Violinist David Bowlin releases a program of works for solo violin, with and without electronics, alongside select chamber works. Featuring works by close colleagues Du Yun, Alexandra Karastoyanova-Hermentin as well as music by luminaries Mario Davidovsky, George Walker, and Martin Bresnick, Bird as Prophet is a poignant snapshot of a performer who at once embodies the virtuoso tradition and brings those prodigious talents to the music of our time. Violinist David Bowlin has won critical acclaim for his performances of a wide range of repertoire from The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and many others. First-prize winner of the 2003 Washington International Competition, Bowlin has performed with such leading artists as Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, Jonathan Biss, Jeremy Denk, Robert McDonald, and members of the Juilliard, Emerson, and Brentano string quartets. His solo performances include premieres of violin concerti written for him at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival and at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and in recent seasons he has performed concerti at Miller Theatre in New York, the Aspen Music Festival, and with the La Jolla Symphony. On air he has performed in broadcasts for WQXR New York, WFMT Chicago, Vermont Public Radio, and nationwide on NPR’s Performance Today.

Chicago based ensemble Fonema Consort releases this beguiling collection of music by the Ecuadorian composer Juan Campoverde. This collection of works highlights his innovative compositional approaches to music for voice and guitar in both solo and ensemble settings, featuring soprano Nina Dante and guitarist Samuel Rowe alongside their fellow Fonema members. Consort: a group of instrumentalists and singers performing together. Fonema: the smallest unit of speech, which distinguishes words according to their sonic quality. These concepts define the essence of Fonema Consort as they commission, perform, and record new music that explores the possibilities of the human voice in an avantgarde chamber setting. Known for their “enthusiastic embrace of daring new music” (Chicago Reader) Fonema is driven by a fascination with pieces that foster rich interplay of voices and instruments and that are characterized by deep expressivity. The ensemble is highly committed to presenting works by Latin American composers to US audiences and encouraging musical exchange between these regions. Fonema Consort was founded in 2011 by singer Nina Dante and composers Pablo Santiago Chin and Edward Hamel. Since its founding, the ensemble has premiered over 50 works, and traveled widely across the US and increasingly in Latin America.

Percussionist and composer Bonnie Whiting's "Perishable Structures" places works for speaking percussionist within a context of storytelling. Through works by Rzewski, Globokar, Parenti, Logan-Greene, and Whiting herself, the album investigates the intertwined relationship between spoken and musical narrative and the unique role that percussion plays in this repertoire. Bonnie Whiting performs, commissions, and composes new experimental music for percussion. She seeks out projects involving non-traditional notation, interdisciplinary performance, improvisation, and the speaking percussionist. She has presented solo and small ensemble shows at The Stone in New York, the Brackish Series in Brooklyn, The Lilypad in Boston, The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, at Hallwalls in Buffalo, the Tiny Park Gallery in Austin, The Wulf in LA, the Carl Solway Gallery in Cincinnati, The Grove Haus in Indianapolis, on the Wayward Music Series in Seattle, on tour throughout New Zealand, and at colleges and universities around the country. Her debut solo album, featuring an original solo-simultaneous realization of John Cage’s 45’ for a speaker and 27’10.554” for a percussionist, was released by Mode Records in April of 2017.

Composer Eric Nathan's releases the ambitious cycle of works "Missing Words", featuring performances by some of new music's most prolific ensembles: International Contemporary Ensemble, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, American Brass Quintet, Hub New Music, and Neave Trio, as well as cellist Parry Karp and pianist Christopher Karp. "Missing Words" balances structural impulses befitting the epic scope of the set with Nathan's carefully considered approach to details of orchestration, harmony, and pitch.

Composer/vocalist Kate Soper teams up with longtime Wet Ink Ensemble colleague, composer, and electronic musician Sam Pluta in this bracing collection that explores the ever-shifting hierarchy between text-driven and music-dominated vocal work. Soper's characteristically clever approach to setting text is balanced by Pluta's ever inventive and sensitive marshaling of his unique arsenal of electronic textures. Writers set here include Franz Kafka, W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, George Berkeley, and Parmenides.

Kate Soper is a composer, performer, and writer. Her work explores the integration of drama and rhetoric into musical structure, the slippery continuums of expressivity, intelligibility and sense, and the wonderfully treacherous landscape of the human voice. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, she has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Koussevitzky Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has been a featured performer with ensembles including the LA Philharmonic New Music Group, the MIVOS quartet, and the American Composers Orchestra. As a writer of fiction and non-fiction, she has been published by McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Massachusetts Review, and PAJ. She is a co-director of the Wet Ink Ensemble.

Inspired by Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and Calvino's deconstructive analysis of the classic Roman recasting of Greek myths, John Aylward's Celestial Forms and Stories establishes musical analogs to Ovid's way of depicting the world. Featuring musicians from Klangforum Wien in chamber formations, Celestial Forms and Stories encapsulates the transformative nature of myth, constantly being reimagined and reinterpreted over generations and retellings. Aylward writes: “The entire nexus of Greek mythology is in constant need of new analysis and artistic interpretation lest it become stale and unable to reflect the ‘universal contiguity’ Calvino so aptly recognizes. Even Ovid’s stories were not his own, but rather the myths of the day retold under his own artistic renderings. And so perhaps Ovid is one of the first to abide by the old adage that the act of writing is to rewrite the already written. I would like my Celestial Forms and Stories to be received also as an act of rewriting these myths that Ovid immortalized, in my own way, and through my own revelation of transformation.”

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.

Pianist David Kaplan releases New Dances of the League of David, comprised of a set of miniatures he commissioned between 2013 and 2015 to be woven into the Davidsbundlertanze of Robert Schumann. Kaplan asked 16 composers to write responses to Schumann's original, presenting a startling range of compositional approaches, though all unified by their common engagement with Schumann's spirit.

Composer Arthur Levering releases OceanRiverLake, a collection of his music for chamber orchestra, string quartet, solo piano, and mixed trio that reflects his affinity with the core repertoire of the modern era, Celtic music, and the work of an esteemed colleague who recently passed, Steven Stucky. The album features performances by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Lydian String Quartet, Donald Berman, Sarah Brady, and Maarten Stragier.

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.

For many years, composer Tina Davidson has written music that endeavored to connect with issues larger than herself. "Barefoot" is no exception, though here Davidson looks inward towards her personal ties to music and how they can be a portal to a more holistic sense of being in the world. Featuring chamber works performed by the Jasper String Quartet and Natalie Zhu, "Barefoot" is an earthy invitation to a subtly powerful musical world.

Scott Wollschleger's Between Breath contains four works for different duo and solo combinations that are presented here as a multi-movement complete work. Featuring performances by Miranda Cuckson, andPlay duo (Hannah Levinson and Maya Bennardo), Lucy Dhegrae, Anne Rainwater, and Nathaniel LaNasa, Wollschleger's music balances exuberance and intimacy with characteristic sensitivity to timbre and structural proportions.

Soprano Fotina Naumenko releases Bespoke Songs, a collection of works she commissioned for voice and ensembles with various instrumentations that set texts by female authors. In pieces by Jonathan Newman, Benedict Sheehan, Carrie Magin, and Jennifer Jolley, Naumenko's crystalline voice leads the ensembles through varied aesthetic territory, displaying a broad snapshot of contemporary vocal ensemble composition.

Cuban-American composer Orlando Jacinto García unveils "la vida que vendrá," showcasing four electro-acoustic solo works that culminate in an ensemble piece performed by the prolific loadbang ensemble. Through this collection, García invites listeners to delve into the realm of timbre, exploring the interplay between harmonious and divergent sounds.

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.

Richard Cameron-Wolfe's Passionate Geometries features eight of his chamber works written over a thirty year period, displaying the wide range of aesthetic approaches at play in his music, from his theatrical micro-operas to deeply felt settings of instrumental works that explore microtonality. Cameron-Wolfe's musical voice is rarefied and unique in it's precise detail, injecting pathos and brilliance into the smallest of gestures as they come together to convey rich narratives.

Reiko Füting's newest release "Broken Song" alternates choral settings of poetry by his long-term collaborator Kathleen Furthmann with a solo piano performance of his introspective work, "Five Meditations on Music from Luigi Rossi’s Collection," by pianist Jing Yang. Füting frequently uses quotation and references to early music as a jumping-off point in his work. The choral works are sung by Vocalconsort labia vocalia, conducted by Füting himself.

Composer Kate Soper releases The Hunt, a one act chamber opera inspired by a series of medieval tapestries known as "The Lady and the Unicorn." The work is scored for three sopranos who also play instruments onstage (violin and ukulele), and incorporates some of Soper's characteristic compositional interests, such as the use of diegetic music, into this intimate staging.

Composer Yi-Ting Lu releases her debut album, An Unopened Seashell, a collection of five solo works that demonstrates her capacity for using musical materials to explore extra-musical phenomena. Featuring performances by bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward, harpist Ben Melsky, pianist Lam Wong, saxophonist Thomas Giles, and guitarist Daniel Lippel, An Unopened Seashell is an exciting first release from a composer with a captivating balance between her management of development and structure, creative approach to instrumental writing, and a flair for expressive character.

Oboist Kyle Bruckmann, founding member of the wind quintet Splinter Reeds, releases "of rivers," a collection of vanguard music for the instrument that highlights its integration with electronics, improvisational practices, extended techniques, and microtonality. The album features music by Jessie Cox, Hannah A. Barnes, Helen Grime, Linda Bouchard, Christopher Burns, and Bruckmann himself.

In 2019, Jessica Meyer’s first composer/performer portrait album Ring Out highlighted her lyrical, expressive works that celebrate the arts of interpretation and performance. In her sophomore effort, I long and seek after, she focuses solely on vocal music that features poetry by female and underrepresented writers who tackle universal themes such as loneliness, desire, love, heartbreak, justice, and the courage to embark on a journey of discovering oneself.

Violinist Movses Pogossian continues his admirable advocacy for the work of Armenian composers with this extensive 4 disc collection of new works, a follow up to his Modulation Necklace release in 2020 (FCR244). Divided into four volumes that focus on instrumental chamber music, art song, and solo piano music, Serenade with a Dandelion is an invaluable resource to explore 20th and 21st century Armenian repertoire, performed with the utmost sensitivity and commitment by Pogossian and his colleagues.

Following up on a debut release with New Focus that was hailed as "spectacular" by The Whole Note and "remarkable" by textura, Ekmeles vocal ensemble, led by director Jeffrey Gavett, brings their crystalline performance style to new works by Zosha Di Castri, James Weeks, Hannah Kendall, Shawn Jaeger, and Erin Gee on "We Live the Opposite Daring."

Composer Yu-Hui Chang's Mind Like Water presents three ensemble works and one solo cello piece that all feature a dialogue between musical elements. Sometimes this dialogue unfolds between contrasting energies, such as the percolating rhythms of the opening movement of In Thin Air versus the dramatic gestures in its second movement. Other times the conversation is between smaller musical elements, like the cells in Germinate or the flowing, through composed unfolding of the title work. The recording features performances by the Lydian String Quartet, Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, Composers Conference Ensemble, and cellist Rhonda Rider.

Composer Michael Hersch's epic setting of Poppaea turns the classic tale of Nero inside out, examining it from multiple angles and unearthing the powerful lessons it holds for contemporary society. Hersch, along with vocalists Ah Young Hong, Steve Davislim, Silke Gang, with Ensemble Phoenix Basel and Ensemble SoloVoices, delivers a wrenching version of the tale, challenging assumptions and forcing the listener to ask difficult questions about history and the inherent biases that are ingrained into its mainstream understanding.