Avant-garde

Guitarist-composer Flórez is uniquely skilled at interlocking written music with group improvisation in song-length tracks that leave us bopping our heads and scratching them at the same time.

The summer series concluded with Robert Schumann's Fourth Symphony, Clara Schumann's 'Konzertsatz in F minor,' and a world premiere by James Lee III.

One of this music's most interesting characteristics is a seamless fusion of acoustic and electronic sound.

If alternate tuning systems are new to you, this album will be an introduction more musical than pedagogic, and nonetheless revealing. If not, it will be easy to admire Thornock's ingenuity and talent.

Yugoslav-Israeli intellectual and Holocaust survivor Yehuda Elkana may be best known for his insistence that a people must leave the traumas of the past behind in order to thrive. With 'Que sais-je?' Amos Elkana, Yehuda's son, has created a profound portrait in music of his father.

Aucoin's vision asserts itself from the first touch of the first movement's mysterious music, with fluttering melodies from angsty high-pitched woodwinds and metallic percussion strokes.

'River Spirits' by Susan Botti lives up to its dual billings as a 'theatrical motet' and a 'futuristic abstract fable.'

The language comes not from notes and rhythms but the physical parameters of how an instrument is played.

Exceptet's debut album explores the sonic possibilities of a lineup inspired by Stravinsky, with music by Katherine Balch, Paul Kerekes and Sarah Goldfeather.

In all these works, played magnificently by Jing Yang, Vigeland makes conscious and effective use of the piano's acoustical properties to create sound worlds that couldn't exist in the same way if played by orchestral instruments.