Avant-garde

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.

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.