This 2-CD set includes the inaugural recordings of Beaudoin's music based on microtiming: A refined methodology for translating micro-temporal properties of a recorded performance into standard notation, which are then used as the basis for newly-composed acoustic works. The CDs include 11 recent pieces, recorded in England, based on microtimings of Argerich playing Chopin, Cortot playing Debussy, and Pollini playing Webern. Disc 1 is devoted to piano music and Disc 2, string quartet music.

The high flying NY new music band ICE features it's sensational guitarist Daniel Lippel in a recording of five bracing new pieces for ensemble with guitar. The CD includes the premiere recordings of two rising composition stars: Dai Fujikura's Abandoned Time for rock guitar and ensemble, and Du Yun's Vicissitudes no. 1. Also on the disc are ICE's full on version of Magnus Lindberg's classic quartet Linea d'ombra, Mario Davidovsky's identity juggling Festino, and Kaija Saariaho's beautifully lyrical Adjo with phenomenal soprano Tony Arnold. The five pieces work together as a cohesive artistic statement, highlighting a trend in contemporary music towards a sheer physical and sensual gestural language, a style that the high energy ICE is particularly well known for in their performances. 'The title track on Dan Lippel's new CD with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Abandoned Time (New Focus), is scored for chamber group-strings, piano, flute, clarinet-so it's a bit of a shock when his slithering, distorted electric guitar makes it's first entrance. Written by young Japanese composer Dai Fujikura, the piece is packed with collar-grabbing stop-start transitions and dissonant strings that deliver choppy unison parts and ominous long tones, but Lippel's guitar presides over the proceedings whether it's screaming atop the din or weaving delicately through it. Also a longtime member of the post-rock band Mice Parade, he tackles a strictly modern repertoire on Abandoned Time, backed with sensitivity and verve by members of ICE, a partly local collective that's emerged as one of the country's boldest advocates of new music. Lippel plays acoustic guitar on most of the other compositions-by Mario Davidovsky, Kaija Saariaho, Du Yun, and Magnus Lindberg-and they're just as demanding, filled with jagged lines, blistering rhythms, and explosions of energy.' -Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader, November 17, 2008 'International Contemporary Ensemble, which was founded in 2001, consists of over thirty musicians, but their performances generally draw on only a handful at a time; this recording features a dozen players, but most of the works are trios or quartets for unconventional combinations of instruments and voice. The unifying element in the repertoire on this CD is it's unapologetic modernism -- this is music with a spiky, sinewy physicality that makes no concession to easy accessibility, and there is a good mix of pieces by established and emerging composers. Abandoned Time, by Dai Fujikura, includes almost the whole ensemble, and is essentially a small concerto for electric guitar, played here by Daniel Lippel. It's language may be modernist, but it's not the academic modernism of the late twentieth century; the piece is strongly flavored with a loose-limbed energy and grittiness that's reminiscent of Bang on a Can. Kaija Saariaho's Adj�, for voice, flute, and guitar requires the singer and instrumentalists to use a variety of extended techniques, and is notable for the sense of frantic disjunction that it creates with instruments that are most often used for their lyrical quality. Vicissitudes No. 1, by Du Yun, which includes both Western and traditional Chinese instruments, is characterized by frenzied anxiety, but has an expanse of serene equipoise at it's center. The ensemble plays with exquisite precision, understanding, and fierce energy and engagement -- this is a group to watch out for. The sound is exceptionally clear, crisp, and well-defined. -Stephen Eddins, All Music Guide, 2009 'The performances of the International Contemporary Ensemble are staggeringly cool.' American Record Guide, January 2009 "In recent years the International Contemporary Ensemble has proved itself one of the most adventurous and accomplished groups in new music." Steve Smith, New York Times 'The title track on Dan Lippel's new CD with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Abandoned Time (New Focus), is scored for chamber group-so it's a bit of a shock when his slithering, distorted electric guitar makes it's first entrance. Written by young Japanese composer Dai Fujikura, the piece is packed with collar-grabbing stop-start transitions and dissonant strings that deliver choppy unison parts and ominous long tones, but Lippel's guitar presides over the proceedings whether it's screaming atop the din or weaving delicately through it. Also a longtime member of the post-rock band Mice Parade, he tackles a strictly modern repertoire here, backed with sensitivity and verve by members of ICE, a partly local collective that's emerged as one of the country's boldest advocates of new music. Lippel plays acoustic guitar on most of the other compositions and they're just as demanding, filled with jagged lines, blistering rhythms, and explosions of energy.' -Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader, November 17, 2008 "vivid, high-energy performances..." Allan Kozinn, New York Times "It would be hard to over praise the prodigiously talented, bracingly idealistic and indefatigable ICE." - Michael Cameron, Chicago Tribune "crackling virtuosity and palpable commitment...their music grabs the listener by the lapels and refuses to let go." - John Von Rhein, Chicago Tribune "The group deserves the attention." Allan Kozinn, New York Times "Daniel Lippel is exceptional in his craft but he does not ham it up. The apotheosis of the modern guitarist...'

Du Yun, hailed as a “significant voice” by the Financial Times as a composer of concert music, releases her first album on New Focus. Raised in Shanghai, China, Yun blends Chinese and English lyrics freely on the album. Recorded and produced in New York, Shanghai, and Montreal, Shark in You features Yun as a vocalist, composer, producer, and lyricist in 12 far ranging tracks, from dance electronica to Kurt Weill-inspired neo-cabaret. A founding member of the influential International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Du Yun has also received commissions from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, and the Whitney Museum of Art. “This CD is a wild ride, well worth jumping aboard.” –Audiophile Audition

Composer Dalia Raudonikyte With focuses on exploring nuances within the phenomenon of sound, approaching it from a variety of multi-disciplinary angles including the visual arts, literature, philosophy, computer programming and ethnography. Her music often creates implicit links to apssages from great literature by including literary quotes in her scores that encode the performer's perception and interpretation withe xtra-musical reference points. In her solo clarinet work, Solitarius, we hear whispered fragments of text occasionally woven into the fabric of the performance itself, a window into the unspoken literary source that informs its interpretation. The work unfolds otherwise as a thoughtful soliloquy, a rhetorical dialogue with different sides of oneself. Ventus is timbrally more exploratory, as fluttering extended techniques in the saxophone merge with unstable sounds in the electronics. The chamber orchestra piece Grues et nix revels in dense sound masses and long, sustained lines, creating crestling waves of evocative and expressive harmony. FCH, an homage to Frederic Chopin, begins with an exploration of sparse lyricism before evoking its dedicatee through pianistic passagework. The solo guitar work Primo cum lumine solis also remains within a conventional harmonic frame for the mos tpart, melding the free, rhetorical dialogue of Solitarius with modeal treatment. The final section of the piece breaks away from the prevailing lyricism with some angular passagework before the final cadence brings back the expansive character of the opening section. The final work on the program, Idem non semper idem, returns to the fragility of the extended techniques of teh solo saxophone, with unearthly multiphonics serving as architectural pillars for this strange and tactile sonic language. Dalia R. With's expressive palette is driven by an internal muse. At her disposal is a strong command over experimental instrumental technique as well as a penchant for beautiful expressive melancholy. Connecting the diverse expressive worlds she inhabits is a solemn, lyrical quality tha tpierces through varied textures.

Composer David Kirkland Garner, currently faculty at University of South Carolina, draws inspiration from archival recordings capturing the musical heritage of the American south. His ebullient work for large chamber ensemble Dark Holler, performed here by a collection of wonderful players including several members of the acclaimed ACME and YMusic ensembles, puts some of these sounds traditionally associated with southern folk music through Garner's prismatic compositional lens, as they emerge contorted, distorted, but ultimately intact with a reverence for their original source of inspiration.

Plastic Facts is the debut album of New Thread Quartet, a NYC-based saxophone quartet hailed as "adventurous, rule-breaking" (NewMusicBox). The album serves as a showcase of modern compositions for saxophone quartet which utilize extended techniques, and includes music by Michael Djupstrom, Marcelo Lazcano, Anthony Gatto, and Richard Carrick. The first piece, "Test," refers to the difficulty of writing for the performers. Michael Djupstrom wanted to make it a real challenge to play- and also signify that the work represents something new for the composer as well, especially in it's harmonic language. This piece is followed by "Ser," which is built around the Buddhist phrase "We are what we think. Everything we are arose from our thoughts" from the Dhammapada. Next is the title track, "Plastic Facts," which is an expression the composer first encountered in the writings of architect Le Corbusier. The term "plastic facts" refers to basic architectural necessities that are constraints to work with, or bend somehow, to make something new and beautiful. The final piece, "Harmonixity," is a sonically inspired composition based on two different acoustical phenomena. One is the natural harmonic overtone of each saxophone and how it's overtones change as it blends between the fundamental and lower harmonics. The second is the resulting harmony of acoustical reverberation, where a single line creates a sonic tapestry through it's sustaining decay.

"The Stone Tapestry is a collection of interwoven myths, about origins, lifecycles, and the pace and significance of change. As a whole, the piece divides into two segments that together trace the path of just a few stones, from discovery to disappearance. Musically, several different ideas appear and recur in different forms, modeling change across large time spans. The ritualistic approach to the performance of many segments of the piece is intended to impart a distance to the act of music-making, placing forcus on the repetitive nature of the physical acts themselves." - Jeff Herriott. This remarkable one hour long piece in nine sections, commissioend by the Barlow Foundation, written for Due East and performed here with Third Coast Percussion, marries a timeless stance to sound and pacing with a very contemporary approach to timbre and instrumentation. Each movement patiently excavates a different sound world, unearthing subtleties and long structural shapes. But the sonic parirings are innovative, like the union of flutter tongue flute and bowed vibraphone in the third movement. Due East and Third Coast Percussion are ideal instrumentalists for this music, exploring the fine details in timbral shading as an archeaologist might examine an artifact. Herriott's expansive formal process in The Stone Tapestry allows the work to breathe and inhabit the world of natural time. While the resultant sound of the music is very distinct, the temporal quality of the piece is reminiscent of the music of John Luther Adams. In this sense, Jeff Herriott joins Adams in allowing his music to draw attention to, and not away from, our natural landscape. Stones, like rivers, mountains, and valleys move and change at a glacial pace, and Herriot's deft use of repetition with subtle variation, avoidance of didactic rhythmic regularity and penchant for static harmonic textures bring us into a sphere entirely apart form glowing screens, twenty four hour news cycles and crowded metropolitan areas.

Barbary Coast, the debut album from New York-based ensemble Red Light New Music, presents five stylistically diverse works by the group's founding composers, representing ten years of collaboration between the composers and performers, and showcases the collective’s imaginative approach to contemporary chamber music. Red Light New Music is an ensemble dedicated to illuminating new paths in the composition, performance, and understanding of music. Since 2005, Red Light New Music has been devoted to the production of new music for the concert stage.

Praised for their “devotion and original programming” (Ha’aretz, Israel), Duo Figer-Khanina (f.2006) is a violin and piano duo formed with the goal of exploring rarely played repertoire composed for these voices. The duo performs regularly in Europe, Israel and North America.

• A mix of seminal songs from the jazz canon, original works and free improvisations. • Saxophonist Jason Kush performs as a soloist and ensemble member in both classical and jazz genres throughout the United States and Europe. He's performed with the • Woody Herman Orchestra, ArturoSandoval, Eddie Daniels, Christian McBride and Jeff “Tain” Watts among others. • Pianist Billy Test has performed and/or recorded with Rich Perry, BorisKozlov and Tim Horner,among others.

• American Vernacular features ten world premiere • recordings. • Pianist Nicholas Phillips maintains an active schedule as a soloist, having played in venues across the United States and abroad. • His previous albums, Portals and Passages and Boris Papandopulo: Piano Music both garnered critical acclaim. • Mr. Phillips is currently Associate Professor of Piano at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire. • ""...an able and persuasive advocate"" of new music (New York Times)

The American composer Jonathan Dawe has forged over the years an original and highly distinctive compositional voice. This new collection of chamber works features all premiere recordings in compelling and elegant performances. Dawe's highly innovative and conjured world joins Baroque imagery with a modernist mix, cast with dynamic dramatic flair. Upon completing his graduate studies at the Juilliard School in 1995 he joined the doctoral faculty where he currently teaches.

Composer, trumpeter, arranger and bandleader Ben Bierman releases a collection of his music, Beyond Romance, that is a deeply personal statement and an amalgam of his wide breadth of musical experience. His song cycle Beyond Romance reflects influences from jazz, Broadway, cabaret and art song, and sets poignant lyrics about midlife relationships by Earl Shuman, performed elegantly by Broadway and jazz notables Hilary Gardner, Matthew Scott, and pianist Jeb Patton. Bierman's instrumental version of his Six Songs rounds out the disc, tying together his rich background accrued through years as a New York freelancer.

Composer Lee Weisert writes acoustic and electro‐acoustic music that seeks to find a ritualistic and expressively deep world of sound. His music manages to excavate fresh timbral territory while still retaining a sense of narrative and architecture, something often lost when composers dig deep to unearth new textures. Pianist Clara Yang’s performance of Erard yet another rich side of Weisert’s writing. notable is saxophonist Matthew McClure’s performance on Any thing that is Strang.

Composer and Carillonneur Neil Thornock releases a collection of works for percussion that explores the dichotomy between instruments with little sustain and those whose over ringing can obscure and define the texture itself. Featuring performances by acclaimed soloists Matthew Coley, Thornock himself, and the Iowa Percussion Group and Iowa State University Percussion Ensemble conducted by Gerald Morris, the recording culminates with "Lurgy", a four movement work for carillon and percussion ensemble suggestive of Gamelan music.