Avant-garde

Composer Aaron Helgeson's starting points range from traditional Norwegian fiddle to Shakespeare to Debussy.

Pianist and composer Mark Micchelli twists and blows up five jazz classics with piano, toy piano, percussion, and electronics.

Natural horn specialist Isaac Shieh has paired music by 19th-century composer Jacques-François Gallay with new commissions by contemporary composers, revealing Shieh's gifts as a musician and the potential for continued life for this ancient, "outdated" member of the brass family.

The meaning of simple contrasts is magnified in composer Ryan Vigil's meditative, thought-provoking works for violin and piano.

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.