Avant-garde

The energy was bright at the Momenta Quartet's "Night Dances" concert featuring music by Harry Partch, Gyorgy Ligeti, and a Roberto Sierra world premiere.

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.

Easy-flowing vocals and lyrics with literate depth fuel two recent recordings from distant regions of the music spectrum.

Cantata Profana explores via collage the story of a rape that, according to legend, triggered the fall of the monarchy in ancient Rome.

Whoops and hollers from a student-heavy audience at Juilliard greeted the head of the school's viola department at his concert featuring music by Mozart, Hummel, and John Harbison.

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.

New York-based cellist Inbal Segev continues to expand her range. The quality of the music in her latest program ranged from exhilarating to predictable. But her technique and sensitivity revealed all the works in advantageous light.

Composer Yevgeniy Sharlat takes Bach's English Suite No. 2 as a starting point, and engineers energetic rhythmic surprises, ear-catching counterpoint, and busy, angsty drama in a prismatic work of accessible modernism.

This Italian string quartet has developed a tight, fluid ensemble sound as comfortable with the avant-garde as with Boccherini.

The monks retreated behind stone walls to chant their devotions. Composer Lansing McLoskey stands in the agora with his choral music on writings by Wole Soyinka.