The charming title of percussionist-composer John Hollenbeck’s new album refers to the multicolored sprinkles atop mounds of ice cream. The 41-year-old composed the title track in celebration of his marriage engagement, and the deliberately out-of-phase teams of vibraphone/drums and guitar/clarinet/accordion indeed conjure the image of tiny cylinders of sugar cascading from spoon to dish.

“At one point during our recording session, Ben’s bow exploded!” Calder Quartet violist Jonathan Moerschel tells us of first violinist Benjamin Jacobson. The L.A.-based group is fortunate that horsehair was the lone casualty of the sessions for its outstanding latest release, Transfiguration. The word brutal is often used to describe the compositions of Christopher Rouse, whose String Quartets No. 1 and 2 and “Compline” are pressed to CD here for the first time.

Say what you will about the nausea-inducing style of director Eduardo Sánchez’s debut horror effort, The Blair Witch Project—it set a definite tone. The film also inaugurated the collaboration of Sánchez and longtime friend Antonio Cora, a mysterious Miami-based composer who shuns publicity and contributed an original work to Josh’s Blair Witch Mix, a goth and industrial-laden soundtrack inspired by the film.

For the Cuban-born director’s 2009 foray into Chinese lunar mythology, Seventh Moon, Sánchez commissioned Kent Sparling, sound designer for Skywalker Sound, to collaborate with Cora. The two were instructed to eschew any traditional Chinese melodies or stereotypes and instead work with an ambient and non-orchestral palette.

It’s been a tough year for our city: Blago and his dead-beaver ’do, the Olympic bid, Captain Interception (a.k.a. Jay Cutler). Fortunately, in the classical world, things have been rosier. Composer George Flynn’s latest release is a reminder that Chicago still boasts more uplifting heroes than indicted officials.

Violist Kim Kashkashian’s 16th recording for ECM, Neharót, meanders through a menagerie of culture-specific laments and prayer-song (Armenian, Israeli and Kurdish, among others). The record’s most compelling track, Israeli composer Betty Olivero’s “Neharót, Neharót” (Hebrew for “rivers, rivers”), refers to the streams of tears shed for the victims of Lebanese violence in 2006.

“Arvo Pärt’s music is a house on fire and an infinite calm,” posits R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. The magnificent opening of ECM New Series’ In Principio is the blaze of creation, not immolation. Voices cry out into the darkness, “In the beginning was the Word,” as Zarathustra-like timpani thunder the universe into existence.

Fortunately for classical music, industry awards carry an air of legitimacy that’s often lacking from any pop Grammys or the Oscars. There’s no classical equivalent to the Recording Academy’s conclusion that in three of the last ten years, the Foo Fighters made the single finest rock album. In the case of David Lang’s 2008 Pulitzer-winning The Little Match Girl Passion, evidence of what drew the jury to honor this haunting work immediately springs from the speakers.