Clarinetist Marianne Gythfeldt's "Only Human" is a collection of recordings of works with electronics written for her by colleague composers John Link, Mikel Kuehn, David Taddie, Elizabeth Hoffman, Eric Lyon, and Robert Morris. Featuring music involving fixed and live interactive electronics, these pieces demonstrate varying contexts within the electro-acoustic medium, from tightly interwoven dialogues between live and pre-recorded material to establishment of acoustic environments within which a soloist steps to the fore. Gythfeldt's virtuosic and sensitive performances are present throughout as a constant on this dynamic release. Clarinetist Marianne Gythfeldt, a native of Norway, has distinguished herself in chamber music, orchestral and contemporary music performance on the international stage. She is equally at-home in traditional, contemporary and alternative/cross-over genres, as a result of the extensive experience and training as clarinetist of Ensemble Sospeso and former member of the Naumburg award-winning group New Millennium Ensemble. Gythfeldt's exceptional ability with contemporary technique, and as a clarinetist who sings through the instrument with a traditionally beautiful tone, led to many collaborations with great soloists and musical innovators such as Alvin Lucier, Peter Serkin, Petr Kotik and the SEM Ensemble, Ursula Oppens, and Paquito D'Rivera. As co-founder of PG2, a sound-art duo, she collaborates with visual artist Ashley Pigford to design original audio-visual pieces for presentation at multimedia conferences.

Composer Reiko Futing's music engages with temporality and memory on a multi-dimensional level. By using musical quotation and balancing current instrumental techniques with early music stylistic traits, Futing invites the listener to reflect on a musical tradition through a contemporary prism. Through his innovative approach to structure, internal repetition, and additive motivic content, Futing shapes the listener's perception of musical time. He writes in the liner notes that, "The quotations are treated to processes of assimilation, integration, disintegration, and segregation while moving freely between clear borders and gradual transitions. Among my interests in this structural approach was to construct a musical forum to reflect upon contemporary artistic, cultural, social, and political phenomena." "Distang Song," Futing's second release on New Focus, features works for voices and instruments performed by excellent established young ensembles in both the United States and Europe. The compositions included are emblematic of Futing's deeply humanistic approach to creative activity and a sensitivity to contemporary political issues.

Classical Music

Pianist David Kaplan releases New Dances of the League of David, comprised of a set of miniatures he commissioned between 2013 and 2015 to be woven into the Davidsbundlertanze of Robert Schumann. Kaplan asked 16 composers to write responses to Schumann's original, presenting a startling range of compositional approaches, though all unified by their common engagement with Schumann's spirit.

Soprano Fotina Naumenko releases Bespoke Songs, a collection of works she commissioned for voice and ensembles with various instrumentations that set texts by female authors. In pieces by Jonathan Newman, Benedict Sheehan, Carrie Magin, and Jennifer Jolley, Naumenko's crystalline voice leads the ensembles through varied aesthetic territory, displaying a broad snapshot of contemporary vocal ensemble composition.

Suzanne Farrin's debut full length recording of her works features a series of songs without words for solo instruments inspired by the poetry of the great Italian poet Petrarch. Featuring performances by Joshua Rubin and Nuiko Wadden of the International Contemporary Ensemble and Cal Wiersma of Cygnus Ensemble Corpo di Terra packs intensity and drama into a meditative and introverted context.

Flutist and MacArthur Genius Grant Awardee Claire Chase releases her third solo recording on New Focus, Density, featuring music for solo flute and multiple overdubbed flutes. Featuring works by towering composers of the 20th century Edgar Varese, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass and Alvin Lucier, alongside works written for her by long time collaborators Marcos Balter and Mario Diaz de Leon, Chase continues to blaze a trail with her unique approach to the flute.

Chicago based a�pe�ri�od�ic performs music grounded in post-Cagean experimental traditions. "for a�pe�ri�od�ic" features music written for the ensemble by ensemble members Nomi Epstein (artistic director and founder), Kenn Kumpf, Billie Howard, and pivotal Wandelweisser composer Michael Pisaro. Each work engages with the relationship of the individual to collective, highlighting one of the fundamental parameters for exploration in ensemble music. Founded in 2010, a�pe�ri�od�ic's repertoire explores the indeterminacy of various musical elements including instrumentation, structure, pitch, and/or duration. Drawn to works of sparseness, contemplation, and quietude, this "daring group" (Chicago Reader) has a history of interpreting distinctive pieces using a collaborative rehearsal process, deriving meaning and intention from oblique prose scores with great sensitivity. Led by Nomi Epstein, the ensemble has commissioned, premiered, and recorded works by composers such as Michael Pisaro, Eva-Maria Houben, J�rg Frey, James Saunders, and Pauline Oliveros. a�pe�ri�od�ic released it's debut album, more or less, featuring the music of J�rg Frey in 2014 under New Focus Recordings. The ensemble has received funding from the Swiss Arts Council, the Earle Brown Foundation, the Goethe Institute, and the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. Members of a�pe�ri�od�ic hold graduate degrees in music performance or composition from Chicago-area universities and conservatories, and are featured in other Chicago-based groups including Ensemble Dal Niente and Outer Voices.

Bassoonist Mike Harley releases an album of premieres demonstrating the range of aesthetics present in the growing repertoire for the instrument. Including works by Carl Schimmel, John Fitz Rogers, Fang Man, and Caleb Burhans, the recording highlights Harley's versatility and instrumental command in solo, electro-acoustic, and layered settings, while reasserting the bassoon's presence in contemporary music as a featured instrument. Michael Harley teaches bassoon, coaches chamber music, and is artistic director of the Southern Exposure New Music Series at the University of South Carolina. His performances have been called "spectacular" (Washington Post) and "exquisite" (Columbus Dispatch). A founding member of the contemporary music chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound, called "one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American musical scene" by the New York Times, Harley has worked with and premiered pieces by many of today's most distinguished composers, including John Adams, John Luther Adams, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Nico Muhly, Steve Reich, and Augusta Read Thomas. This is his first solo album.

The New York based electric guitar quartet Dither has established itself as one of the premiere ensembles of it's kind, cementing their reputation as keen champions of inventive composers and deft sound sculptors in the rich sonic world of the electric guitar. Their newest release features works by Eve Beglarian, Jascha Narveson, James Tenney, Ted Hearne, Paula Matthusen, as well as each of the four members of the group. DITHER, a New York based electric guitar quartet, is dedicated to an eclectic mix of experimental repertoire which spans composed, improvised and electronic music. Formed in 2007, the quartet has performed across the United States and abroad, presenting new commissions, original compositions, multimedia works, and large guitar ensemble pieces. Dither's members are Taylor Levine, Joshua Lopes, James Moore and Gyan Riley.

Violin and viola duo andPlay (Maya Bennardo, violin, and Hannah Levinson, viola) release their debut recording featuring music by Ashkan Behzadi, Clara Iannotta, and David Bird. The duo's fluency with contemporary performance techniques and aesthetics is grounded in their symbiotic ensemble performances, bringing their finely tuned interpretive instincts to music that exists across a wide expressive range. Described by I Care If You Listen as "enthusiastic champions for new music and collaboration" and performing "with a welcoming and dynamic spirit," andPlay is committed to expanding the existing violin/viola duo repertoire through performing rarely heard works and commissioning emerging composers. The New York City-based duo of Maya Bennardo, violin, and Hannah Levinson, viola, first played to an eager crowd on Fire Island in the summer of 2012 and has since commissioned over thirty works.

Violinist Movses Pogossian has assembled this illuminating collection of contemporary music from Armenia, "Modulation Necklace," revealing a vibrant repertoire whose aesthetics are as outward looking as they are grounded in their reverence of a centuries old culture. In his liner notes, Pogossian acknowledges the long shadow that the Soviet Union cast on Armenian composers during it's reign - this recording celebrates this generation's liberation from those constraints. The composer Tigran Mansurian played a pivotal role in connecting the threads of this Armenian new music tradition, both by literally introducing Pogossian to musicians involved in the project, but also in his courage and leadership to explore Western and later older Armenian sources for inspiration during the Soviet era. The performers heard here are drawn from Pogossian's Dilijan Chamber Music Series, the Lark Musical Society, as well as the flagship group of UCLA's Armenian Music Program, the VEM Ensemble.

Composer Ted Hearne releases "Hazy Heart Pump," a collection of recent chamber works that highlight his wonderful openness to various sources of inspiration, from Charles Mingus to Appalachian fiddle music to bureaucratic rationalizations for arrest by the NYPD. The album features committed performances by the Mivos and Argus string quartets, as well as Anne Lanzilotti, Miki-Sophia Cloud, Ashley Bathgate, Ron Wiltrout, Diana Wade, Saul Williams, and Hearne himself on piano. Composer, singer, bandleader and recording artist TED HEARNE (b.1982, Chicago) draws on a wide breadth of influences ranging across music's full terrain, to create intense, personal and multi-dimensional works. The New York Times has praised Mr. Hearne for his "tough edge and wildness of spirit," and "topical, politically sharp-edged works." Pitchfork called Hearne's work "some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory - from any genre," and Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that Hearne's music "holds up as a complex mirror image of an information-saturated, mass-surveillance world, and remains staggering in it's impact."

Composer Yu-Hui Chang's Mind Like Water presents three ensemble works and one solo cello piece that all feature a dialogue between musical elements. Sometimes this dialogue unfolds between contrasting energies, such as the percolating rhythms of the opening movement of In Thin Air versus the dramatic gestures in its second movement. Other times the conversation is between smaller musical elements, like the cells in Germinate or the flowing, through composed unfolding of the title work. The recording features performances by the Lydian String Quartet, Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, Composers Conference Ensemble, and cellist Rhonda Rider.

Movses Pogossian's follow up release to his Bach Sonatas and Partitas recording on New Focus explores three works for solo violin that are inspired by those iconic pieces. Featuring solo music by Kaija Saariaho, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Andrew McIntosh, Pogossian's powerful performances carry the spirit of this most intimate of instrumentations forward, connecting the listener with Bach and extending the legacy of the unaccompanied string works further. He writes: “This is a happy [album]. It celebrates creativity and beauty, through the eyes of three very different composers. Directly or indirectly, Bach was the inspirational point of reference for each of these works. As for me, conceiving this project seemed a natural segue from my most recent recording prior to this one… As they say, all roads lead to Bach…”