What is “authenticity” in classical/new music?

I’m not touching that with a 13 ½-foot pole, as I don’t have the requisite dozen hours to regulate the social-media donnybrook that would inevitably erupt, regardless of the position taken. What I will hazard is that New Morse Code’s new record, Simplicity Itself, is a flag of genuineness raised … and if one is — or isn’t — a sonic citizen of this particular flavor of programming, the indisputable commitment of the performances and intimacy of the delivery will unconsciously draw right hands upwards toward the heart.

Let’s begin at the end. Composer Robert Honstein’s Unwind, which rolls the credits on this album, pulls the cellist half of this cello–percussion duo off her native instrument and over to the marimba and vibes. There is an inherent and dramatic risk — not to mention unexpected possibilities revealed — in removing expertise from the equation, and cellist Hannah Collins brings not only accuracy, but that elusive element of feel to the rising melodic lines and layered polyrhythms within. If there is any justice in the universe, Netflix will lay claim to this uncluttered, heartbreaking number for some upcoming, Nordic crime drama.

When conservatories and music departments finally awake from their (irresponsible) slumber to the reality that they should be teaching new music in earnest, they would do well to ink Mariel Roberts at or near the top of their list of cello professor candidates.

Ms. Roberts first head-butted her way into my consciousness in 2012 with the exceptional Nonextraneous Sounds record, and as with her debut release, I fully anticipate that 2017’s Cartography will remain in my annual Top 10 across the next seven months. The technique is superlative here, but this album is also a feat of inspired and divergent programming, and the technique tends to evaporate behind the poetry of the performances.

These days, I find that I either want to engage with the news directly, getting a serious rage buzz on, or disengage completely by staring at photos of International Space Station repairs on the NASA app. How to wrestle with our current reality with the hues of gray that are necessary to inspire anything resembling a nuanced discussion? Well, since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, one composer has never disappointed in his attempt to ask just the right questions at just the right time, like a one-person Oblique Strategies deck. 

If anyone were making any money on classical albums these days, news of a Hopscotch release might be initially misinterpreted as a cynical cash grab. How can a site-specific opera – one in which miniature audiences were shuttled around Los Angeles in limos, side-by side with performers – hinged on a singular and deeply personal live experience translate to the static medium of a recording?

Pluck the key-shaped USB drive out of the digipak, set the car stereo to “shuffle,” and shift into drive for the answer.

To set the scene: Donald Trump had pulled off his electoral upset just three days prior to Yarn/Wire’s show at Chicago’s new-music apothecary, Constellation. The audience was a coin toss of composers and performers, and faces were noticeably pallid. What ensued, and what is captured on Currents Vol. 4 at a similar staging in Red Hook, Brooklyn, was an immersive trek inward. This was group meditation… and we levitated.

The crux of a film like Blade Runner or Ex Machina – the bit that makes it heartbreaking – is that moment in which a glimmer of humanity escapes the machine. Is the robot’s emotional response really just a product of ones and zeros? Does it matter?

Fascination with this nebulous distance between machine-ness and human-ness is largely the reason that the grooves on my Clara Rockmore LP are worn smooth, and why a ravishing new release by another lion of the theremin is a welcome sight and sound.

Christopher Tignor has created a perfect new-music make-out album. To be crystal clear, this is intended as high praise for this artist, who listeners may already know from his work with A Far Cry, Brooklyn Rider and The Knights. Sensual, often melancholy, and expansive in its approach to both melody and time, Along a Vanishing Plane is record for drawing the drapes and tucking into a pillowy sofa.

There is something singularly delicious about an album that ferries the listener all the way across it, allowing not a moment of hesitation in which to consider skipping ahead. There is a visual analog in film. Consider one for which it would be irresponsible to view on a phone screen, say a Julie Taymor or Terrence Mallick picture. It begs to be viewed in full detail, and otherwise deflates. Battle Trance’s second full-length, Blade of Love, is such a record, with its three corpulent tracks fusing bleary chord nebulae, scorching rhythmic bursts, and vulnerable incantations into a philosophic, aural aphrodisiac.

Prophesying a specific date for the end of times is a sure-fire way to ensure international ridicule (please do check out the comic wormhole that is the broadcast oeuvre of Harold Camping), but memorialize that date with a piece as delirious and trance-inducing as The Edge of Forever, and the entire enterprise takes on a far more potent, mystic hue.

Discovering that a student of Hans Jørgen Jensen is on the roster of the cello competition in which you’re competing is a bit like finding out that Elon Musk just entered your seventh-grade science fair. The Northwestern University cello professor has been sculpting world-class musicians (and competition slayers) for decades — and is now releasing a stunning album showcasing their collective artistic agility.

Music eats literature and literature dines on music, and Mivos Quartet’s Garden of Diverging Paths is an album of beautiful cannibalism. As a theme, the intersection of words and sounds is a path crowded with footprints, but what elevates this effort is genuinely exceptional programming and the full…digestion…of the scores on the part of the quartet.

If artificial intelligence must necessarily lead to a robot revolt, it’s safe to assume that we’ll be taking cover from a swarm of sex-bots, not T-1000s, statistically-speaking. Whether its streaking automatons or homicidal cyborgs, we can rely on cellist Michael Nicolas to be our Schwarzenegger. His peacemaker is "Transitions," a stylistically manifold collection of works at the intersection of cello and electronics, and one that makes a strong case for their interdependence — and nonviolent collaboration.

As someone who imbibes a perhaps absurd number of filmic hours, I have a habit of bleeding together details of moving pictures in my brain. This is the not the case for Darren Aronofsky’s Y2K masterpiece Requiem for a Dream, due in large part to the iconic score by Clint Mansell. In celebration of Record Store Day 2016, Nonesuch has released this indelible soundtrack on deliciously chunky 180g vinyl, housed in a heavyweight cardboard gatefold sleeve, inviting fans to sink into this ravishing and irrevocable terrarium once again.

Steve Reich and Third Coast Percussion (TCP) are both celebrating birthdays this year, and if the latter’s new album is, in part, a gift to the former, all subsequent presents will likely take on a paler hue. Marking its 10th anniversary, Third Coast is surfing substantial momentum, with a residency at Notre Dame, frequent appearances on the country’s choicest music series, and this new album released by Chicago’s premiere classical label, Cedille. 

It was 1958, and Heitor Villa-Lobos was contracted to write the film score to Green Mansions, starring Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins. He was shocked – BEFUDDLED – to discover that the film would not be edited to his music, rather than the other way around. The story sounds charming these days, and yet how bizarre is it that a composer should expect his music to be weed-whacked to fit a scene?