Tag Archives: Innova

New collections from two very different composers reveal contrasting approaches to creating accessible modern classical music.

Two new albums from innova demonstrate a lively feedback loop: Composers with all kinds of backgrounds and sensibilities continue to expand the string quartet repertoire, while ensembles like the Argus and the Friction record (and often commission) these fine new works.

Brightly inventive in the service of a dim mood, the songs on Beat Circus' 'These Wicked Things' smell of existential desperation. It's one of the cooler albums to cross my transom this year.

Who says serious music can't also be fun? Case in point: Marc Mellits's works on New Music Detroit's debut album 'Smoke.'

Matteo Liberatore uses unconventional tools and methods to pluck a variety of jolts and scratches, arpeggio sequences, and melodic and chordal motifs from that most common of instruments, the acoustic guitar.

This fine new album may not be the most "authentic" place to start appreciating the marvelous sound of the traditional Japanese flute, but it's nonetheless a good one.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer has a surpassing ability to set tightly packed texts to expressive music using the combined vocabularies of tradition, modernism, and even the jazz age.

Cellist Maya Beiser takes a serious journey into the heart of serious rock, and we're the beneficiaries.