"Little Dancer,' an intimate jazz album by bugelhorn player Angelo Verploegen and pianist Jeroen van Vliet, is a profound musical journey through themes of love, hope, and comfort.

Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Lizzie No has said that the artist’s role is to expand their audiences’ awareness by exploring the musician’s private consciousness.

Ben J. Connolly is an Irish composer, producer, lyricist and multi-instrumentalist, based in Berlin.

Manuel Luque Regodon (born 15 May 2000 in Madrid) is a double bassist, currently living in Barcelona. He grew up in a small town southeast of Madrid (Nou Bazt), where he started playing guitar. He traveled to the United States (Rochester, NY) in 2016, where he discovered jazz, playing in different local formations.

FOUR ELEMENTS from Thomas Cabaniss showcases the composer’s creative versatility developed over three decades collaborating across various artistic disciplines. Writing music for dance, theater, film, and the concert stage, Cabaniss incorporates elements from all of these forms in his works for string quartet. Many of the movements started out as portions of dance and theater works, while others were crafted from the start for concert audiences. Performed by the Charleston Symphony String Quartet, FOUR ELEMENTS presents Cabaniss’s String Quartets 1, 2, & 5 — representing the first half of his output in this musical form. Taken together, the works serve as a fitting reflection of his wide-ranging pursuits and passions.

Theodor Kirchner (1823-1903) had been friends with Brahms since 1862 and was enthusiastic about his music. This enthusiasm is reflected in several arrangements of his works, which were so successful that they won Brahms' explicit approval. The two piano trios based on the string sextets Op. 18 and Op. 36 presented here are among the particularly exquisite adaptations.

HOLY SHIP is Stockholm based Jonatan Westh, formerly of late 00's shoegazers BLACKSTRAP (SWE).
After BLACKSTRAP disintegrated by 2013 developing into various sonic particles (I BREAK HORSES, THE HEART OF THE SUN) Westh regrouped with building his own studio, Pink House Studios in Stockholm. Expanding from his shoegaze roots with inspiration from the synths of TrenteMöller, John Maus, and Clark.

Though Toronto rockers Hot Garbage’s signature tinge of moody, heavy psychedelia remains present on Precious Dream, their forthcoming sophomore album careens at high speeds into a darker world of searing post-punk riffs, grappling with themes of dread, loss, the resilience of the human spirit and the highs and lows of solitude. From the onset, elegant yet brutalist sonic architectures provide the scenery for an escape route, while cryptic poetic spurts act as surreal signage.

'Four Nocturnes' (1992-3, revised 2010; perf. London Voices & National Symphony Orchestra Chamber Ensemble, conducted by Ben Parry) contains settings of Byron’s night poetry. The range of subjects and moods is enormous, from gothic black to risqué farce, and this provides the composer with a rich quarry for an extended piece. In 'Viola Sonata' (2012, revised 2015; perf. Caleb Sibley, viola & Aleksander Szram, piano) the long melody heard at the beginning of the sonata is reintroduced many times in different guises. This gives the piece its unity, while the re-imagining – retrograding, inversion, canon, rhythmic compression, reduction to chords, etc – provides the variety.

Bálint Gyémánt from Hungary is one of the most complex and imaginative guitarists and composers in the contemporary jazz world - constantly looking for new musical worlds to explore.

Honoring the one-year anniversary of Chicago-based microtonal composer Easley Blackwood, Jr.’s death, Cedille Records releases Acoustic Microtonal, a new and unconventional acoustic presentation of Blackwood’s Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media, Op 28, arranged by Grammy-nominated composer and orchestrator Matthew Sheeran.

When it came to setting his poems to music as art songs, Goethe preferred the approach of Carl Friedrich Zelter, who composed "carefully" and always focused on the rhythm of the language. Fortunately, not all composers adhered to the ideas of the poet prince, but rather, like Schubert for example, thought much more independently in terms of composition. The recording with Sofya Gandilyan and Fanie Antonelou thus creates a fascinating field of tension between the very different approaches of contemporary composers to Goethe's poetry.

I am thrilled to present here my debut album. It is a true honor to be releasing it on Fresh Sound New Talent. As much as I am proud to be surrounded by the amazing musicians youwill hear on that recording. First and foremost, let me introduce them to you in regard of how they are a tremendous source of inspiration.

BLOODY JACK from composer Michael Matthews is a cycle of 14 songs based on selected poems from Dennis Cooley’s 1984 collection by the same name. These poems draw upon the chilling story of John Krafchenko, a Hungarian immigrant to Canada who became a notorious outlaw at the turn of the 20th century. The music was originally composed between 2015 and 2017, and revised in 2020. Matthews dedicates this work to pianist Laura Loewen and vocalist Dawn Bruch, both of whom bring this release and its haunting harmonies to life.