Composer Nils Vigeland releases Perfect Happiness, a compilation of solo piano works that chronicle his intimate relationship writing for and performing on the instrument over the last six decades. Vigeland's work centers on subtleties of resonance and register, two parameters that are uniquely facilitated by the specific characteristics of the piano, with it's expansive range and it's nuanced pedaling. Perfect Happiness features award winning pianist Jing Yang who has been a long time collaborator of Vigeland's and brings a sophisticated understanding to interpretations of his works.

Three musicians from the Italian festival soundSCAPE (Tony Arnold, Thomas Rosenkranz, Aiyun Huang) release a record of new works written for them in association with the festival by Josh Levine, Richard Carrick and Mark Applebaum, alongside canonic works by Webern, Aperghis and Rzewski. Soprano Tony Arnold was hailed by the New York Time as a 'bold and powerful interpreter,' and pianist Thomas Rosencranz and percussionist Aiyun Huang are known for their meaningful collaboration with composers and committed interpretations of music from many eras.

Classical Music

Composer Reiko Futing releases his fifth portrait album on New Focus, featuring performances by Longleash, Unheard-of//Ensemble, Quartet121, Noise Catalogue, SchallSpektrum, violinists Miranda Cuckson and Doori Na, and pianist Jing Yang. Futing's music engages with temporality, memory, and quotation as tools put in service of using music as a way to explore contemporary moral and spiritual questions.

Violinist Patrick Yim's One documents his activities commissioning, premiering, and recording new solo violin works by some of the contemporary music scene's most active composers, including Juri Seo, John Liberatore, Takuma Itoh, Ilari Kaila, Pall Ragnar Palsson, and Matthew Schreibeis.

Composer Adam Mirza releases Partial Knowledge, a collection of chamber works written between 2006 and 2022. Featuring some of the new music world's most active ensembles, including loadbang, Mivos Quartet, Unheard-of//Ensemble, Bent Frequency Duo Project, and members of International Contemporary Ensemble, Mirza experiments with the relationship between the part and the whole that is germane to the experience of chamber music. He employs strategies involving independent tempi, integration of field recordings, and live electronics to destabilize expectations and inject unpredictability into the essence of ensemble works.

South African composer Andile Khumalo releases his debut portrait album, including chamber and solo works that reflect the rich tapestry of influences at play in his music. Featuring Ensemble Dal Niente, Argento Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, and several acclaimed contemporary soloists and chamber musicians, Tracing Hollow Traces captures the embedded conversation between spectralism, polyglot American aesthetic threads, European modernism, and foundational African musical principles in Khumalo's work.

In their debut release, the Conor and Ayano Duo explores repertoire for flute and percussion that takes it's inspiration from various folkloric, world music, and vernacular styles. The works on the CD exist on a continuum, some borrowing elements from other styles to integrate into traditional concert music structures, others striving to inhabit the musical culture from which they borrow.

Cellist Diana Golden's "Tanbou Kache," features works by composers of Haitian descent, and documents her involvement in the musical life in Haiti as an educator and a scholar. Featuring works that reflect that confluence of influences that have shaped Haitian history, including music by Frantz Casséus, Justin Élie, and Daniel Bernard Roumain, "Tanbou Kache" helps to bring deserved attention to a neglected repertoire. Cellist Diana Golden has performed in chamber music festivals such as Quartet Program of the East, Killington Music Festival, Summit, Musicorda, Zephyr and Musica Lozzo. She has recently performed on chamber music series such as Firebrand Concert Series where she is the Founder and Artistic Director, Bushwick Chamber Concerts, Music and More Chamber Series, Standing Room Concert Series, and Union City Chamber Players. Dr. Golden performs in a range of musical styles, with ensembles throughout New York, New Jersey, and New England. She holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Cello Performance from Rutgers University, a Master of Arts in Cello Performance with Distinction from the Royal Academy of Music in London, a Bachelor of Arts in English from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance from San Francisco Conservatory of 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.

The opening bars of Warren Enström's Hushers on Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble's new release emphasize extended fricative sounds that could be mistaken for a percussion ensemble playing maracas. When we finally hear sung notes emerge, they are first accompanied by hisses and shushes, and the pitches themselves push up against each other in dissonant intervals. Hushers is very much a work for the 21st century vocal ensemble, with extended techniques woven into the fabric of a timbre and sound driven texture. Kate So0per's Songs for Nobody returns to traditional text setting, with texts by American poet, Thomas Merton. Written as the result of a commission from the Museum of Biblical Art in New York, Soper endeavored to capture Merton's investment and faith in the purity of the inner life. Saariaho's From the Grammar of Dreams sets excerpts from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath for two singers, embodying the instability of the protagonist's struggles with issues of life and death, madness and solace. In the second movement, each singer in the duo alternates between athletic singing and forceful, rhythmic recitation of the text, creating an unsettling texture where song and speech are unbroken even as each individual performer leaps back and forth between roles. This alternation culminates in the earthy fourth movement, as the two singers hocket between each other in spats of heavy breathing and swooping, plaintive figures. Giacinto Scelsi's compositional process was unique - he did not consider himself a "composer", but instead a "receiver" of sounds, and he did not notate his music, but rather recorded improvisations and handed them off to a colleague to notate and orchestrate. On Sauh I-IV, Scelsi uses phenomes instead of language setting, lending the piece a ritualistic, chanting quality. The relationship between Sauh I-II and Sauh III-IV is close - the first two duos provide the seed material for the fleshed out quartet versions. After a journey through the intensity of the Plath and Merton text settings, the album closes in a world of abstract syllables and non-semantic meaning, as it began.

...there’s something immediately captivating, compelling and compulsive about this feisty flautist’s newest solo album. Chase, one of the indefatigable forces behind the International Contemporary Ensemble, has never been one to hide her voracious appetite for new music... Worth the price of admission alone is the world-premiere recording of Kaija Saariaho’s Terrestre, an opening track that percolates with a gamine energy and beguiling bird calls... Throughout the album, Chase displays a dreamy flute technique, ringing crystalline and clarion when she wants to, but also exploring the textural possibilities of the instrument...

-- Olivia Giovetti, Q2 [4/9/12]

Flutist Roberta Michel releases Hush, a collection of new works for solo flute and with electronics by Victoria Cheah, Angelica Negron, Jen Baker, Mert Morali, and Jane Rigler that are the result of close collaborations. Michel brings her wide ranging virtuosity to all of the pieces, from acrobatic passagework to deep timbral excavation.

Guitarist Daniel Lippel's "Adjacence" features a collection of new chamber works for guitar, including works by Tyshawn Sorey, Charles Wuorinen, Tania Leon, Nico Muhly, Mario Davidovsky, Ken Ueno, Peter Gilbert, Tonia Ko, Bernadette Speech, Peter Adriaansz, and Sidney Boquiren. The works occupy a broad range of aesthetics, from modernist to minimalist, incorporating improvisation and microtonality, and featuring a variety of instrumentations with Lippel's colleagues in the International Contemporary Ensemble, counter)induction, as well as other active performers in the New York contemporary music scene.

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.