Contemporary

This ensemble could develop some real star quality if they remain a unit.

A challenging and often dazzling multicultural program featured solo pieces and music for two pianos, with four guest pianists and two world premieres.

When the proletariat strains of folk and popular music intersect with "contemporary classical" and experimental music, interesting things happen.

The meditative sound glows like the globe. Flowing melodies in the upper and middle voices cruise atop droning tones in the lower, like satellites passing high above the surface of the Earth.

A precision performance of a superb modern score highlighted the artistic depth of a historically important and expertly made movie from the golden age of silent film.

Music by definition almost always engages with the passage of time. The captivating music on this album stands on its own without the need for any specific meaning.

A Village Trip Festival concert served up some wonderful Brahms; a bracing new work by William Kentner Anderson; and an "Homage to the New York School" that touched on some 20th-century music that has never worked for me.

The composer pays tribute to the Persian poet-musicians of late antiquity on this superb album featuring soprano Sara Paar.

The analogies to tarot cards might have been somewhat fanciful, but that's the magic of tarot: It becomes what you choose to make of it, as this concert and a current exhibit at the Morgan show.

This is the accomplished and often exciting portrait album from the pianist and multidisciplinary artist.