Avant-garde

Beltline Bones, a "new music ensemble disguised as a trombone quartet," offers an album with much variety, yet these commissions seem to lean into one another. Each engages in its own way, as all five composers seem to fully understand the ensemble's sensibility.

There's a sense of splintering throughout the suite, of dissociation and the associated discomfort – all conveyed through a sonic palette suffused with beauty.

Past, present, and future mythologies inspired composers Steven L. Ricks, Caroline Louise Miller, and Elainie Lillios to create experimental new music for the trumpet, piano, and percussion trio SPLICE Ensemble

On Diego Tedesco's first portrait album, the composer uncovers fresh seams of gold in well-explored mines of atonality and abstraction.

The players showed consummate skill in Beethoven's final string quartet and virtuosic enthusiasm in new music from Jeff Scott.

Rush in high fidelity, Matt B with the London Phil, dancing with DJ Danny Trance, chill string trios, and more.

In the music on composer David Bird's new album, the hardness and coldness of actual metal seem almost literally audible.

"While the world is waiting for the UFC Freedom 250 on June 14 at the White House, I challenge President Putin to a cage match," says Pussy Riot.

A work like this asks us to exercise our patience, something in short supply these days – to listen closely to a spread of sound over time without imposing expectations on it.

The man-machine duality of a soloist performing alongside a recording has what in the pre-robotic, pre-AI age we might have called a futuristic quality. Today it touches on the "uncanny valley" effect.