A practicing Mormon who is completely attuned to contemporary culture (everything from Thomas Pynchon to videogames and recent pop trends), Steven Ricks creates latter day synchronisms containing some of the most thought-provoking music written this decade.

There’s a certain set of commonalities to abstract yet evocative music that encourages listeners to identify in a deeply emotional and visceral way, and Grouper’s music has these qualities in spades.

There’s a steady stream of sound running through Lukas Ligeti’s head, and this constant state of mental invention keeps him on his creative toes.

The music of Keeril Makan contains multitudes: pulsating rhythmic gestures, noise and abstraction, beauteous slow-moving harmonies, and long-breathed modal melodies.

Whether standing center stage under the spotlights or sitting just across a table while chatting over coffee, American bass baritone Eric Owens only has to utter a few lines to have his audience completely entranced.

Robert Dick is a “musician who happens to play the flute,” with full complementary skills in composition and improvisation.

The list of guest artists gracing Gabriel Kahane’s new self-titled album reads like a Who’s Who of great indie/classical/pop/chamber wherever-you-want-to-file-it performers, musicians linked by a shared creative impulse.

The intense physicality that causes Peter Evans to produce such formidable spittle is backed up by his prodigious technique.

Ken Ueno is a man comfortable with a gear shift—a composer of music that thrills with its interior complexity in one case and probes the ear deeply with a simple overtone vocal line in the next. He is also as likely to pick up the inspiration for his work inside a candy store and a childhood memory as in the text of Calvino, Beckett, or Joyce.

On stage, Molly Thompson’s music comes across as honestly raw and yet sophisticatedly crafted, filled with intimate lyrics and intriguing cross-genre influences. Off stage, she’s disarmingly forthcoming—the kind of woman you could easily think of as your best friend after a 15-minute conversation. Still, her musical personality seems to draw a curtain around some more mysterious internal characters, and it keeps her audiences on their toes.