In “Worldwide Funk,” Foday Musa Suso and Jack De Johnette take timbres that might hastily be dropped in the “world music” category and stretch them far beyond the Pier 1 Imports®-esque lifestyle music that characterizes …

“Act,” the final movement of Alex Shapiro’s three-part suite At the Abyss has a freneticism and spontaneity to it that is usually associated with jazz improv, but as far as I can see—Alex features …

The composers have spoken. In a near unanimous decision, trumpet extended techniques have been deemed merely the tools of improvisers, too unruly for the printed page. When is the last time you’ve seen multiphonics, half-valve …

As a girl with an overdeveloped sense of nostalgia and a connection to the Appalachian foothills, traditional music, played with the unavoidable force of an impersonal 80-member orchestra, doesn’t work for me. This is one …

Susan Narucki’s recital disc of contemporary American art songs composed at the MacDowell Colony comes with an odd twist. In addition to songs by revered masters of the contemporary art song like Ned Rorem, Aaron …

Coyly titled fred, eighth blackbird’s newest disc is completely devoted to the beloved musical radical Frederic Rzewski. The premiere recording of Pocket Symphony, a piece written for the ensemble, opens the CD and gives each …

One of the most moving conversations about music I’ve ever had was with Charles Lloyd. Perhaps the time and place added to the effect (a poetically rainy September 14, 2001, in a cozy Greenwich Village …

I’ve devoted a major portion of my life to studying the violin and still get a vicarious thrill out of listening to just about anything written for the instrument (though, thankfully, I haven’t been caught …

Daniel Lippel, guitar.
Think of Peter Gilbert’s Ricochet as a sort of virtuoso guitar concerto sans orchestra. Instead, the composer applies a visceral electronic accompaniment of shifting textures—sounds that conjure up the din of a noise …

This sort of thing really shouldn’t bother me but, given my obsessiveness about numbers, I found it rather odd that only five of the compositions on Capstone’s release of Vox Novus’s 60×60 Project, an assembling …