Composer John Aylward releases Angelus, his monodrama for voice and ensemble inspired in equal measure by his mother's experience as a refugee fleeing Europe during World War II, Paul Klee's affecting painting "Angelus Novus," and a series of texts that speak to themes common to her story of displacement and resilience. The performance features soprano Nina Guo in a wide-ranging part with the ECCE Ensemble, of which Aylward is the director. "My music comprises solo works, chamber music, orchestral work and music for film. I'm in the midst of commissions from members of Klangforum Wien and Court-Circuit... In recent seasons, I've been commissioned by Sound Icon, the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society and from Open Space. I regularly advocate for composers of all stripes as a performer (pianist) and as a director of the Etchings Festival for Contemporary Music. I'm also the Artistic Director of Ecce, a contemporary music ensemble. I was born and raised in the Southwest US, and so often my music takes on concerns related to that landscape and culture: ancestral concepts of time, appropriations of indigenous cultures into surrealism and impressionism, and the connections between native traditions and Greek and Roman mythology. Currently, I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and teach music composition at Clark University."

Doug Perkins's "Simple Songs" on New Focus represents his solo debut recording, and is a wonderful document of the dynamism that exists in the constantly growing percussion repertoire. Praised as a "percussion virtuoso" by the New York Times, Doug has assembled a kaleidoscopic collection of works for solo percussion, focusing on the extremes of virtuosity on one hand and percussion's music penchant for the art of tinkering on the other. From the haunting meditation of vibraphone and one-bit music in Tristan Perich's Momentary Expanse to the quirky noises of David Lang's Unchained Melody, and ending with Michael Gordon's monolithic XY, the range of the record is reflective of the vast scope of interests captivating the contemporary percussionist.

Composer and co-director of Either/Or ensemble, New York based Richard Carrick releases an intimate project of his own multi-layered performances of electric guitar music. + Recorded in a spontaneous but closely cultivated manner, Stone Guitars balances the ephemeral quality of improvisation with the curated character of considered composition, leaving a recording that, instead of being an idealized realization of a written score, is the definitive notation of the work itself.

Reiko Füting’s features chamber works performed by members of NYC’s most celebrated contemporary ensembles, including the Int’l Contemporary Ensemble, Either/Or Ensemble, and the Mivos String Quartet. This collection of works illustrates Füting’s interest in the philosophical and artistic conception of memory, as well as the significant role past works of literature, music, and art play in shaping his compositional forms and musical material. Interspersed between the album’s longer works are vocal settings of haikus from Reiner Bonack. In addition to composing, Reiko Füting (b. 1970) is an avid performer who has appeared in Europe, Asia, and the US. Since 2000, Füting has been teaching composition and theory at Manhattan School of Music, where he serves as the chair of theory department.

Longtime collaborators Tony Arnold and Jacob Greenberg release a poignant recording of Olivier Messiaen's evocative song cycle Harawi: Song of Love and Death. Inspired by songs from the Quechua culture of the Andean region of South America, these songs are deeply evocative and colorful, engaging themes of love, tragedy and death.

Carl Schimmel's music possesses a Haydesque structural sensibility augmented with a playful sense of humor. His wonderful ability to communicate semantic meaning from moment to moment gives his scores an engaging narrative, and his penchant fo rminiatures fits perfectly wit hhis colorful depiction of different characters. He is influenced deeply by literature and a background in mathematics. Both of Schimmel's "Roadshow" pieces are written for his children, one for his son Otto and the other for his daughter Thora. Schimmel was inspired by the hit PBS show "Antiques Roadshow," and each miniature movement is a musical imagining of how his children might play with toys he saw featured on thes how. The first track of the recording, "Silver Atom Ray Gun" from Roadshow for Otto, with its bravura opening and maudlin asides, encapsulates Schimmel's occasionally cartoonish presentation. The opening movement Four Nocturnes from "The Oblivion Ha-Ha" sets poetry by James Tate, an American poet whose surrealist imagery veered toward the absurd later in his career. Schimmel's style of setting the text here verges closer to recitative than lieder, and an attentive listener might hear references to Debussy in the final movement. The six movements of his String Quartet No. 2 are inspired by cubist paintings that Schimmel then incorporates as characters in the piece (the paintings are y Braque, Picasso, Gleizes, Gris, Metzinger and Leger). Like a cubist painting, the piece's six portrait movements form six sides of the same complex entity, perhaps even facets of a single personality. The final work on the recording, The Pismirist's Congeries, returns to something of the light character of the "Roadshow" pair. A "pismirist" is someone who collects small, insignificant things, and each movement of this work is named after a different keepsake, such as "orrery" (a clockwork model of the solar system) or "zufalo" (a small flute used to train songbirds). This collection, Schimmel's debut full length release, shows the composer at his best, writing intricate, expressive music that balances wit and pathos.

Formed in 2010 by Nathan Douds, the ensemble features six musicians with diverse musical backgrounds and career paths, a prime factor that allows this group to remain as flexible as it is. These musicians have given recitals/concerts, clinics, and master classes at various academic institutions, including Youngstown State University, Slippery Rock University, Denison University, University of Southern Illinois, Chicago Academy of the Arts, among others. In this, their first self-titled album, the group performs seven of Douds' original works. Recorded at the renowned Red Rock Recording studio, the album showcases the wide dynamic and stylistic range of the group. Nathan Douds is an active freelance percussionist, pianist, composer, and educator. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Percussion Performance from Youngstown State University and a Master's Degree in Jazz Studies: Applied Piano from Bowling Green State University. Nathan has been performing for over 15 years, has played in multiple diverse genres, and has toured internationally.

Composer Douglas Boyce, composer in residence of acclaimed new music ensemble counter)induction, releases his debut portraig album, featuring three of his kinetic chamber works in riveting performances by counter)induction, Aeolus Quartet, and Trio Cavatina. Boyce's music reflects a wide array of interests, from Renaissance traditions to modernist aesthetics, embedding these influences in works that oscillate between tightly organized ensemble mechanisms and carefully curated moments of independent instrumental freedom. Boyce opens the program in a haze with the murky intersection of '102nd & Amsterdam.' His Piano Quartet No. 1 begins with Bartokian off-kilter accents, alternating with hocketed passages between viola and piano. Finally 'Fortuitous Variations' opens with similarly angular music, pillars of repeated octaves in the piano alternating with swooping gestures in the strings. Douglas Boyce is a composer with a powerful focus and impetus in his music, but also a fantastic capacity for expressive range and an uncanny ability to sustain complex rhetorical arguments within his sophisticated structures.

Composer David Liptak releases a collection of chamber works, featuring the cycle,"Dove Songs," written for soprano Tony Arnold with pianist Alison D'Amato. Liptak, longtime composition professor at the Eastman School of Music, writes music that is expressively rich and poignantly lyrical. Rounding out the program are pieces for guitar, cello and piano, and violin and piano, featuring guitarist Dieter Hennings, cellist Steven Doane, violinist Renee Jolles, and pianists Margaret Kampmeier and Barry Snyder. David Liptak's music has been described as "luminous and arresting," "richly atmospheric," and having "transparent textures, incisive rhythms, shimmering lightness." His compositions have been performed throughout the United States and abroad by the San Francisco Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and many others.

Musical ideas that are passed down through tutelage and mentorship also owe a debt to the shared geological proximity that is the fruit of a community. This elegant recording by the duo of violinist Nicholas DiEugenio and pianist Mimi Solomon is an hommage to the late composer Steven Stucky but also to his longtime home of Ithaca, NY, a center for the American compositional tradition for generations of composers. With this release, the duo honors Stucky's memory through their warm and passionate performance of his Sonata for Violin and Piano, but also through th epremiere recording of his teacher and longtime Cornell University professor Robert Palmer's sonata, and premieres of works by two fo Stucky's most successful students, Tonia Ko and Jesse Jones. Jones' evocative...in dulcet tones unfolds with crystalline arpeggiated passages that are contrasted with long lyrical melodies. Jones skillfully negotiates different stylistic traditions, toggling between romantic pathos and impressionistic sound paintings as suits the organic unfolding of the music. Stucky's sonata engages more self-consciously with the tradition, looking particularly towards Debussy's famous work for this instrumentation and its balance between composerly manipulation fo material and episodes of fantasy. The inward, occasionally impassioned ''Interlude'' serves as a bridge before teh final movement's dance between con fuoco and wistful sections. Tonia Ko's Plush Earth in Four Pieces is inspired by author Vladimir Nabokov's impressions of Ithaca, his home for ten years. Ko's work, is comprised of four character pieces, each exploring a different texture and affect. The first is alternatively annunciatory and insistent, the second is reminiscent of a toccata, though through a prism, the third is a study of glissandi on both instruments, and the last a meditation on clusters, trills, and ethereal ascending lines.

Longleash (Pala Garcia, violin; John Popham, cello; Renate Rohlfing, piano) is a group with a traditional instrumentation and a progressive identity. Inspired by music with unusual sonic beauty, an inventive streak and a truthful cultural voice, Longleash extends a love of classical chamber musicianship to the interpretation of contemporary music, crafting performances that are both dynamic and thoughtfully refined. An “expert young trio” praised for its “subtle and meticulous musicianship” (Strad Magazine) and its “technical expertise and expressive innovation” (Feast of Music), Longleash has quickly earned a reputation in the US and abroad for innovative programming, artistic excellence, and new music advocacy. Longleash balances a full performing schedule with commissioning and recording projects and the trio’s own summer concert series and composition workshop, The Loretto Project. On this, their debut album, the group has included first recordings of innovative piano trios, written by an international group of composers launching remarkable careers. This collection of works illustrates the inventive and experimental ethos that has shaped the evolving identity of this traditional instrumentation in recent years.

Composer Mikel Kuehn, a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, carries the mantle of American high modernism forward with this debut full length release of his compositions. Kuehn's work draws influence from Babbitt, Carter, and Wolpe among others, as well as figures from other disciplines including Italo Calvino and Paul Klee. Heard here in performances by Chicago based Ensemble Dal Niente, Flexible Music, percussionist Gregory Beyer, guitarist Daniel Lippel, cellist Craig Hultgren, and Bowling Green's Saxophone Ensemble, and with in depth liner notes by flutist/composer/new music eminence Harvey Sollberger, Kuehn's music represents the apex of compositional craft, prioritizing the kind of depth that rewards repeated listening.. Noted for its presentation of “bracing sonic adventures” Ensemble Dal Niente aims to drive musical discourse with adventurous projects that exhibit an ambitious range of aesthetic values tied to contemporary life and culture. Recent projects include a collaboration with Deerhoof and Marcos Balter, an East Coast tour of German music, and recordings of works by George Lewis. New Music Quartet Flexible Music formed in 2003 and has since been devoted to expanding the repertoire for their uncommon instrumentation. The group can be heard on several New Focus releases, as well as on recordings on Albany and Centaur.

Described as “evocative” and “kaleidoscopic” (NY Times), composer Scott Wollschleger’s music is at times deconstructive, disembodied, and dystopic, but always infused with awe and wonder. Wollschleger probes timbre, instrumental relationships, and aesthetic implications to find transcendent moments in unique textures in this remarkable recording featuring performances by soprano Corrine Byrne, trumpeter Andy Kozar, violist Anne Lanzilotti, cellist John Popham, pianist Karl Larsen, Mivos Quartet, and Longleash trio. Scott Wollschleger is a Brooklyn-based composer of solo, chamber, and dramatic music. His distinct musical language explores themes of art in dystopia, the conceptualization of silence, synesthesia, and creative repetition in form. Wollschleger’s concert works have been performed across the United States and the world, including the International Music Institute at Darnstadt, the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, the Bang on a Can Festival at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and the MATA Festival Interval Series. His music is published by Project Schott New York.

Du Yun, critically acclaimed as a composer of concert music, releases her first album as her pop diva alter-ego, duYun. Recorded and produced in New York, Shanghai, and Montreal, Shark in You features duYun's broad palette, from neo-cabaret to house.

Van Stiefel's Solaris is an anti-electric guitar electric guitar album, exploring the fragility and beautiful vulnerability of music for amplified guitar plucked by bare flesh and nail in the manner of classical guitar playing.