Pianist/composer Cat Toren conjures music as healing force and hope for the future on the second album by her exploratory quintet Human Kind. "Scintillating Beauty" evokes 60s spiritual jazz, sound healing techniques and positive activism. She writes: "Scintillating Beauty illustrates how musical improvisation is a form of conscious communication. We musicians honor the self and honor others with our musical choices, making decisions between active listening and active sound making. We choose to bring our voice to the foreground or to support another voice in the background. We can change the direction of the music, imitate another's voice, or pause in silence. While performing we aim to strip away veils and expose ourselves. Our contributions are made unique by our backgrounds and experiences..."

Composer and drummer Colin Hinton's Simulacra exists at the intersecting edge of experimental improvised music and contemporary composition. Bringing together a band of crack colleagues from the fertile Brooklyn improvised scene, including Anna Webber, Yuma Uesaka, Edward Gavitt, and Shawn Lovato, Hinton's music has absorbed influences from people with whom he has a range of degrees of separation, including mentors Ingrid Laubrock, Tyshawn Sorey, and Eric Wubbels, as well as inspirational luminaries Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Morton Feldman. In the liner notes, Robert Grieve writes, ''How does this singularity for which I am affectionate come to be expressed in what can only be simulated?'' might be how Colin Hinton's Simulacra approaches its realization. Simulation is captured singularity. Recording is one such procedure of capture. The singularity of performance transduced, thereby modulated, into simulacra-in-wav format. Simulacra the record convokes in its capture an affection for the mentors, community, and the lineages within which Hinton situates himself.

Described by the New York Times as a "talented and entrepreneurial pianist" and an "able and persuasive advocate" of new music, Nicholas Phillips' playing has been praised for its "bejeweled accuracy" ( Fanfare) and as "razor-sharp yet wonderfully spirited" ( American Record Guide). He is active as a soloist and collaborative artist, having performed all across the United States, as well as Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa. Phillips is an active recording artist and champion of living composers, having released four previous CDs devoted to contemporary music, including Portals and Passages (Albany Records, 2011), American Vernacular: New Music for Solo Piano (New Focus Recordings, 2014) and Impressions (Blue Griffin Recordings, 2016).

Longtime Metropolitan Opera guitarist and lutenist, versatile and award-winning composer, and mentor and teacher to generations of guitarists, Frederic Hand has enjoyed an impressive and impactful career on many levels. His latest release, Samatureya, features his signature brand of compositions and his fluid, expressive playing. In an era where the performer/composer has been making a much written about comeback, Hand represents someone who has been occupying this role with great success steadily for decades. His compositions defy easy categorization- they draw from various styles including early music, Irish music, new age, contemporary composition, and jazz. Samatureya is a compilation of original works composed for small ensembles and solo guitar. Hand is joined by five extraordinary musicians, flutist Paula Robison, guitarists Joao Luiz and Douglas Lora, flutist Amy Porter and violist Juan-Miguel Hernandez, who along with Joao Luiz are Trio Virado.

Collage Project (Aidan Plank- bass, Dan Bruce- electric guitar, Dan Lippel- guitar, and guests Nathan Douds- drums, Noa Even- saxophone, and Chris Anderson- trombone) was born out of collaborations from the late 1990s and early 2000s in Cleveland, Ohio. Aidan Plank, Dan Bruce, and Dan Lippel gravitated towards each other musically through a shared conviction that free improvising need not be restricted by vocabulary and written material in improvised music need not be confined to conventional forms or stylistic boundaries. Over the last several years, the three have reunited to bring together their diverse sets of experiences in contemporary classical music, jazz, and other stylistic contexts. Off Brand is a recording defined by the unique musical space shaped by these diverse perspectives. Three guests, trombonist Chris Anderson, saxophonist Noa Even, and drummer Nathan Douds, join the trio for this project, bringing their own unique sensibilities.

Frederic Hand has been influencing generations of guitarists throughout his impressive career. A longtime Metropolitan Opera guitarist and lutenist, he also enjoys a flourishing and award winning composing career. This album of Hand’s compositions hearkens to the tradition of the performer/composer- a role in which Hand has been thriving throughout his career. His compositions draw from a variety of inspirations, including Irish music, jazz, early music, and new age. Especially notable is the track For Julian. The work was composed in 2007 in honor of Julian Bream, who was Hand’s teacher while on a Fulbright Scholarship in England. The original composition is for eight course lute, but is performed for this recording on guitar for its greater timbral variety.

Arcomusical, led by percussionist/composer/scholar Gregory Beyer, is an ensemble devoted to the promotion and exploration of the berimbau, an Afro-Brazilian instrument closely associated with capoeira. In his stewardship of Arcomusical, Beyer has carved a unique path commissioning new works for berimbau ensemble and expanding its presence within contemporary concert music. In addition, Arcomusical has established meaningful relationships in Brazil, notably cultivating a sister ensemble in Belo Horizonte. Emigre and Exile is Arcomusical’s third album project. A product of the pandemic that has dramatically shifted all of our lives, it was recorded entirely in multi-track fashion to ensure the safety and well being of each individual musician during the pre-vaccine era in the summer of 2020. It features six compositions by four composers: Jeremy Muller, Alexandre Lunsqui, Matt Ulery, and Arco-musical Artistic Director Gregory Beyer. This album continues Arcomusical’s musical vision to celebrate and highlight the voice of the musical bow through creative and colorful chamber music, incorporating deep influences from the Afro-Brazilian berimbau and its African musical bow cousins such as the Mbundu hungu from Angola, the Tsonga xitendefrom Mozambique and the Zulu umakhweyana from South Africa.

Pathos Trio writes: "When Dark Sounds Collide: New Music for Percussion and Piano is a collaborative project between PATHOS TRIO, and composers ALYSSA WEINBERG, ALISON YUN-FEI JIANG, ALAN HANKERS, FINOLA MERIVALE, and EVAN CHAPMAN, dedicated to presenting newly commissioned works for two percussionists and piano in the form of this full length LP and accompanying music videos produced by Philadelphia based audio/film/videography company FOUR/TEN MEDIA. The commissions featured on this album seek to combine aesthetics of contemporary classical music with the ensemble's interests in dark, heavy, dense sounds drawn from other genres of music such as alternative rock, cathedral music, minimalist music, electronic synth-wave, and more. As a result, each work on this album creates raw, edgy, and powerful soundscapes that will engage audiences in both mainstream and classical/new music scenes. Each composer involved in this album also specifically explores various sound worlds through their own vernacular. Evan Chapman's fiction of light is a minimalist, electronic style rock trio; Alyssa Weinberg's Delirious Phenomena features heavily percussive prepared piano; Alison Jun-Fei Jiang's Prayer Variations is solemn and gloomy with church-like melodies; Finola Merivale's oblivious/oblivion charts a course from calm to frantic; and Alan Hankers' Distance Between Places is our heavy hitting finale to this album. These composers and their pieces exemplify the kind of music making that has energized us to commission and champion these new works. This album has been the product of over two years of collaboration, as we've worked hard to truly push the boundaries of new music in these commissions to deliver fresh, innovative sounds and concepts. We thank you for supporting this music and hope you'll enjoy the journey of listening to each piece on this album!