Contemporary

Sometimes musicians create an atypical instrument combination simply because they have similar tastes or just like working together. Not so here – there's no sense of anything forced, or absent.

The placement of the different instruments in the listener's ears creates a sense of surrounding space; the bleed of one tone's decay into the attack of the next seems to smooth over the passage of time.

Groban takes on movie music, Batiste reinterprets popular Mozart melodies, and pianist Min Kwon commissions 76 variations on "America the Beautiful."

Despite the presence of Stravinsky's 'Firebird,' it was a large new work by Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Reid that proved the program's creative centerpiece.

In this music Liang raises the process of creation to such an esoteric level that the substance thins out almost to the vanishing point.

"Living with this music over time has only deepened my understanding of the country and its people. The project now feels more like an ongoing conversation – something unfinished, and in progress, and very necessary."

It's quite possible to enjoy (or disdain) the music without thinking or knowing anything about music theory. A little bit Charles Ives, a little bit Raymond Scott, a little bit Looney Tunes, it conjures a fusion – really a plurality of fusions – all its own, and all with tongue in cheek.

There's a lot of pain and grief here, but it has inspired a suite of eclectic and eccentric chamber music that's almost operatic.

It's as if the violin can't stop swatting at mosquitos while the cello sings a sad, halting, unmoored kind of song.

Evocative electroacoustic music from composer-percussionist José Martínez engages with the composer's Latin heritage, and with the absurd, while pushing creative boundaries.