Avant-garde

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.

You may not 'like every song on 'War Zone' by Yoko Ono, but as with all the best art it will make you think and form an opinion.

With 'Dark Alien Pop,' gloryBots presents dazzling soundscapes and deliciously soft vocals.

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

Theremin virtuosa Carolina Eyck and avant-garde vocalist Theo Bleckmann were at their inventive best in separate sets at (le) poisson rouge in NYC.

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.

'Landfall' by Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet is extraordinary and one of the most brilliant albums I've heard in a long time.

The tones of dark gravity on 'Greetings From Mars' completely bypass the normal auditory apparatus. You listen but you also experience the music on a primal and visceral level, like a punch in the solar plexus. This is pure, dominant noise rock, consuming, taut with foreboding, and engaging.

In 'Pissing Stars,' Efrim Manuel Menuck creates a protest album that is as focused as it is obscured by his own compulsion for noise.