What comes through with clarion intensity in Iron Orchid, a collaboration between composer & producer David Bird and pianist Ning Yu, is material. The through line is metal, but a transmogrified metal, embodied in timbres that shift and evolve in real time from the familiar to the surreal to the non-real. The metal of piano wires takes on a life of it's own, as in "Iron," where the rough scraping of piano strings lay atop a gorgeous pillow of sine tones. Despite the album's considerable electronic element, Bird and Yu embrace the full timbral range of the piano as an acoustic instrument: from the crinkling tactility of fingers on wire; to resonant sotto voce melodies; to the murky and microtonal piano tremolos that comprise the dark but fecund soil of album opener "Garden." Because these sounds feel like the genesis for Iron Orchid's electronic components, the intermingling of piano and production is utterly fluid. Complex, faint overtones from a muted piano string are replicated by sine tones and echo off into nothingness; pitches crack and collapse unexpectedly; pulsing, stuttering synth sounds combine with the twisting, tortured scraping of wire. Iron Orchid began in 2019, with the interactive multimedia sculpture "Echo Chamber," a collaboration between Bird, Yu, and sculptor Mark Reigelman. The 11-foot-tall sculpture was constructed of stacks of 56 metal tubes, each with an audio speaker inside. Scattered materials from Echo Chamber are woven into the fabric of Iron Orchid, which could be thought of as a guided aural tour of the sculpture. The sculpture is simultaneously absent and yet omnipresent. Stasis and momentum evoke motion through an imaginary environment, one haunted by a foreign and unknown object freighted with immense mass, and operating under it's own logic.

This release is a survey of music by American composers, and is a mixture of premieres and first recordings of new transcriptions for the clarinet. Featuring works from composers Robert Beaser, Joseph Schwantner, Lukas Foss, Marti Epstein, Derek Bermel, and David Gompper, this album evokes the image of Americana. While these composers typically air on the side of modernism, these particular works draw out the expansiveness, nostalgia, and optimism of traditional American compositions. Michael Norsworthy is an in demand soloist with a unique voice on the clarinet. He has gained praise all over the planet, and has premiered over 150 new works. David Gompper has worked as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer all over the world. He has been Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa since 1991.

On her latest release, Kathleen Supove explores our collective fascination with Debussy's music. As she observes in her notes, Debussy's music "seems to suggest a state of mind, too, envisioned in a very crystalline and personal way." The Debussy Effect documents Supove's project of enlisting several composers to bring that sensibility and their personal relationship to it to new, 21st century works, for solo piano and piano and electronics. Composer and performer Joan La Barbara is renowned for her unique vocabulary of experimental and extended vocal techniques, influencing generations of composers and singers.

Steven Ricks‘ new release, “Young American Inventions”, begins with an automated vocal greeting, speaking, “Hello, pay close attention, everything is ready, so let’s begin.” This quirky opening invites us into his conflicted relationship with technological affect, cliché and populism, underscoring questions about our culture’s relationship to musical sound. Ricks combines several strains of American compositional tradition, an awareness of found objects and found sounds, an academic modernist’s approach to pitch and rhythm, and a minimalist’s penchant for repetition with variation.

Scott Miller's Tipping Point chronicles a long collaborative relationship between him and Minneapolis based new music ensemble, Zeitgeist. The members of Zeitgeist have regularly acted as a musical proving ground for Miller's explorations, particularly those combining acoustic instruments with interactive-electronic effects. From the opening measures of the title track, Miller's approach to integrating acoustic instruments into an electroacoustic environment is apparent. The tipping point Miller refers to may well be the edge at which we can no longer identify where the acoustic instruments end and the electronics begin. Funhouse dives immediately into this ambiguity, as snarling bass clarinet multiphonics mimic and later become absorbed into the carefully crafted noise world of the electronics. Pure Pleasure's percussive rhythms are manipulated timbrally as well as sent swirling around the stereo field in passages of spatialized virtuosity. Featuring soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw, Forth and Back's haunting minimalism suggests the slow evolution of a mind at work as it gains understanding over a puzzling paradigm: none other than time itself and our ability to transcend it through union with another. Mr. Miller is currently the President of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS).

New focus recordings expands it's representation of iconic works from the solo piano repertoire with this Eric Huebner recital release of three brilliant, challenging and rewarding works by carter (night fantasies), Stravinsky (trois mouvements de Petroushka), and Schumann (Kreisleriana, op. 16, 1st edition). New York philharmonic-appointed pianist since 2012 and asst. prof. of piano at Suny Buffalo, the acclaimed Mr. Huebner, also a frequent recitalist, was recently appointed adjunct faculty member at the Juilliard school where he teaches a class in orchestral piano performance.

Called "an impressive, eclectic composer" (Time Out New York) and possessing "some of the most uninhibited brain cells around" (Washington Post), composer David Smooke is a sonic tour guide, leading his listeners ona polystylistic and expressive journey. Smooke employs a wide range of compositional techniques to paint his individually unreal soundworld, including microtonality, a deft timbral and orchestrational brush stroke, and extended performance techniques.

Composer and artistic director of Chicago based experimental ensemble a. pe. Ri. od. #ic, Nomi Epstein releases "sounds," a compilation of her own works for ensemble and solo piano. Epstein's sensitive attention to timbre, phrase syntax, pitch, and silence invites the listener inside a sonic world that is rich in expression and poignant contemplation. Nomi Epstein is a Chicago-based composer, curator, performer and music educator. Her compositions center around her interest in sonic fragility, where structure arises out of textural subtleties. Her music has been performed throughout the US, Europe, and Asia by such artists as ICE, Ensemble SurPlus, Mivos Quartet, Wet Ink, Dal Niente, Noble Fowl Trio, Quince Vocal Ensemble, Rhymes With Opera, Seth Josel, and Eliza Garth, and at festivals such as Ostrava Days, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Darmstadt, Bang on a Can, and Akademie Schloss Solitude. She has contributed works to Australian flutist Janet McKay's 2009 US tour "Those Vanished Hands," guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan's "New Lullaby Project" and percussionist Joe Bergen's new vibraphone collection "For Semy. " She was twice invited as an Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and has received grants from The Foundation of Contemporary Arts (Emergency Grant), Chicago's DCASE (Individual Artist Grant), and New Music USA (CAP Grant).

Composer Scott Wollschleger releases his second album with New Focus, "Dark Days", chronicling solo piano repertoire written between 2007 and 2020 and featuring his longtime close collaborator, pianist Karl Larson. Aspects of style that are heard on his first album "Soft Aberration" are present again, but now filtered through the introspective immediacy of the solo piano medium, as we hear coloristic harmonies, a penchant for using displaced rhythms and repetition to subvert phrasing expectations, and an intuitively driven approach to form and structure.

Seventy years after John Cage introduced it to the concert stage, the toy piano has evolved into an instrument that has inspired and fascinated many composers. This album showcases the toy's ability to solo on stage, accompany other instruments, and hold it's own in a chamber group. It's diminutive size belies it's power of evocation, it's ability to imbue each piece with alluring colors and character. In the solo works, the toy is in turn the lead instrument in a mini Peking opera (Wrong, Wrong Wrong!), a trigger for sounds processed through cell phone towers (Babbling Tower to Tower), and a virtuosic soloist turning itself into a metal machine bumble bee a la Rimsky-Korsakov (Ujo-foryt). In Gossamer Wings, the toy is at the center of a journey into many different sound worlds inspired by, among others, Cole Porter, Stravinsky, and Debussy. The duet Knock Em Back, written for Chat Kinsey and Ju-Ping Song, is, as of this writing, the first piece of music to explore the playful and combustible synergy between electric guitar and (modified) toy piano.

Since their formation in 2009, The Bowers Fader Duo (Jessica Bowers, mezzo-soprano, and Oren Fader, guitar) has commissioned over 20 new works from American composers representing a wide range of compositional aesthetics. Between Us All, their debut recording, features performances of works by Paul Salerni, Scott Wheeler, Tim Mukherjee, and David Claman, that highlight the duo's precise realization of the musical score and expressive communication of the texts. "The afternoon ended with the stylish pairing of husband and wife team of Jessica Bowers, mezzo-soprano and Oren Fader, guitar. They are clearly "in sync" on stage as a pairing, here interpreting songs of Brahms, Mozart, and Salerni with excitement and skill. Her diction and communicative skills were a master class in song interpretation while his accompaniment was sensitive and playful. " (Ladd Boris, soundwordsight. Com)

Composer Hannah Lash writes music that is informed in equal measure by historical precedents, such as the Baroque inspired "Suite: Remembered and Imagined," as it is by a modernist examination of instrumental phenomenon, such as the dual meaning of the word "Pulse" as it pertains to bow changes as well as beatings in closely spaced sonorities. A virtuoso harpist in her own right, she joins the acclaimed JACK Quartet for "Filigree in Texture," a work integrating aspects of Middle Ages tapestry with early contrapuntal practice. Hailed by The New York Times as the "nation's most important quartet", the JACK Quartet is one of the most acclaimed, renowned, and respected groups performing today. JACK has maintained an unwavering commitment to their mission of performing and commissioning new works, giving voice to underheard composers, and cultivating an ever-greater sense of openness toward contemporary classical music. Over the past season, they have been selected as Musical America's 2018 "Ensemble of the Year", named to WQXR's "19 for 19 Artists to Watch", and awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Harpist Ben Melsky, of Ensemble Dal Niente, a staple on the Chicago new music scene, releases a recording of innovative chamber works with his colleagues by a wonderful collection of composers including Wang Lu, Fred Gifford, Tomas Gueglio, Alican Camci, and Eliza Brown. Dedicated to connecting audiences to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, Chicago-based Ben Melsky is Executive Director and harpist of Ensemble Dal Niente. In close collaboration with composers and performers he encourages the creation of new work to break pre-conceived notions of the harp's capabilities, activating new techniques, sounds, and performance practices. "Melsky's playing belied any perceived limits of his instrument. Even within phrases, individual notes had different colors and sensations, and melodies seemed to break free from their surroundings." (Chicago Classical Review)

Oboist Jacqueline Leclair releases a collection of premiere works for English horn that covers a wide range of stylistic territory and explores the rich, penetrating voice of this beguiling instrument. Featuring music by Meera Gudipati, Hannah Kendall, Faye-Ellen Silverman, Jenni Brandon, Karola Oberm�ller, Lisa Bielawa, and Cecilia Arditto, Leclair's virtuosity, flexibility, and lyricism abound in these major contributions to the English horn repertoire. Oboist Jacqueline Leclair is Associate Professor of Oboe at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. She is a member of Ensemble Signal, and can frequently be heard performing solo and chamber music concerts internationally. She was a member of Alarm Will Sound for eight years until resigning in 2011. Dr. Leclair was on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music (NYC) and was Assistant Professor of Oboe at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) from 2007 to 2012. During her last two years at BGSU she also served as the Director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music.

Composer Eric Moe draws from a wide well of influences, integrating various elements from across the aesthetic spectrum into music that is rhythmically propulsive and preserves an emphasis on melodic development and harmonic context. The works on his latest collection, "Uncanny Affable Machines," are all engaged, in one form or another, with the paradigm of human/machine interaction. Firmly within a polemical tradition related to electro-acoustic composition, Moe engages with the complex dynamics suggested by a performance involving a live human and a prerecorded track. Many of the sounds on the playback are "organic" themselves, however, involving manipulated recordings of human performers, or recorded sounds from the environment. And of course, in order to coordinate with the playback, a live performer needs to discipline themselves to execute the passagework precisely with the tape each time, making themselves more machine-like. This is just one of the ways that the medium invites us into a fascinating dialogue blurring the lines between the technological and the human, and Moe is acutely aware of this in his approach.