Bergamot Quartet releases its first full length recording with premieres by Suzanne Farrin, Tania León, Paul Wiancko, and Ledah Finck, who is also a violinist in the group. The critically acclaimed quartet merges a refined chamber music sensibility with a versatile and precise approach to contemporary scores, making a valued contribution to the repertoire with works that can be performed by new music specialists and generalized quartets alike. Bergamot Quartet is fueled by a passion for exploring and advocating for the music of living composers, continually expanding the limits of the string quartet’s rich tradition in Western classical music. With a priority given to music by women, they aim to place this new, genre-bending music in meaningful dialogue with the histories that precede it with creative programming, community-oriented audience building, and frequent commissioning.

Boston based composer Marti Epstein releases this collection of her chamber music including clarinet, featuring Rane Moore and the Winsor Music ensemble. Epstein's music is shaped in equal measure by modern icons Webern, Feldman, and Takemitsu, as it is by the expansive landscape of the American plains and her upbringing in Nebraska. Marti Epstein is a composer whose music has been performed by the San Francisco Symphony, The Radio Symphony Orchestra of Frankfurt, Ensemble Modern, and members of the Boston Symphony. She has completed commissions for the Fromm Foundation, The Munich Biennale, the Ludovico Ensemble, Guerilla Opera, the Radius Ensemble, Tanglewood Music Center, Winsor Music, Boston Opera Collaborative, and the Callithumpian Consort. During the 2017-2018 concert season, Marti’s work was featured extensively alongside the work of Anton Webern on the Trinity Wall Street’s Time’s Arrow Festival in New York City. Her music was also performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players in Leipzig, Germany in June 2018. Her opera, Rumpelstiltskin, was presented with shadow puppetry in May 2019 in New York City. In November 2019, the Boston-based Ludovico Ensemble presented three portrait concerts of Marti’s music in celebration of her 60th birthday. In 2021 her music was featured as part of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s streaming concert content.

Composer and Rome Prize winner Christopher Trapani releases "Horizontal Drift," a collection of six works written for custom instruments that explore rich corners of microtonal tuning, timbre, and electronic processing. Featuring performers Max Haft, Daniel Lippel, Amy Advocat, Marilyn Nonken, and Marco Fusi in music for vioara cu goarna ("violin with horn"), quarter-tone guitar, Bohlen-Pierce clarinet, piano scordatura, Midi-controlled Fokker organ, and viola d'amore, Trapani revels in sound worlds that challenge listener expectations and reveal new expressive possibilities.

Trapani writes: “some time around 2015, I started to wonder if the received wisdom of the concert music circuit might not be out of date. Listeners now seem far more likely to engage with a new work online, streaming a single recorded track, than to hear a work live in concert. The publication-performance model, relying on new interpreters to pick up old pieces for similar instruments, has started to seem increasingly anachronistic—or even quixotic, given the abundance of options to choose from. Shifting my strategy, I decided to concentrate on writing music that isn’t necessarily meant to circulate to other performers. Working closely with specific musicians on their custom-made instruments, I would create uniquely-tailored showpieces for a few gifted soloists who share my passion for rare tunings and timbres. This album is the fruit of those collaborations...”

Composer Wilfredo Terrazas presents a seven part album length work, The Torres Cycle, which explores ritual, indigenous tradition from his native Mexico, alternative notation, structured improvisation, spatialized live performance techniques, and an evocative instrumentation layout to explore questions of social connection and the mysterious relationship between tradition, history, and the present. A virtuoso flutist, Terrazas presents a musical language in which the power of expression frames the palette of techniques, creating a fresh and urgent sound world.

Formed in 2017, Tucson based Borderlands Ensemble formed to foster connections across disciplines and music communities that have traditionally been separated. "the space in which to see" specifically draws links between music cultures in Arizona and Mexico, engaging with one of the most dynamic and charged dialogues in our current national landscape. Including works by Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Jay Vosk, Vivian Fine, Charles Daniels, Alejandro Vera, as well as traditional Mexican songs arranged by Borderlands Artistic Director Johanna Lundy, this engaging debut speaks to the ensemble's purview to reach out to the region specific audience of the culture rich American Southwest.

Composer, clarinetist, and pianist Paolo Marchettini releases his debut recording of works for orchestra that are characteristic of his lush, lyrical style. Born in Rome and currently living in New York City, Marchettini draws inspiration from Verdi, Frescobaldi, Morricone, and sets texts by Emily Dickinson in this collection of recorded performances by the Orchestra della Toscana, the Orchestra Roma Sinfonietta, and the Manhattan School of Music Chamber Orchestra. A native of Rome, Italy, composer and clarinetist Paolo Marchettini has a wide catalogue of works, including orchestral, choral, vocal, and chamber music. His music has been commissioned and performed by an array of international festivals, including the Biennale di Venezia (Venice), PlayIt! Festival (Florence), Festival Berio (Rome), Villecroze (France), and Baki Contempo Festivali (Azerbaijan). An active and accomplished clarinetist, he has performed as soloist with orchestras in both Europe and the United States and has collaborated with distinguished composers such as Goffredo Petrassi, Luciano Berio, Salvatore Sciarrino, Ennio Morricone, and Sylvano Bussotti.

Pianist Richard Valitutto releases "Noctures and Lullabies", a collection of works organized around themes of transitional states between light, dark, consciousness, and unconsciousness. Featuring premiere recordings of music by Nicholas Deyoe, Rebecca Saunders, Philip Cashian, Marc Sabat, Maura Capuzzo, and Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Valitutto's poignant performances and poetic curation make this a unique and compelling release, containing works that explore a new virtuosity engaged with the delicate management of the piano's resonant properties.

Composer Scott Miller releases ""Ghost Layers"" in collaboration with critically acclaimed TAK Ensemble. The album features recent chamber works, all but one of which include an electronic element. Miller's extensive exploration in the electro-acoustic realm informs these works, some of which apply digital techniques to the acoustic writing, while others layer electronics on top of acoustic textures and field recordings embedded in the compositional texture. Scott L. Miller is a composer of electroacoustic, orchestra, chamber, and multimedia works described as “high adventure avant garde music of the best sort” (Classical-Modern Music Review) and “inspir[ing] real hope and optimism for the future of electroacoustic music.” (5against4.com). Known for his interactive electroacoustic chamber music and experimental performance pieces, Miller has twice been named a McKnight Composer Fellow, he is a Fulbright Scholar, and his work has been recognized by numerous international arts organizations. Recordings are available on New focus, Innova, Eroica, CRS, rarescale, and SEAMUS, and his music is published by ACA (American Composers Alliance), Tetractys, and Jeanne. Miller is Professor of Music at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, where he teaches composition, electroacoustic music, and theory.

Composer Michael Hersch's string quartet, performed here with absolute commitment by the New York based FLUX Quartet, is inextricably connected to his friendship with the late American artist Michael Mazur. More specifically, Hersch was inspired by a series of etchings and lithographs Mazur did of inmates in a Rhode Island mental asylum in the 1960's. In his musical depiction of these images, Hersch writes music that is at times aggressive and disturbing and at other times wistful, but always with the profound intensity of a deeply sensitive nature. Mazur wrote of Hersch's music: "These compositions are filled sometimes with frightening sounds. They are unrelenting, nearly without hope... But no artwork can be without hope since it is in the very nature of creative work to be optimistic, if only in as much as we continue to work through everything but our own death."

Pioneering composer George Lewis releases "The Recombinant Trilogy," an album consisting of three works for solo instrument and electronics that use interactive digital delays, spatialization and timbre transformation to transform the acoustic sounds of the instrument into multiple digitally created sonic personalities that follow diverse yet intersecting spatial trajectories. Featuring virtuosic soloists flutist Claire Chase, cellist Seth Parker Woods, and bassoonist Dana Jessen, doppelgangers are created that blur the boundaries between original and copy, while shrouding their origin in processes of repetition.

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.

Canadian composer Zosha Di Castri releases this stellar collection of music for various instrumentations, featuring the JACK Quartet, pianist Julia Den Boer, Yarn/Wire, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, and the vocal ensemble Ekmeles. Her compositions are an expression of a searching artistry, mapping her explorations into the nature of experience onto musical parameters, including structural organization, timbral vocabulary, and text setting. Zosha Di Castri is a Canadian composer/pianist/sound artist living in New York. Her work, which has been performed internationally, extends beyond purely concert music including projects with electronics, installations, and collaborations with video and dance. She has worked with such ensembles as the BBC Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the L.A. Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the NEM, Ensemble Cairn, and the groups included on this album among others. Zosha is currently the Francis Goelet Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia University and was a fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris during 2018–19, while working on this recording project.

“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.

Loadbang’s third release on New Focus, “Plays well with others,” is a celebration of a community of artists with a shared sensibility. The voice and winds quartet is joined here by string players in works by Taylor Brook, Reiko Füting, Paula Matthusen, Heather Stebbins, Scott Wollschleger, and Eve Beglarian. 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 ʻcultivatedʼ by The New Yorker, ʻan extra-cool new music groupʼ and ʻexhilaratingʼ by the Baltimore Sun, ʻinventiveʼ 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), and Shanghai Symphony Hall (China).

Transient Canvas releases their second recording on New Focus, "Wired", continuing to document their excellent work commissioning music for bass clarinet and marimba. This diverse collection includes works by Kirsten Volness, Peter Van Zandt Lane, David Ibbett, Lainie Fefferman, Rudolf Rojahn, Mischa Salkind-Pearl, and Dan VanHassel. Hailed as “superb” by the Boston Globe, and “nothing short of fabulous” by the Boston Musical Intelligencer, Amy Advocat and Matt Sharrock have been blazing their own trail as the bass clarinet/marimba duo Transient Canvas since 2011. In that time they have premiered over 80 works and continue to perform across the United States and abroad. They have been presented by the Alba Music Festival, SoundNOW Festival, Composers Inc., and Outpost Concert Series, among others. Additionally they have held residencies at Harvard, Northeastern, Brandeis, Otterbein, and Tufts Universities, the University of Georgia, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.