Combining her own powerful voice with her arsenal of electronic gear and the talents of The Cello ChiXtet, Amy X Neuburg has put together 13 songs that, each in their own unique way, speak to “the inane and perpetually unfinished business of love and war—and New York.”

Weighing in at 300+ heavily inked pages, Notations 21 carries both the intellectual heft of an academic text book and the intrigue of a good coffee table read.

Ruby Fulton radiates a sort of “ask me anything” energy, so when the Baltimore-based composer stopped by the Counterstream studio to chat about her work, questions were fired and she unloaded the details behind some of the stories that have inspired her and the philosophies underneath the musical choices she’s made.

Whether a sincere revelation of self or a purely manufactured construction (all is fair in the pursuit of art, no?), Christopher Tignor’s music tends to hit the ear as an intimate disclosure, leaving the impression that the listener has been given the chance to peer into an unguarded mind. A warm tone, a languid phrase: You’d be forgiven for imagining that the door had been left cracked open, impossible to resist as you pass by.

Cenk Ergün and Jason Treuting have a history of musical familiarity that goes back to their days studying at the Eastman School of Music. Now, after a decade of collaboration, they put each other on the spot.

Plain-speaking human voices stretch out a hand to listeners and the music pulls them—deeply, completely, without gratuitous fanfare—through these collected moments of incredible pain and amazing beauty.

Phil Kline, the New York composer we know best as the leader of boombox parades through the Village at Christmas time, offers his original take on the choral Mass with his John the Revelator, now available on the Cantaloupe label.

These days, Angélica Negrón has settled into a way of working that allows her to reach out in many directions without losing her center of gravity, no matter what genre umbrella she happens to be standing under. “In the end, the music that I like to write is the music I want to listen to,” she says. “And it’s something that you can’t control and you can’t escape.”

G. Schirmer, Inc./Associated Music Publishers, Inc. has launched SchirmerOnDemand, an online service that allows registered users to view, and in some case print, select perusal scores from the catalogues of nearly 50 composers.

Neil Rolnick’s latest release features collaborations with the usual suspects, and proves that he just keeps getting better with each piece.