Pianist Omri Shimron releases a virtuosic and personal account of Rzewski's iconic hour-long solo work, The People United Shall Never Be Defeated! + Shimron draws from his own family history to construct a unique cadenza based on Zionist songs and draw a parallel between the Chilean-Marxist origins of Rzewski's chosen theme and other solidarity movements across the globe. + Based in Greensboro, NC, Mr. Shimron is an associate professor at Elon University in Elon, NC.

Ryan Streber, a well-known sound engineer and owner of the pivotal NYC recording studio Oktaven Audio, releases his debut full-length recording of his compositions, featuring a selection of some of the most active performers on the city’s contemporary music scene. + Streber studied with the late Milton Babbitt, and while his music reflects his mentor's style and is clearly grounded in the modernist aesthetic, his work nevertheless unfolds intuitively as opposed to adhering to a rigid system. + Mr. Streber’s works have received performances by various ensembles in the US and abroad.

Composer Louis Karchin releases a collection of chamber works, featuring violinist Miranda Cuckson, pianist Steven Beck, and oboist Jacqueline Leclair. Partially inspired by the iconic romance of Venice, Karchin marries a fascination with the intricacies of subtle hybrid instrumental timbres with a penchant for elegantly articulated structures. Over a career spanning more than four decades, composer Louis Karchin has amassed a portfolio of more than 90 compositions, appeared as conductor with numerous ensembles, and co-founded new music groups including the Chamber Players of the League-ISCM, the Orchestra of the League of Composers, the Washington Square Ensemble, and the Harvard Group for New Music. Described by critic Andrew Porter in The New Yorker as a composer of “fearless eloquence,” his works have garnered distinguished honors, including three awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three National Endowment for the Arts Awards, and Koussevitzky, Barlow, and Fromm commissions.

The intrepid quartet loadbang exists in the margins between chamber music, new music, and the unnameable music that is the intersection between their unprecedented instrumentation (baritone voice, bass clarinet, trombone, trumpet) and the fantastical concoctions that it inspires in composers. If this release, loadbang's third (and second on New Focus) can be summed up in no other way, it is certainly at least a testament to the fact that composers approach this ensemble with a sense of freedom and otherworldly creativity they might not find in themselves with more conventional instrumentations. The deftness with which the ensemble fields these diverse scores and renders them expressive and moving is further testament to their musicianship and commitment. New York City-based new music chamber group loadbang was founded in 2008. They have been praised as 'cultivated' by The New Yorker, 'an extra-cool new music group' and 'exhilarating' by the Baltimore Sun, 'inventive' by the New York Times and called a 'formidable new-music force' by TimeOutNY. They have premiered more than 250 works, written by members of the ensemble, emerging artists, and today's leading composers.

Christopher Bailey's "Glimmering Webs" is a comprehensive collection of his piano music written between 1993 and 2013 and displays several threads of influences and interests, from avant-garde modernism to irreverent pastiche and from ambient sonic beauty to gleeful silliness.

R We Who R We is the electronic project of Hearne and White whose musical backgrounds are in avant garde classical and underground electronic music. This album features the duo's versions of several iconic hits from the pop world like Madonna's Material Girl and Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror.

Classical Music

The foundation of composer Alexander Sigman’s fcremap project is a collaborative piece with animation with the Korean visual artist Eunjung Hwang called Future Creatures. The generative seed of Future Creatures has given birth to this remarkable set of works for various instrumental combinations that are represented on this recording. Sigman’s approach to these pieces, all reconceptualization of the original materials for Future Creatures in some form, is appropriately multi-disciplinary. He explores non-traditional scores including real tie scrolling electronic graphic notation, experimental methods for triggering electronic tracks and unconventional ways of playing back those electronic sounds, and image to sound analysis of the Future Creatures animation to draw fundamental connections between the materials in use in both medium. The overall result, from a musical perspective, is a rich tapestry that takes on the form of a sophisticated palimpsest, with a conceptual template serving as the frame upon which several variations are layered.

Some composers are manically focused, repeating themselves in some way or another throughout their entire lives, honing in and perfecting a single notion in it's multiple extremes-from Rossini to Reich, Lassus to Lutoslawski-while others are absorbent, exploring multiple strands of possibilities, moods and stripes, among them Stravinsky, Poulenc, Schoenberg, Andriessen, and the composer of the music on this disc, Adam Silverman. Neither sort of artist is preferable to the other (where would we be without Reich's razor-focus and Stravinsky's wanderings?) but it does say a lot about the person and personality of the composer who chooses to go rogue, even from themselves. The compositions of Adam Silverman reflect his adventurous curiosity-he's written music in many styles, from tonal to microtonal, from minimal to maximal. He seems to have settled, at least in the last half decade, on music favored by melody and lush, piquant harmonies, music with clear forms and elegant instrumental lines. But what he retains throughout all of the four pieces on this disc is a generous spirit and a caring, inviting approach to music making. The disc opens with Sturm (2002), a word most often paired with "drang" to make for a German expression meaning roughly "storm and stress." Silverman is very telling with his title: this will be a storm sans stress, and the title also puns on a fresh and fizzy, intoxicating Viennese wine. He labels each movement with dual descriptions that the title appropriately lacks. The first movement, "Forcefully, with bite" is an essay in waylaid anxiousness; agita lurks but gives way to the quiet bliss of serenity. The second movement, "Tenderly, with passion" is full of gorgeously ghostlike figures, as if the quiet deep-below anxiety of the first movement has moved to the attic. Dreamy reveries cede to a gentle, satisfying ending-the dreamer awakens, perhaps? The third movement "Swiftly, with aggression" is a rock-solid, rollicking scherzo that draws the listener, through the sheer moxie of momentum to a decidedly emphatic ending. The solo piano work Nocturnes and Reveries (2004) delivers on the promise of the title, daringly offering middle of the night thinking cast in the form of intricate miniatures. The fugitive yet traditionally based harmonies pay homage to the French masters of the early 20th Century-shadows of Poulenc, Satie, and Debussy drip from these delicious moments musicales-but with the quick-change focus and pacing that can only come from our own "age of information." There's an unsettling quality to all the well-wrought separate movements, and while each of these pieces can be enjoyed as a separate creature (I can imagine both the first movement, "Fleeting," and the fourth, "Tenderly," as good recital fare on their own) the cycle on a whole is a complete journey, beginning in skittishness and ending with quiet succor. Audrey Andrist's loving performance presents the work with engaging focus and panache. From a piece called Ricochet (2004), one might expect the high-volume hiccoughing hockets of Andriessen, perhaps a piece favored by brutal velocity, but instead Silverman, once again devilishly playing off the title's expectations, delivers an essay on motivic development which he allows to sink or swim (the latter, certainly) on it's own inherent musicality rather than on a clever notion. The title reflects both how the music quickly bounces from mood to mood, and how it's instruments gaily bounce from note to note, key to key, and string to string. From the quiet (but hardly shy) gurgles of the opening moments to the surprising close, Silverman saturates with wry little tunes and his customary bold and broad harmonies; this is another piece in which the composer considers his audience and gives them something sweeping, bright, and amusingly chaotic. In 2005 Silverman wrote, for the Corigliano Quartet, his third string quartet Corrie Q's Jigs and Reels as a reaction to the infectious verve and soulful variety of traditional Irish music. In this piece, Silverman, like many other composers before him who folded folk music into a concert work (e.g. Copland's Appalachian Spring, Brahms' Hungarian Dances, or just about everything by Bart�k), takes the original material and runs with it in a special-and surprising and witty-way. The opening movement is full of the spry jigs for which this music is known, while the closing movement answers with driving reels, moving from a fetching opening glissando to a striking and tap-toe, laugh-out-loud raucous finale. Silverman makes excellent use of these country-dance forms to his own end, absorbing and reflecting rather than simply aping by arranging. But it is the slow second movement, "Slippery Waltz," that makes this piece so compelling, because, bookended as it is by two barn-burningly seductive sections, this movement speaks to quiet, calm beauty (always a tough assignment for a composer). Without pulling heartstrings in a contrived or self-indulgent way, the composer waxes nostalgic in a manner that is effective and deeply touching; this music longs achingly for simpler times, quieter and more courtly musical experiences, and Silverman does this without sacrificing the spark of quirk and piquancy that lends his music it's own shimmer. The music sings for something just out of reach while being entrancing and gorgeous-which is what all good music ought to do. The notes above are by Daniel Felsenfeld, a composer and sometimes author who lives in New York City. Adam Silverman's compositions, noted for their intensity of expression and direct accessibility, have been heard at such venues as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Tanglewood Music Center, Ravinia, The Library of Congress, The Metropolitan Museum, La Jolla Chamber Music Society, and The Spoleto Festival. This music ranges from classical concert works (the piano trio "Sturm" and three string quartets) to opera (Korczak's Orphans, based on the life of the Holocaust martyr Janusz Korczak) and conceptual music-theater (stars, cars, bars, which sets a text from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita). Korczak's Orphans was performed by the New York City Opera's orchestra and soloists; another work, In Another Man's Skin, was performed dozens of times throughout 2001-2003 by Eighth Blackbird, who memorized and staged the work with choreography that accentuated musical elements. In 1998, he co-founded the Minimum Security Composers Collective, a group that is dedicated to the presentation of new music. He has taught music at Yale, The City University of New York, and since 2006 at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. STURM: Compositions of Adam Silverman [1-3] Sturm performed by James Stern, violin; Amy Sue Barston, cello; Audrey Andrist, piano [4-9] Nocturnes and Reveries performed by Audrey Andrist, piano [10] Ricochet performed by Strata (Nathan Williams, clarinet; James Stern, viola; Audrey Andrist,piano) [11-13] Corrie Q's Jigs and Reels (String Quartet No. 3) performed by The Corigliano Quartet (Michael Jinsoo Lim and Lina Bahn, violins; Melia Watras, viola; Amy Sue Barston, cello) Produced and engineered by Judith Sherman. Engineering and editating assistant: Jeanne Velonis. 2009 New Focus Recordings FCR107.

•An email intended for someone else reaches your inbox. You catch a glimpse into someone else’s world through a virtual peephole. But what if you received a series of errant emails over time, meant to be sent through the servers of an internet dating site? This is what happened to Robert Honstein’s friend and annotator for this recording’s liner notes, writer Jeffrey Miller; this saga is the inspiration for this cleverlycomposed set of songs without words for the internet era, Re: You.

Guitarist Daniel Lippel releases a double album set of premieres for solo classical and electric guitar and with electronics by several composer colleagues: Ryan Streber, John Link, Kyle Bartlett, Sergio Kafejian, Douglas Boyce, Dalia With, Karin Wetzel, Orianna Webb, Sidney Corbett, Ethan Wickman, Christopher Bailey, and Lippel himself. Mirrored Spaces engages with many different parameters through which musical ideas are refracted, including microtonality, the aesthetics of electro-acoustic music, timbral exploration, and historical and extra-musical reference points. Guitarist Daniel Lippel, called an "exciting soloist" (New York Times) and "precise and sensitive" (Boston Globe) has carved out a unique and diverse career that ranges through solo and chamber music performances, innovative commissioning and recording projects, and performances in diverse contexts. He has premiered more than fifty new solo and chamber works, many written for him, recording several on the independent label he co-founded and directs, New Focus Recordings. Recent performance highlights include recitals at Le Poisson Rouge in New York, Sinus Ton Festival (Germany), National University of Colombia in Bogota, Lawrence University (Wisconsin), and the New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland Classical Guitar Societies, featured solo performances at the ZKM in Karlsruhe Germany with the SWR Experimental Studio Frieburg, MATA Festival, and WNYC's Greene Space, and chamber performances on the Macau Music Festival (China), Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Ojai Festival, Ottawa Chamber Festival, Aspekte Festival (Salzburg), Kunst Universitaet Graz (Austria), Newburyport Chamber Music Festival, and at Teatro Amazonas (Manaus, Brasil), Sibelius Academy (Finland), and Zankel and Weill Halls at Carnegie Hall.

"an engrossing meditation on the sustain, overlap and decay of isolated pitches." - The Chicago Tribune on Drew Baker's Gray for solo piano - featured on Stress Position "a determined protector of important music" - The New York Times on pianist Marilyn Nonken Stress Position is the first recording to feature the works of Chicago-based composer Drew Baker. Baker's compositions have been presented by many leading new music groups including The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and The Group for Contemporary Music. Stress Position has also been performed by Nonken, a Professor of Music at NYU, at festivals throughout the world including Music Harvest Festival in Denmark, Works & Process at The Guggenheim Museum, Philadelphia's CHAMBER MUSIC NOW! and Festival of New American Music in Sacramento. In addition to addressing political topics, Baker's piano works continually challenge preconceived notions of the instrument itself. From the ethereal, "electronic" sounds of the opening track, Gaeta for two pianos and water percussion, to the shotgun blast chords of Asa Nisi Masa for solo amplified piano, Nonken's stunning performances are a testament to the piano's myriad identities.

All of the new works for violin featured on this release have been inspired by the minimalism of John Adams. Violinist Francesca Anderegg, inspired by "After Dead Souls," a poem by Ginsberg, explores the evolving American compositional tradition that romanticizes, above all, freedom. Francesca Anderegg is hailed for her "fiery interpretation," and "exceptional performances." A graduate of Harvard University, Anderegg also holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from Julliard.She is currently the Assistant Professor of Violin at St. Olaf College.

Flutist Conor Nelson and pianist Thomas Rosenkranz, colleagues on faculty at Bowling Green State University, release a recording exploring the abstract edges of the expression of the dance impulse within the avant-garde. Featuring music by Elliott Carter, Jonathan Harvey, Josh Levine, and Christopher Dietz, these performances highlight the cathartic nature of complex and ecstatic new music. Several of the works on this ambitious release were written for the performers, representing an important contribution to the available recorded output of avant-garde flute music.

... through which the past shines... is a collection of the current complete works for guitar, both solo and in ensemble, by composers Nils Vigeland and Reiko Fueting. The music is emblematic of both composers' sophisticated voices, grounded in the tradition while forward looking in nuanced and elegantly integrated ways. Vigeland, whose mentors included Morton Feldman and Lukas Foss and who directed the influential Bowery Ensemble in the 1980s, is an important link in the "New York School" of composers. As director of the composition department at the Manhattan School of Music for several decades, he had a profound influence on several generations of composers, including current MSM faculty member and East German native Reiko Fueting. All the performances on this recording of music by Vigeland and Fueting by guitarist Daniel Lippel (ICE, Flexible Music), John Popham (Longleash, Either/Or), and Vigeland himself are the byproduct of close working relationships developed over the last 17 years.