From Gabriella Smart: Alvin Curran belongs to a long line of pianist composers who speak through their instrument as philosopher, poet, dancer, comedian, lover. His passion for the piano is visceral. As an interpreter I can read a composer’s personality through their music; Alvin’s psyche is one that that I never tire of. He has the gift of transcending humanity while remaining firmly embedded in it, of communicating vast architectural horizons while meditating on a single leaf. We became friends through a profound, shared experience.

Solos is a sonic exploration of the acoustic guitar. But that glib description gives short shrift to the daring and abstract worlds unearthed from within the instrument by Matteo Liberatore (using such unconventional tools as metal springs, alligator clips, a bass bow, and a kick drum beater). The mountainous, medieval region of Abruzzo, Italy, where Matteo grew up, inspired an overarching darkness in his sound as much as being the son of an architect fostered his deep appreciation of textured expression and modern art movements. Now resident in Brooklyn, Matteo's new album draws from his early experience of life in America - the rawness of a world where incredible art and expression flourish alongside money market-driven politics.

Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (b.1937) is an important contemporary voice in vocal music. In this new release, Silvestrov’s hauntingly beautiful vocal works are performed by the Latvian Radio Choir under their director Sigvards Kļava. During his artistic career, Silvestrov has explored a number of musical styles and techniques, such as avant-guard, post-modernism, neo-classicism, dodecaphony, aleatoric writing and pointillism. The fall of the Soviet Union, however, allowed Silvestrov to eventually compose spiritual works, inspired and influenced by his love of the Russian Orthodox Church music which Silvestrov imbues with his own unique sound and bursts of surprising harmonic moves. Silvestrov’s compositions are invested with the composer’s own unique personality, musical sensibility and sense of beauty.

A necessary follow-up his first album on Ambientologist, Kval strengthens Henrik's crossing of medieval evocation and meditative ambient cello. Where Själ sought to remain non-directional in its expression, Kval turns on a central theme, guiding a narrative through the mundane and the sublime.

"Préludes au silence" is an invitation to take the time to stop, breathe and meditate. Dominique Lawalrée, the composer of these preludes, has successfully combined various melodies which lead the listener to be silent in order to hear another voice. Of an intimate character, this album invites personal or community prayer or meditation.

An album the majority of whose contents consists of harp arrangements of music by Philip Glass might seem a bit arcane for a major label, but it seems that Sony knows what it is doing here. The Glass Effect double album is one of those releases that succeed on two different levels, an explicit one and one that, although not mentioned, is perhaps even more important. The former level here is the one denoted by the title, as Meijer picks up the rather neglected theme of Philip Glass' influence by offering, on disc two, a group of works by younger composers who follow Glass in varying degrees but who, it's safe to say, wouldn't have the styles they do without Glass having gone before. Much of the album consists of arrangements by Meijer herself, and these include, at the end, a remix of music from Koyaanisqatsi that's delightful and would be spoiled by description. But there's also solo harp music: sample the Suite for Harp by progressive rock musician Bryce Dessner, who certainly seems to have absorbed Glass' style far enough to make it his own.

My Flame Burns Blue is the twenty-second album by Elvis Costello, released on Deutsche Grammophon. It is his second official live release after the El Mocambo bonus disc issued with the 2½ Years box set. It consists of recordings from the North Sea Jazz Festival in July 2004, made with Steve Nieve and The Metropole Orkest, with Vince Mendoza conducting. With this album, Costello joined the ranks of songwriters adding lyrics to jazz instrumentals, a practice encompassing classic pop, jazz standards, and vocalese. In addition to the Mingus tune, he drafted words for "Blood Count" by Billy Strayhorn, appearing here as the title song "My Flame Burns Blue." The initial release included a bonus disc of an abridged version of his 2004 ballet score recording Il Sogno, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.

The origins of Philip Glass' Voices, for didgeridoo and organ was specific: a commission from the city of Melbourne, Australia, in 2001. Yet the instrumental combination works so well that it seems almost foreordained, and Glass went on to write further music for the soloist here, Mark Atkins. In this performance, the didgeridoo and organ tracks were recorded separately, in Australia and upstate New York, respectively, and in Glass' metronomic world this works well enough. Yet one hopes that this release on Glass' Orange Mountain Music label is enough to spur future live performances with both players in the same room. The addition of the didgeridoo to the relatively homogeneous texture of Glass' organ writing is dramatic, but it doesn't disturb the basic shifting fields of the composer's music. It just deepens their color and variety in an immensely attractive way.

This album contains six pieces written by French composer/artist Bruno Duplant, all composed and realized by Dutch pianist/composer Reinier van Houdt. Duplant's scores 'Lettres (pour Reinier van Houdt)' (2017) are three letter-form scores personally addressed to van Houdt containing letter sequences distributed across the page. 'Trois replis d'incertitude' (2018) are also three letter-form scores but with the notion of 'repli' (meaning 'fold' in a Deleuzian postmodern baroque sense as well as 'withdrawal' of incertitude and reactionaries toward the neglect of ecology, humanism, and culture). Duplant's scores also reflect Mallarmé's notion of textual space and chance, leaving a large room for the interpreter/performer.

Ganglion is the 2006 album by multi-instrumentalist Menton J. Matthews III, who goes by the name Saltillo. This was released on Suspicious.

This is 'Winds Of Change', a very nice tiny new collection of tracks featuring 'Experience," "DNA," "Life," and some more.

John Williams In Vienna’ featuring the legendary composer’s debut concert with the Vienna Philharmonic will be released in August 2020.

Carlo Domeniconi is a master of guitar composition. His fusion of Western and Eastern elements is a distinctive feature of his writing, and this album presents a body of work for the unusual combination of mandolin and guitar. The large-scale Durandarte charts a medieval knights wild journey through the countryside, which is accompanied by poignant love songs, elegies, and agitated cross-rhythms.

Pulitzer and Erasmus Prize-winning composer John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of American music. His works stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. Adams describes My Father Knew Charles Ives as “an homage and encomium to a composer whose influence on me has been huge.” Harmonielehre was a deliberate move by Adams to expand his musical language beyond Minimalism, keeping its energetic pulse but embracing the rich tonal resources of the past to create a work that has accrued an aura of timelessness.

As part of his final year as Music Director and following a two-season celebration of the Orchestra’s 125th anniversary, Peter Oundjian and the RSNO here present their second recording of music by John Adams, with the exceptional participation of the Doric String Quartet. Written for a large orchestra including six percussionists, keyboard sampler, and amplified steel-string guitar, Naive and Sentimental Music is a sweepingly symphonic masterpiece, full of contrasts and clashes. It reflects the dichotomy between ‘naive’ and ‘sentimental’ poetry as analysed by Friedrich Schiller in his 1795 essay Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, as well as the ‘bipolar’ musical life of Esa-Pekka Salonen, the dedicatee of this piece, who conducted the first performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1999. Absolute Jest is a large-scale scherzo for amplified string quartet and orchestra, heavily inspired by the music of Beethoven, which Adams has always deeply admired. The quartet of soloists, a late addition to the score, emphasises the echoes of Beethoven’s music (mainly his string quartets) and facilitates a ‘hyperspace rate’ of virtuosity, which the Doric String Quartet here perfectly demonstrates.