Scott Wollschleger wrote�Lost Anthems�as part of The 20/19 project, violist Leilehua Lanzilotti's commissioning enterprise. The twenty five minute work is divided into fifteen discrete sections, what Wollschleger describes as "a melodic, song-like structure in search of itself." By titling the works "anthems," Wollschleger invokes a music that is inherently communal and symbolic of something larger than itself; by presenting music that is often introspective, he subverts the bombastic underpinnings of many anthems.

Composer Daniel Strong Godfrey's�Toward Light�presents three quintets for string quartet and piano, guitar, and cello respectively, showcasing his expressive, finely crafted chamber music. Featuring performances by the Cassatt Quartet with guests pianist Ursula Oppens, guitarist Eliot Fisk, and cellist Nicole Johnson, the works on�Toward Light�are elegantly balanced compositions, cohesive conceptions that are deeply felt.

Composer Per Bloland newest releaase,�Shadows of the Electric Moon,�highlights his reliance on fiction as an impetus for compositional inspiration as well as his integration of custom designed electronic software into his work. Featuring Unheard-of//Ensemble, Wild Rumpus, Keith Kirschoff, Bill Solomon, and Stephen Marotto, Bloland's music captures his inventive spirit and keen ear for highlighting subtletlies of instrumental characteristics and developing them within the narrative of a composition.

On Lines and Traces of Desire, composer Mischa-Salkind Pearl collaborates with cimbalom artist Nicholas Tolle on this collection of solo, duo, and ensemble works for the beguiling stringed percussion instrument. These mystical, reflective pieces celebrate the cimbalom's resonant qualities, and honor the eminent composer Gyorgy Kurtag, whose music provided Tolle the inspiration to dedicate himself to the instrument.

The 21st Century Orchestra�is a celebration of the evolution of symphonic writing into our current era through the lens of the work of four composers on faculty at Brown University: Wang Lu, Anthony Cheung, Joseph Butch Rovan, and Eric Nathan. Despite their diverse stylistic approaches, they share a decidedly contemporary approach to writing for individual instruments and for contextualizing the modern orchestra, heard in expert performances by one of the premiere symphonies devoted to modern music in the United States, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, led by Gil Rose.

The Massachusetts based Ecce Ensemble, directed by composer John Aylward, releases this composer portrait album of Trevor Weston's chamber music, Remembrances. Weston's music aims to be transformative regardless of aesthetic, and he seamlessly integrates influences from a wide range of sources into his attractive, cohesive musical language.

Composer Adam Roberts'�Book of Flowers�is a celebration of the large scale collection of character pieces, participating in a tradition that traces from Schumann to Chopin to Debussy to Crumb. Performed by piano virtuoso Conrad Tao, Roberts explores an expansive range of expression and techniques on the keyboard, fashioning many short components into work of epic scope.

Pianist Ann DuHamel releases the first volume of her commissioning project of solo works that are inspired by and draw attention to the climate change crisis. Featuring works by Laura Schwendinger, Judith Shatin, Juhi Bansal, Karen Lemon, Erick Tapia, Ian Dicke, Daniel Blinkhorn, and Gunter Gaupp, this collection is enlivened by the pathos with which the composers and DuHamel approach the underlying subject matter.

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 Richard Festinger's Then and Now includes five chamber works for various instrumentations, featuring Collage New Music, Cygnus, Windscape, Calefax, and other accomplished performers. Festinger's aesthetic springs from the pitch centered modernists of the late 20th century, but is also informed by his background studying jazz with such luminaries as Gary Burton, shaping his music not so much in terms of feel or expression, but in the way in which he approaches harmony and motivic development.

The intrepid contemporary vocal ensemble Ekmeles, directed by Jeffrey Gavett, releases their third recording featuring works written for the ensemble by George Lewis, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, and Katherine Balch. Ekmeles has cultivated an unparalleled reputation for tackling the most challenging vocal scores of our era, navigating microtonality, complex rhythmic textures, and experimental structures with virtuosity and expression.

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.

Percussionist Michael Jones releases an album featuring three works that resulted from close collaborations he has had with composers pluto bell, Nicholas Deyoe, and�Scott Wollschleger. These works are part of a growing portion of the solo percussion repertoire that celebrates sensitivity, timbre, and painting of expressive worlds not as a counter to traditional virtuosity, but an expansion of it.

Lei Liang crafts multi-disciplinary works that bridge scientific research, electroacoustic composition, and contemporary improvisation to create a cohesive message of holistic symbiosis. Partnering with musicians from Ensemble Dal Niente, Mivos Quartet, loadbang, [nec]shivaree, and pianist Stephen Drury, Lei Liang's newest release is an ambitious snapshot of his current aesthetic direction.

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.

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).

A Forest Unfolding is a collaborative work inspired by recent scientific research into the rich communication and subterranean connectivity between trees. Four writers-the environmentalists Bill McKibben and Joan Maloof, along with the novelists Richard Powers and Kim Stanley Robinson-selected prose passages and poems on the relations among people and trees. They presented these selections to four composers-Eric Moe, Melinda Wagner, Stephen Jaffe, and David Kirkland Garner-who set these words into a linked sequence of recitatives and arias. The resulting whole traces a narrative arc beginning with human estrangement from nature and ending with a glimpse of the endless cooperation that knits a forest together.

Los Angeles-based composer Noah Meites releases a collection of his chamber music that chronicles his vibrant artistic voice and his role as an active member of that city's fertile contemporary music community. Featuring performances by Brightwork New Music, HOCKET, Linnea Powell, richi valitutto, New Thread Quartet, and Meites' own ensemble LA Signal Lab, COUNTING is a vital snapshot of a prolific artist in one of the United States' most vital new music scenes.

a�pe�ri�od�ic is a Chicago-based experimental music ensemble founded in 2010 and directed by Nomi Epstein, featuring post-Cagean notated experimental music. Their second release on New Focus features an album-length work by Magnus Granburg written for the ensemble, Aus der Nacht, von den Wehen, a forty-five-minute episodic work comprised of 71 distinct sections that explore subtle changes in attack, decay, resonance, and pitch, using an indeterminate notation to inject variability into it's performance.

Movses Pogossian and his colleagues in the Armenian Music Project continue their tireless advocacy for the music of Armenia with this ambitious 4-CD collection, Stanzas in August. At the heart of the release are two sub-collections devoted entirely to the music of Ashot Zohrabyan and Koharik Gazarossian, two consequential composers who shaped Armenian music far beyond their own oeuvres. The other discs include lesser-known works by Aram Khachaturian, Tigran Mansurian, and Ghazaros Saryan, as well as premieres of piano miniatures by Artur Avanesov, and premieres by Vahram Sargsyan and Aram Hovhannisyan.