Christopher J. Keyes's new album, Ravello Records' A CONNOTATION OF INFINITY, speaks directly to why listeners should embrace the transgressive element of electronics in traditional classical music. Keyes, who wrote as much software for the album as he did music, employs what he calls a 3D audio for a more immersive listening experience. Keyes's latest release, which features performances of select pieces on video, envelopes and entrances the minds of listeners from all walks of life. The album opens with the 17+ minute epic Of Worlds Beyond. Performed by an orchestra, the composition possesses a well-rounded quality of sound. Another unique feature in Keyes's album is the use of non-musical elements to influence the piece. In Four Improvisations on Cummings, the composer uses keyboard sensors to detect pitch and dynamics that, when played, subsequently trigger text from poems in E.E. Cummings' collection "Tulips and Chimneys." Resonant Passages features images and sounds of Hong Kong traffic as an accent to the composition's reflection on how streams of images and sounds resonate with us as listeners and human beings. In some compositions, the piano gives way to other instruments that star the show. Antiphon in Memory of Pierre Boulez, for instance, is a piece written for two flutes and two clarinets, paying homage to the late composer through the minimalist use of processing available in Boulez' time. Tree of Remembrance features only violin and tape. An homage to Henri Dutilleux, Keyes wrote the composition to loosely mirror Dutilleux's violin concerto "L'Arbre Des Songs."

Ravello Records proudly presents The Ceiling Floats Away, a groundbreaking new collaboration between sound artist Matthew Burtner, former US poet laureate Rita Dove, and ecoacoustic ensemble EcoSono. A National Endowment for the Arts commission, The Ceiling Floats Away was awarded was awarded a Special Jury Award in the 2016 American Prize in Chamber Music Composition for "Unique Nexus of Acoustics, Electronics and Audience Interaction." Since its composition, it has been selected for performance at various festivals and venues, including the Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s Accelerate Festival. The Ceiling Floats Away bridges the gap between different spaces: spoken word and song, performance and technology, audience and artist. The chamber ensemble work consists of recitation of Rita Dove’s poetry by the poet herself—sometimes simultaneously with the singer. The performance is enhanced by Nomads, software that enables audience participation through mobile devices. Thirteen pre-composed movements alternate with Audience Creation Bridges, during which the audience uses Nomads to contribute thoughts and reflections on the work by manipulating the music in real time. In this sense, the audience members become active artists alongside composer, poet, and performers. As Burtner writes, “the piece empowers people as creative agents in an artwork without walls, without ceiling.”

What can one expect from a musician who spent his youth getting into trouble by furtively composing in chemistry class? Apparently a lot, provided they are cut from the same cloth as multi-faceted composer Phil Salath�, the brains behind Imaginary Birds: Music for Oboe and English Horn. The commissioned duet Mandarin Ducks is as much a natural observation as it is a musical piece of work: With the precise gaze of an ornithologist, Salath� illustrates seven enchanting anatine scenes. Fittingly, these short pieces roam about in free form - just as their natural subjects would. The title also nods to the recent marriage of the two performers, oboist Ling-Fei Kang and Charles Huang on English horn, as mandarin ducks are known for their lifelong fidelity. The upbeat start of the album soon grinds to a halt, however, in The Heart That Loves But Once. Inspired in title and style by the music of Robert Schumann and interspersed by the chilling whispers of a celesta, the rhapsodic work chronicles the disheartening state of a lover who finds his desires unattainable. Imaginary Birds of the Frozen North harks back to an avian theme, musically depicting three very different birds with an accuracy that is equal parts surprising, hilarious, and astonishing: a proud, leery ostrich, a dodo anxious of it's forthcoming extinction, and an enigmatic screech owl. The Wood Between The Worlds takes the listener on a walk through a mystical landscape and conjures a cryptic, ethereal kind of beauty. The secret highlight of this mini-cycle is indubitably "IV. A World Shrouded in Forest," in which the composer fuses his multifarious musical influences into an evocative portrait of not only the world he is painting, but also of a highly recognizable compositional style. Expecting the Spring Breeze rounds off the album with Salath�'s arrangement of a lyrical melody composed by Teng Yu-hsien, completing the overarching natural theme of Imaginary Birds.

Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi's debut TACIT-CITAT-ION is a reflection of contemporary Scandinavian composition - gestural, yet empowered by painstaking attention to detail. Where other composers' work ends, Ahvenniemi only begins. Breath sounds, glottal stops, microphone static, white noise, electronic interferences, the percussive friction of instrument bows - these byproducts of music are the backbone of TACIT-CITAT-ION, yielding a truly unique auditory experience. Internationally educated and performed, Ahvenniemi exemplifies the new generation of musical tradition in the Nordic countries. Elements from previous musical epochs are eclectically drawn upon, such as romantic operatic singing in Dada-aria or the mix of classical and jazz elements in L'operette d'amour. Each of the works individually engages in reflecting the traditions of music and the surrounding society. The echoes of traditions are brought into the context of contemporary music through specific choices concerning scores, treatment of sound, and sound technology. Perhaps most importantly, there is a unique philosophy behind this music which is unfussy yet avantgarde - no minor feat by any means. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the album's eponymous track Tacit-Citat-ion, a post-modern composition for string quartet stylistically reminiscing about the ethereal qualities of composers such as Kaija Saariaho, Salvatore Sciarrino, Giacinto Scelsi, and Hans Abrahamsen. The title refers to the idea that no work appears outside of a historical context of musical codes. It is no wonder, then, that the Norwegian Composer's Society willingly supported the creation of this album: with it's prominent intellectual quality and uncompromising melange of stylistic elements, Ahvenniemi's compositions encompass the late-breaking zeitgeist of Nordic and contemporary European composition like few others.

Zvonimir Nagy's Angelus is a singular journey into a meditative state. Like the commemoration of annunciation, Nagy's album features music for thoughtful contemplation, using solo organ to create delicate space for inner exploration throughout the life of the album. Themes of spiritual reflection are evident in most of the tracks. Inspired by Philippians 4:13, "Prayer" features a melody that is moody, melancholic, and mournful, a plea for forgiveness. Later on, in the back half of the album, the seven movements of the "Preludes for a Prayer" embrace the ambience created by Nagy's solo organ performance. Angelus is Nagy's foray into a unique blend of post-minimalism and traditional. The composer finds inspiration in both ends of the spectrum. The tender droning melodies ring in the eponymous track evoking ease and a soothing mood. In stark contrast, the five movements of "Litanies of the Soul" generate augmented power, creating the yin and yang of disturbing and recreating peace. While the album promotes the theme of internal investigation, the performance is by no means stream-of-consciousness. Despite it's free-flowing feel, each composition is meticulously written. Rather than being a reactionary performance, the movements in Angelus feel like chapters in a document. Each one captures the shifts in dynamic and repetitive melodies that builds the complexity with each passing second until the explosion of the last movement arrives. Then, just as quietly as Angelus was born, the finale rings into a moment of closure and then ceases, completed.

The Patterson/Sutton Duo and composer Stephen Goss have worked together over many years and this album represents the fruits of their musical collaboration. This collection of Goss's complete works for cello and guitar is a kaleidoscopic journey through the evocative sound world of this instrumental pairing. Featuring multiple world premieres and a diverse array of styles, STILL LIFE attempts to push the medium of cello and guitar to it's limits. Praised by The Strad magazine for their "wit and imagination", the trailblazing Patterson/Sutton cello and guitar duo continue to be in demand as they bring the rich cello and guitar repertoire to audiences around the world. The Patterson/Sutton duo were featured artists at the 2016 Guitar Foundation of America Convention and have an ongoing relationship with The Juilliard School as Juilliard Global Visiting Artists. The duo have been featured on Performance Today/American Public Media, Radio New Zealand, Fine Music Radio South Africa, among many others.

On their debut Ravello Records release, New Zealand composer Michael Calvert and guitarist Matthew Marshall present original works for solo guitar that display a musical language influenced by serialism, New Zealand culture, and several guitar traditions, from classical and folk to rock, jazz, and pop. The title track treats a well-known passage from the rock group Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water, while Lascivious Pleasing elaborates on phrases from John Dowland's Flow my Tears and the Beatles' Norwegian Wood. Written for the 2008 film Flesh in Ecstacy, Gaston Amoureux is based on the opening of Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune; Fantasia in August references works from Britten and Kubizek.

On her debut release with Ravello Recrods, composer Betty R. Wishart presents a collection of her solo piano works, performed by award-winning pianist Jeri-Mae G. Astolfi, which highlights the composer's use of distinctive harmonic structures, tension and space. In many of Wishart's works including Toccata II, Toccata III, Sonata and Night Visions, the composer employs the intervals of seconds, fourths and sevenths to create melodic and harmonic material which unifies the style of her writing while creating a variety of colors and textures throughout the album.

Ravello Records proudly presents MUSIC FOR GUITAR AND ELECTRONICS, an album of original works for guitar from composer Mike Frengel. The collection spans 20 years of Frengel's creative output and features unconventional guitar tunings, instrumental preparations, and virtuosic performances. Even for a genre that famously balks at convention, MUSIC FOR GUITAR AND ELECTRONICS is an exciting departure from what we're used to in the electronic music world. Upon hearing the new album, it comes as no surprise to learn that Frengel is something of an expert in this field. His book The Unorthodox Guitar: A Guide to Alternative Performance Practice, published by Oxford University Press in 2017, reflects his fascination with the guitar and his obsessive quest to engineer new ways of playing it. Hotbird, the first track on the album, utilizes a "prepared" guitar which emits rattling harmonies and alien harmonics. This piece and those that follow highlight Frengel's desire to wed live recorded performances with electronic manipulation, pushing the guitar to sound and behave like nothing we have ever heard before. Later, the three-movement work Country Roads incorporates sounds from country western, like the tone bends of a pedal steel and double stops. But this is no Randy Travis tune-amid the ambient sounds of a barnyard, we hear the twanging notes dip and rise like gunshots, eschewing traditional tonality for a host of timbral fascinations. Later, the second movement incorporates Travis picking, with a third movement that includes the sound of an electric guitar bowed with a drumstick. Electronic music composers are often considered to be on the creative forefront, the true avant-garde. If this is so, Frengel is out at the bleeding edge, taking an instrument we all thought we knew and reimaging it's potential.

Soli for Tuba, Zheng, Horn with Percussion is percussionist Robert McCormick's tenth album with PARMA Recordings. On their latest album, the Robert McCormick Percussion Group performs five compositions from four distinct composers, each of whom contributes striking works that range from personal to global inspiration. The album opens with Loam, a concerto for tuba and percussion ensemble composed by Tyler Kline. Much of the concerto is texture-based in order to convey the idea of loam, or soil, with some parts of the music reflecting the sound of the earth being tilled. The general arc of the concerto is cyclical, a metaphor for being born from the earth and returning to the earth after death. Chihchun Chi-sun Lee's Double Concerto for Tuba, Zheng and Percussion Orchestra is a unique amalgam featuring zheng, tuba, and percussion. The first movement creates a unifying sense of color, timbre, and gesture. Movement II mainly focuses on the tuba and zheng, while Movement III displays the sound of the tuba, zheng, and percussion in perfect balance. Written by Michael Standard, Stamina for percussion quartet and horn soloist is comprised of three parts: "Fracture," "Rehabilitation," and "Capacity." "Fracture" sees a breaking apart in every element of the music. "Rehabilitation" strings together the previously fractured pitch material in a new way using glissandos. The final stage, "Capacity," uses this new pitch organization to fill the spaces with notes. Following this piece, composer Matthew Kennedy and his In Pursuit of Ghosts explores the journey from one chapter of life to the next through the structure of the three-part concerto. Soli for Tuba, Zheng, Horn with Percussion closes with Zusammenflusses (Confluences), another work by Lee, that captures the differences and similarities of the zheng with the vibraphone and cymbal. Zusammenflusses aptly concludes this new addition to the McCormick Percussion Group's oeuvre, and the album as a whole inspires listeners to explore new and unexpected combinations of sounds to create innovative music.

James Dashow's double album SONGS FROM A SPIRAL TREE-new from Ravello Records-collects many of Dashow's vocal works into an abundant release. Songs from a Spiral Tree is first on the program; flute, harp, and mezzo-soprano blossom out of the silence as the track begins. Dashow deftly captures the many moods of the fleeting imagery and quicksilver language of Roethke's poetry, while each of these five songs create a deeply personal and intimate listening experience. Following on the Roethke work we hear settings of another legendary poet, John Ashbery. Ashbery Setting is meticulously crafted music, which provides a deeply expressive interpretation of the poem, Clepsydra, one of Ashbery's finest efforts. Two works with stereophonic electronic sounds are next: in Sul Filo dei Tramonti, due Liriche dalla Mont, poems by Gian Giacomo Menon, the electronic sounds work In tandem with soprano and piano. The sounds add contrapuntal and timbral textures that further elaborate the expressivity of the text. Some Dream Songs sets the words of John Berryman whose short, complex, and above all ironic, poems inspired Dashow to enlarge considerably his compositional bounds, yielding a definitely theatrical dimension to the work. The soprano sings, talks, converses with the violinist, sings ironic comments to the pianist, and so on. This piece can easily be heard as a kind of precursor of Dashow's planetarium opera, ARCHIMEDES. The second of the two works with electronic sounds, Second Voyage, for tenor and computer generated electronic sounds, concludes the two-disc collection. In this piece, the vocal pitches are processed using additive synthesis, ring modulation, and other methods of sonic manipulation. The result is a web of electronic sounds, varying in density and complexity according to the pacing and imagery of the text, that enhance the vocal line while immersing the words in an expressive interpretive context.

"Orpheus Lex is composer Marie Nelson Bennett and librettist David Kranes’ modern retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. This album presents a live recording of the work, performed by narrator Nathan Bahny, The Artemis Chamber Ensemble, and the acclaimed New York Virtuoso Singers under conductor Harold Rosenbaum, with baritone Dave Arnold and soprano Wendy Baker. Marie Nelson Bennett was a student of Paul Hindemith and is herself a oft-performed composer."

Ravello Records welcomes Michael Wittgraf to it's family of artists. Wittgraf is releasing his debut album Manifold, an expansive effort with numerous layers hidden in the composition. Choosing texture over melody, the visceral compositions of Manifold draw the listener in to the arresting music, and sound as if it would take lifetimes to unpack the complex layers building to Wittgraf's stellar debut. The album features Jesse Langen on guitar, for whom Wittgraf wrote the eponymous track and Topographic Timepiece. The compositions rumble with complexity, some employing electronic sounds, others entirely acoustic. The truly expressive nature of Langen's performance leaves the listener impressed with the balance of such a calculated composition combined with his ability to build emotion. Performing with Langen on two improvised tracks is vocalist Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, who adds to the chilling texture of the album with her modernist take on medieval chanting. DeBoer Bartlett brings a new variety to the music with her ability to elongate beautiful melodies only to, literally, hush herself and let the listener dissolve back into the eerie fog of Wittgraf's electronics and Langen's guitar. On tracks such as Improvisation 2 and Improvisation 4, the performers tenderly build the centrifugal force of the song with DeBoer Bartlett's processed voice providing a soothing drone. As the droning climaxes, the soundscape sends the listener spiraling into a haunting, brand new dimension of texture and space. Wittgraf's brilliance with computer manipulation makes the composition seem as though the listener has just phased into the sounds of an alternative universe. Manifold was recorded at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, IL. Wittgraf holds the title of Chester Fritz Professor at the University of North Dakota. The University of North Dakota College of Arts and Sciences Fine Arts and Humanities Scholarship Initiative Grant funds this project.

Long time Parma composer Doug Anderson is showcasing his legacy with One At A Time. As the name implies, Anderson's solo compositions act as milestones to the artist's musical development through the intimacy of solo instruments. As an instrumentalist early in his expansive career, Anderson found particular affection for live performance. In this album, you will hear the diversity of the composer's inspiration amid it's intense, physical element. The first track, appropriately named "... increasingly, physical... ", establishes tension with consistent building and release, creating captivating drama that draws the listener in immediately. Various artists spanning the artistic timeline of Anderson's career perform on One At A Time. Each track spotlights a different instrument, adding to Anderson's compositional legacy. "... increasingly, physical... " performed by Maureen Keenan, kicks off the album with her intense performance on the flute. The jazz-influenced composition is played with inescapable passion. Five Bagatelles and a Synopsis, on the other hand, is an exploration lead by pianist Jin-Ok Lee into a realm evoking free jazz sharing blurred lines with the avant-garde. Contrast that with "... springing, gradually... " which presents Debbie Schmidt and her French horn creating a grand orchestral sound that evokes nostalgia for the days of radio dramas. Anderson's One At A Time is nothing less than engaging. Listeners will be hanging on to every breath the musicians take. Performances are raw, emotionally arresting, and yet provide the perfect insight into the mind of a completely original and unique composition talent.

Contrary to the popular belief that likes to separate the emotional from the logical, few things go together as well as music and mathematics. With Pieces of Mind and Matter, South-Dakota- based music professor and composer Paul Lombardi has taken it upon himself to render this intricate relation audible and accessible to audiences - all while chronicling his personal musical journey. Paul Lombardi holds a Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Oregon, and studied composition with David Crumb, Robert Kyr, Stephen Blumberg, and Leo Eylar. His music has been performed in more than 30 states across the US, as well as in other areas in North America, South America, and Europe. Many groups have played his music, notably the Kiev Philharmonic, the East Coast Composers Ensemble, Third Angle, and the Hundredth Monkey Ensemble. His music has been performed at national and regional Society of Composers, Inc., National Association of Composers/USA, College Music Society conferences as well as numerous festivals and symposiums. He is an associate professor of music theory and composition at the University of South Dakota, where he was awarded the 2018 Belbas Larson Award for Excellence in Teaching.