Many New Trails To Blaze showcases three musicians in an intellectually driven, globally inspired set of compositions. Each work, from the genre-crossing Sonata for Three to the tonal balancing act in Flying Over Water, presses boundaries, and the three instruments work together to draw every ounce of potentiality from the notes. Notable trumpet and cornet player James Zingara has performed around the globe and his album of trumpet recordings, Textures, is already a key member of the Ravello Records catalog. With his colleagues, pianist Chris Steele and clarinetist Denise Gainey, Zingara performs a collection of works that show off the virtuosity of each musician alongside intricate compositions. The album's title says it all: as a new chamber group, the performers have many new paths to follow and pieces to learn, while they also have new music to uncover and expose to a world waiting for it. While blazing trails, the ensemble breaks down barriers, performing songs that are not quite jazz, not fully classical, and sampling tastes of Argentinian, Romanian, and other international location. The UAB Chamber Trio is blazing trails with their latest release. The modern world can present challenges to the contemporary classical composer and performer - this group, nonetheless, meets these challenges with open arms, forging their own path and making their mark on music history.

Using the sounds of handmade paper, electronics, and surf guitar among others, Ted Coffey composes a sometimes fragile, sometimes brutal order that swings from texturalism to song. Written for dance, both fixed media and live computer-mediated performance, Coffey's music feels spontaneous without sacrificing finely calculated craft. Petals 8 starts off the album. The composition draws inspiration from gagaku, the 'elegant music' of Japanese medieval courts. Featuring, as Coffey described, a "funky-slash-improbable-yet-maybe-inevitable instrumental assemblage, " Petals 8 moves with quiet commitment through cycles of suspended moments - and close vocoded vocal harmonies, too. It is followed by Petals 1, 2 & 3, three attacca movements of electronic music for dance, composed in response to different compositional problems that both music and dance work through. One Note Solo, which can be experienced here with it's original video by Aaron Henderson, demonstrates how a single note can be squeezed and stretched into a composition of spellbinding presence. The final track on the album, Sonatina, is a concluding statement that accumulates eight years of sonic experimentation, from viola da gamba hooks to microphone feedback, demonstrating how computer music transcends time and space. Collected Works for Dance connects visuals and sounds through the computer-mediated experience. Coffey's latest work with Ravello Records demonstrates how organic movement and electronic voice can come together in one compelling dance.

While New Zealand guitarist and composer Campbell Ross cites influences as varied as Claude Bolling, Manuel Ponce and Benjamin Britten when discussing the works featured on Concertante, it is clear that his own distinctive style is manifested throughout the album. The first of Concertante's Modern Works For Guitar opens with the three-movement Concertante for guitar, jazz trio and strings - a work that allows all of the album's performers to be featured as soloists. It's kaleidoscopic first movement reveals elements of Latin, Blues, Jazz, and Classical genres that, when combined with the Spanish touches in the final movement, encompass the major musical styles that have influenced Ross over the past 30 years. The two sets of Variations on the album reflect his life-long admiration for the McCartney/Lennon oeuvre. While playing homage to "Norwegian Wood" and "World Without Love," both pieces fall more to the improvisatory end of the compositional scale. The second portion of the release, which features works written by Gerardo and Ariel Diri�, is filled with modern guitar works that have never before been recorded. Ross first presents a series of pieces written by Ariel Diri�, who passed in 2010, leaving behind a collection of works, some of which are light and some of which are dark, some playful and some serious. The final three works on the album form a triptych, Si un dia el Olvido (If one day oblivion...), which "gather different evocations of time." Concertante reflects both the interpretive and written skills of Ross, who performs each piece with equal parts energy and sensitivity.

Dear Darwin, composer Scott Brickman's second Ravello release, explores several themes relating to Charles Darwin’s studies and interests. +The song-cycle Dear Darwin is set to 26 poems by Kathleen Ellis and arranged as an abecedarium. +The remaining works, conceived for electro-acoustic instrumentation, are examples of evolutionary composition. +Mr. Brickman’s compositions have been performed throughout the U.S. and in eleven countries across Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America.

In celebration of her 30th anniversary of coming to America, Boston based composer Alla Cohen presents a double album of new works for chamber orchestra and chamber ensembles. A graduate of highest honors of the famed Moscow Conservatory, Cohen emigrated to the United States in 1989, first teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music, and for the last 15 years- as a Professor at Berklee College of Music. Her works have been awarded multiple prizes, are raved about in stellar reviews, and have been performed by acclaimed musicians from around the world. Corresponding with Cohen's monumental milestone of three decades in the United States as a highly acclaimed composer and sought-after master composition teacher, QUAESTIONES ET RESPONSA is a monumental release. This double album set, compiling Cohen's recent compositions, very likely will be met with the same acclaim as her previous releases. Cohen's music is strikingly unique by it's style, monumental in scale, yet delicately crafted in every detail. The music is moving and uplifting, emotionally and spiritually, and is visionary and highly imaginative. These are the works of a dedicated master composer whose work and teaching captures the spirit of 20th and 21st-century art music. Cohen's music is thought through, with painstaking care, yet retains a sense of being unbridled; often, the seemingly more traditional titles (like Partita) completely belie expectations - Cohen expands formal presumptions considerably and takes listeners on a journey to new lands of originality, discovery, and artistic freedom. Notably, Cohen prides herself on performing her own parts at the piano - and justly so, for who could understand and execute Cohen's thoughts better than the thinker herself? Hence, all the piano parts on QUAESTIONES ET RESPONSA are played by Cohen, who shines in this respect with empathetic sensitivity and impeccable timing; a skill she undoubtedly passes on to and demands from her other performers.

Clarinetist Andrea Cheeseman infuses every note of her performances with a sense of passion and purpose. It is with this intentionality that she approaches Ravello Records' SOMEWHERE, an album of electroacoustic works that expand the clarinet repertoire to new heights while also showcasing Cheeseman in the genre where she feels most at home. The title, SOMEWHERE, is deeply telling-listeners and performers are taken somewhere new, somewhere completely different, with every piece. This does not, however, suggest a lack of cohesion throughout the album. In fact, each piece fits together as neatly as the connection between the clarinet and the computer. The atmospheric nature of the first three pieces-the fluid Arioso/Doubles, the e.e. cummings-inspired somewhere, and a memory of abstract paintings in Messy-creates space for the performer to fully express herself. SOMEWHERE moves into a more rigid, angular soundscape with Ultraviolet and Penelope's Song, the latter using recordings of a weaving loom that back up the lonely but resolute responses to challenges by Odysseus' faithful wife in Homer's epic. The album then moves back to it's earlier meditative space with the ebbs and flows of Breath before concluding with the shimmering textures and harmonics of Favorable Odds. SOMEWHERE creates a one-of-a-kind dialogue between this symbiotic musical pairing. Cheeseman's thoughtful, nuanced, and altogether captivating performances welcome listeners into an experience they won't want to miss.

On Ravello Records, London composer and saxophonist Sophya Polevaya offers ELECTRIC SCENT, a series of 19 instrumental meditations on the mythic power of flowers and perfumery. Polevaya's mastery of both composition and performance shines from the outset of ELECTRIC SCENT. Polevaya performs on more than a half dozen instruments throughout, including saxophone, cello, and harpsichord, yet her music is anything but traditional. Rather, she liberates these instruments from some of the frowsty confines of the Western canon and pushes them to their physical limits. The album opens with the throaty drone of a cello announcing a singular tone as harpsichord, saxophones, and a collection of found objects flutter and spark around it. In one fleeting miniature after another, Polevaya explores the tension between piercing tones and rasping cries, inviting the listener to consider more deeply every instrument's distinctive timbre and the additional sonic layers created by effect pedals and loop stations. Each track jolts the listener into new appreciation, from the spritely, arrhythmic saxophone line of Tiger Lily to the surreal, electroacoustic manipulation of "Chypre." Like a perfumer concocting rich, mystifying aromas from potent botanical fragrances, Polevaya stirs together an extraordinary collection of sensory delights in ELECTRIC SCENT. The album is a not-to-be-missed work, speaking directly to the compelling artistic prowess of Polevaya.

New from Ravello Records comes composer James O'Callaghan's ALONE AND UNALONE, a scintillating dance between reality and abstraction that is sure to spark the listener's imagination and unearth their most primal misgivings. Montr�al-based O'Callaghan has been laurelled with innumerable awards and prizes for his work-and rightfully so. Marrying traditional instruments, ambient sounds, and the incomparable power of the human voice, ALONE AND UNALONE dares the listener to grapple with solitude. The album opens with subject / object, where an eruption of piercing woodwinds, rhythmic punctuations, and metallic screeches are overcome at intervals by immersive silence. The piece is entropy in stereo, a kaleidoscope of dissonance sputtering and disintegrating from dystopian havoc into unearthly calm. On notes to selves follows, with an industrial hum serving as backdrop for hydraulic flourishes and silvery shrieks. Then, a flutter of deep flute tones introduces a contrasting texture. Soon, human voices cryptically repeat "notes to themselves" before receding into darkness. AMONG AM A, with it's disconcerting knocks, snapping wires, and rushing winds, introduces new questions. Suddenly, an unmistakable human cough elicits our primeval empathy. Far off voices in another room converse-maybe even argue-but are too remote for straining ears. Finally, alone and unalone portrays the solipsism of a broken psyche left to it's own devices. Whispers trigger in the listener a tingling autonomous sensory meridian response. With intense clarity the movement of lips and tongues refract against the listener's eardrums. Water rushes, submerging the scene, and violin strains introduce a glimmer of tonality before the album recedes back to silence. ALONE AND UNALONE deconstructs the traditional relationships between composition and performance; recognition and confusion; order and chaos. The result is a moving work that touches listeners at the core of their humanity. The courage to enter into and embrace solitude is richly rewarded in James O'Callaghan's ALONE AND UNALONE.

David William Ross, though considered a classical and jazz guitarist, consistently transcends both genres. He works extensively in collaboration with other accomplished artists, while also being a composer with an impressive library of works that accompany dance and performance art. Ross brings this multifaceted background to the fore in Ravello Records' AMOR FATI. Ross opens AMOR FATI with a warm, calming, and familiar folk lullaby: Akira Nakada's A Song of Early Spring, arranged by Toru Takemitsu. Following is an interpretation of Astor Piazzolla's Las Estaciones Porte�as (The Four Seasons), a quintet arranged for guitar by Sergio Assad. Beginning with an enigmatic intro, Ross walks listeners through this four-movement story to it's peaceful, happy ending. Takemitsu is the composer of the following piece, Equinox, which opens immediately on a dissonant chord, paving the way for a Latin work with a more experimental scaffold. Next is New Hampshire composer Frank Wallace's Cycles in six movements. The first is entirely ethereal but followed by a fast-moving arpeggiated and percussive territorial second movement and a harp-like third movement. The final movement is a collection of echoes and minor seconds. It is hurried and entirely purposeful. The culminating piece is Leo Brouwer's Un Dia de Noviembre. In Ross' own words: "Whenever I play this piece, I find the haunting, repeating melody truly evokes the sense of introspection one finds in November, before the winter sets in and all is asleep and at peace." This album feels very familiar, yet is refreshing to hear. Ross' guitar is one with a rich, buttery timbre surely to ease any listener's mind. With it's expressive, modernist elements, AMOR FATI is an all-around pleasure to listen to.

Composer Frederic D’Haene creates a remarkable musical world in Music With Silent Aitake’s. When he was 25 years old, D’Haene began his life-long fascination with gagaku music, or traditional Japanese court music, that has informed his compositional style throughout his career. This study of a musical style different from that of his own culture resulted in what the composer calls “paradoxophony” or “paradoxical coexistence.” Exploring deeper territory than standard cultural crossover music might, Music With Silent Aitake’s offers a splendid introduction to this distinctive style. On the one hand, he combines the sound of a Western instrumental ensemble with that of a traditional Japanese gagaku orchestra. On the other, he has invented musical material and designed a pitch structure starting from the points of tangency between the two worlds. D’Haene also composes with drones, contributing to the overall coherent impression of these compositions. The music on the album is performed by the internationally esteemed Reigakusha Ensemble and by Ensemble Modern, one of the premier new music ensembles in the world. The orchestras are conducted by Kasper De Roo, an internationally renowned interpreter of 20th and 21st-century music. Music With Silent Aitake’s clearly exemplifies paradoxophony, in that the listener tends to forget that there were two separate musical worlds at the beginning of the composition. The western ensemble and the gagaku not only coexist, but they enhance one another, opening new sonic and expressive possibilities and guiding the audience into an exciting new musical universe.

Ravello Records is proud to release SIX ECOACOUSTIC QUINTETS / AVIAN TELEMETRY, the newest album from Matthew Burtner. In collaboration with Omar Carmenates, the Furman Percussion Ensemble, and the Shi Center for Sustainability, Burtner’s compositions incorporate avian biology, soundscape ecology, romantic-period British poetry, ecoacoustic music, and avant-garde percussion performance. And if you find all that surprising, you’re not familiar with the work of these two innovative groups. Six Ecoacoustic Quintets is an in-depth exploration of the elemental relationships humankind shares with nature and the environment. With sensuous clarity, we hear the sounds of water splashing and lapping, of stones clattering, of air whispering—all noises so fundamental that the ear recognizes them with prehistoric instinctiveness. Joining these natural elements are percussion instruments and electronics which, together, express the complexities of human nature. Just as stirring is Avian Telemetry, a piece based on the study of bird songs, and particularly the finding that these songs have risen in pitch over the years. Again, these sounds from nature are interwoven with electronic music and avant-garde percussion performance. This time, another surprising element is added to the mix: British Romantic-era poetry. The stanzas drift throughout the performance, helping to direct the mood through subtle suggestion. This latest release from Burtner pairs the keen sensibilities of two formidable artists. The result is a body of music that is rooted in the incomparable gravity and timelessness of nature itself. A powerful statement about humankind’s place in the ecological world and the responsibility that comes with it, SIX ECOACOUSTIC QUINTETS / AVIAN TELEMETRY is a collection of music that will dare you to listen closely to the world around you.

Preludes + Bagatelles

Keyes, C.: With a Distant Eye

Beeler, A.: Quintessence

McCormick Percussion Group: Music for Keyboard Percussions