unsnared Drum" reframes how people think about, perform, and practice the snare drum, freeing the drum from its historical and idiomatic chains. It asks whether the snare drum can be bold, coy, suave, and elegant: in short, interesting. The album features works written in close collaboration with Compitello by Nina C. Young, Hannah Lash, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Tonia Ko; surprising and inventive new works for solo snare drum. The result is a collection of pieces which highlight the snare drum’s breadth of sonic possibility and depth of expressivity, revealing an instrument of drama, grace, and heart.

Lorelei Ensemble, a critically acclaimed choir of women's voices, releases an EP of James Kellembach's "Antigone." Merging Sophocles original dramatic framework with texts from the Nazi opposition group White Rose in Munich in the 1940s, Kellembach expresses the timeless nature of resistance. James K allembach’s works have been commissioned and performed by Brooklyn Art Song Society, Chorus pro Musica Boston, Lorelei Ensemble, Lydian Quartet, San Francisco Symphony, and Seraphic Fire, among others. He has received honors from ASCAP, ACDA, American Composers’ Forum, Pacific Chorale, ALEA III in Boston, and VocalEssence. He has written extensively for the voice, producing a large catalogue of song cycles and oratorios for voices and instruments. His St. John Passion, Four Romantic Songs, Most Sacred Body, and Antigone have been commercially recorded. The Boston Musical Intelligencer praised him as “a colorful and imaginative orchestrator, word painter, and provider of singable lyrical lines” who could “wring emotion from a dictionary.”

Irish composer Finola Merivale releases her debut album, a collection of works spanning ten years of her life, and featuring the Desdemona Ensemble, a group Merivale has collaborated closely with since moving to New York City. Merivale's music establishes its own reference point, existing within but not being defined by the aesthetic frames of academic new music and chamber music.

Finola Merivale lives in New York. She is a DMA candidate in Composition at Columbia University, where she is studying with George E. Lewis, Zosha Di Castri, and Georg Friedrich Haas. Her music has been performed internationally and featured at festivals such as Huddersfield, the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival and the Contemporary Music Festival of Buenos Aires. Her works have been performed by International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Desdemona, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Crash Ensemble, and musicians of the Chicago and St. Louis Symphony Orchestras, amongst others. Recent honors include the National Concert Hall and Sounding the Feminists’ Music Recording Award (2021), National Sawdust’s New Works Commission Award (2020) and a four-month artist residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2020).

Iranian violist Kimia Hesabi releases her debut album of music by composers of the Iranian Diaspora, featuring works for solo viola, viola and electronics, viola and voice, and viola and piano. Featuring works by composers Gity Razaz, Bahar Royaee, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Mozhgan Chahian, Showan Tavakol, and Alireza Mashayekhi, this album explores Hesabi's passion for the music of her home country, and displays sounds, colors, stories, memories, and identities inspired in different and unique ways by Iran. Kimia Hesabi was born in a musical family in Esfahan, Iran. She has performed as both a violist and a percussionist across Iran. Kimia holds degrees from The University of Tehran and The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Ms. Hesabi Graduated top of her class at University of Tehran and worked with Tehran Symphony and National Orchestra. At The University of Tennessee, Kimia was honored to be a recipient of the prestigious Thomas Fellowship and was a member of the Graduate String Quartet.

Composer and cellist Tom Flaherty releases "Mixed Messages", a collection of his electro-acoustic works for various instruments. Flaherty's music combines a versatile approach to diverse electronic approaches with a humanist's sensibility towards drawing inspiration from extra-musical events and phenomenon. "Mixed Messages" features performances by Sara Parkins, Maggie Parkins, Alma Lisa Fernandez, Cynthia Fogg, Jeff Gauthier, Sarah Thornblade, Mark Winges, Genevieve Feiwen Lee, and Vicki Ray. Tom Flaherty is a composer and cellist who works with music for humans and electronics. He earned degrees at Brandeis University, S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook, and the University of Southern California, where he studied with Martin Boykan, Bülent Arel, and Frederick Lesemann and cello with Timothy Eddy and Bernard Greenhouse. His composition has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Music Center, the Pasadena Arts Council, the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities, the Delius Society, the University of Southern California, "Meet the Composer," and Yaddo.

Composer Steven Ricks' "Assemblage Chamber" features three chamber works that incorporate elements of the Baroque into Ricks' glitchy, collage oriented textures. An eclectic artist who is active in electronic music and free improvisation in addition to through-composed acoustic work, Ricks filters Baroque influences through his omnivorous style, responding at the end of the recording with an electronic reaction piece, a reckoning with incorporating older material from the vantage point of 2022. "Assemblage Chamber" features performances by counter)induction, the Nova Chamber Players, Aubrey Woods, Alex Woods, and Jason Hardink.

String Noise (Pauline Kim Harris and Conrad Harris, violins) returns for their second release on New Focus, a follow up to Eric Lyon's "Giga Concerto" which featured them as soloists with the International Contemporary Ensemble. "Way" highlights their dedicated commissioning work with some of the new music scene's most inventive composers. Featuring works by Alex Mincek, Catherine Lamb, and Lou Bunk, String Noise explores vanguard sonorities and textures, demonstrating their prowess for delivering challenging repertoire with expressivity and understanding. String Noise, New York’s most daring violin duo, has expanded the repertoire with over 50 new works since their debut at Ostrava New Music Days in 2011. More than a decade later, they continue to break down the boundaries of traditional expectations and inspire innovative compositions, displaying formidable virtuosity, integrating multimedia art, electronics, improvisation, video projections, opera, and dance.