Contemporary

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.

"Each of these four figures, Marsha P. Johnson, Harvey Milk, Jeanne Manford, and Xulhaz Mannan, carried a kind of radical tenderness into a world that often met them with hostility."

A selection from the 76 pieces of Kwon's "America/Beautiful" project showed the composers' vast range of styles and approaches.

Four composers combine in an appealing work promoting "a shared community between us and the other living creatures that make us possible."