Avant-garde

The Hungarian bossa nova specialist's new album includes jazz, electronic, folk, and world music settings of poems by Verlaine, Garcia Lorca, T.S. Eliot and more.

Central Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra of Beijing (CCOM) will perform U.S. premieres of music for modern symphony orchestra and traditional Chinese instruments at its American debut at Carnegie Hall.

With his invented instruments and appetite for recasting 20th-century American cultural touchstones, Harry Partch created works that still surprise us, as the new album from the ensemble Partch reminds us.

'From my first day, what jumps out at me, when going floor to floor, is the amazing range of music-making happening on a daily basis.'

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.