A World of Sound Awaits

Neera does not tell one single story; it tells multiple, entwining stories through its sounds. One thread is joy, creativity, and freedom in art. The different sonic combinations—created with violin, viola, kamancheh, tombak, spoken word, electronic pulses, and all the different timbres of each—show how the artists resist the restraints of being put in a box, labeled as a “violinist,” “classical musician,” or perhaps “Iranian immigrant.” Sarvin Hazin & Kimia Hesabi, like all of us, have a palette of experiences at their disposal, and they have used the full range in creating their debut album.

The inspiration from their identities is another thread; the music pulls from multiple traditions, inviting us to do the same. One story told is the strength and power of women throughout history. The piece titles give some clues, as they draw on Persian culture and obliquely allude to both ancient figures and more current women whose actions and values have become touchstones for Hazin & Hesabi, Persian culture, and sometimes throughout the world. The stories of each of these women—like the stories of all of us—are not isolated, but instead pull on the stories that came before, showing the connections across time, people, and cultures. The music itself is not specifically programmatic, but the grief and pain, harmoniously present with the meditative strength of those who persevere, spark change, and fight for true beauty is a theme throughout.

Neera is a multimedia project that blends various cultures and musical echo-systems. Derived from older Persian languages, Neera means “to shine light,” and they (or Hesabi and Hazin) took this meaning to heart by paying homage to Iranian women from different generations who were authentically and courageously themselves while living in a society that constantly worked to define them by enforcing its standards on their lives and identities.

Using Western classical instruments such as violin and viola, as well as Iranian classical instruments such as kamancheh and tombak, in combination with electronic sounds and vocals, give Neera a genre bending quality, and a unique and personal musical language and style.

Neera is a recipient of the Creator Development Fund from New Music USA in 2022.

Africa in New Orleans is a collection of songs created from the wellspring of collaboration that is composer, musician and dancer, Sidiki Conde. In 2023, The New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park invited Conde and guitarist, Wowo Souakoli, to work with New Orleans musicians engaged in the diverse genres of the city: jazz, blues, and zydeco. All genres with origins in West Africa where Conde hails from. Through this collaboration Conde felt both at home and part of a bigger global story.

Abriendo y Cerrando, Shinjoo Cho’s first solo album for bandoneon, features both her original compositions and arrangements. Recorded in Argentina in 2024, this album exhibits Shinjoo’s search for a new language for bandoneon outside of its emblematic role in the tango genre and the making of a composer and performer whose musical passage encompasses Asia, North America, and South America. Guest composers and performers include Alban Bailly and Antonio Boyadjian.

Buoyed by experience and tradition, Cho approaches the bandoneon’s intricacies with affection and curiosity which is evident in the playful chaos of Attention Deficit Distorter and Rocío, an organ-like treatment of the iconic Korean protest song Morning Dew (아침 이슬). Improvisatory influences and tango’s percussive usage of bandoneon are present in all her pieces. Both Cho’s compositions and her playing exude a deep sincerity and masterful control of pace which invites the listener to experience the breath of the reeds as the instrument flexes, snaps, and stretches.

Shinjoo Cho is one of the leading bandoneonists in the U.S. and is an active performer in the Americas, Asia, and Europe. She collaborates in multi-disciplinary projects as a composer, educator, improviser, and tango and ensemble musician, and explores the vast range of tango music tradition as a bandleader and member of Abaddon Sextet (NY), Pedro Giraudo Tango Quartet (NY),El Sesenta Dúo (NY/Philadelphia),Solidaridad Tango (Canada), Casa del Tango Sexteto (Mexico) and Oscuro Quintet (Philadelphia). Her recent projects include Lo que vendrá, a retrospective of Astor Piazzolla’s music with 20 performers and composition for the Lewis Latimer documentary film and the web/radio episodes of WHYY’s Route 47: Historias Along a Bus Route. Shinjoo’s latest recording credits include Roads to Damascus by Kinan Abou-afach, Postales by Patricio Acevedo, and Exploratorium by Gene Coleman.

2022 Pulitzer Finalist Leilehua Lanzilotti releases debut composer / sound artist album on Innova Recordings featuring Sō Percussion and Longleash.

In conjunction with the nationally touring exhibition Lanzilotti co-curated, … Takaezu: Worlds Within, Lanzilotti produced this album of chamber and experimental sound art works that explore the resonance of Takaezu’s bronze bells and the playfulness of her ceramic rattles. Lanzilotti writes, “Growing up at The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, I remember Toshiko Takaezu’s ceramic works being the same size as I was—the greeting presence of one of her mahina, or moons, as you entered the museum.”

Longleash, bring for Toshiko to life with delicate timbres and expressive shaping of resonance. Sō Percussion breathes life to sending messages in their depth of listening. Through their long history of playing chamber music together as a group, there is a magical, spinning quality to the sound. In the resonance of the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky, we get the feeling of being inside Takaezu’s multisensory landscapes.

What She Wrote is a journey through the voices of powerful women writers who have shaped our literary landscape. Japanese-born composer Asuka Kakitani has created a musical bridge connecting her heritage with the timeless words of Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, and Akiko Yosano. Performed by the acclaimed Quince Ensemble, Kakitani’s compositions bring these voices to life, inviting listeners to explore the hidden influences of the women who came before us.

Kakitani was inspired by an article by Brigid Delaney, in which she wonders about the unexpressed talents and stories of her women ancestors. Delaney writes, “there wasn’t a lot of room back then to create beautiful things of your own. Imagination – that hinterland where ideas are born – needs acres of time, not just snatched minutes between cooking and cleaning.” This led Kakitani to wonder about her own Japanese women ancestors, whose unknown lives and creative voices are obscured by the passage of time.

What She Wrote sings the words of women who defied the constraints of their eras to leave a lasting impact through their words. Kakitani constructs each composition as a dialogue with these writers. The first piece, a rendition of Dickinson’s “In This Short Life,” begins with a delicate refrain that swells to a powerful crescendo before gently receding, inviting us to contemplate the power we possess in these ephemeral moments we call life. “A Room of One’s Own” weaves Virginia Woolf’s powerful words that emphasize the necessity of personal space and financial freedom for women to fully realize their artistic potential. The album’s final piece begins with a vocalization that builds in tension until it ultimately erupts into Shelley’s bold declaration: “I am fearless and therefore powerful.”

Asuka Kakitani’s deep love for nature inspires her to transform her vision into musical stories. Her mostly-programmatic music results from the inspiration evoked by her surroundings interweaved with her perspectives and imagination. Kakitani’s projects span jazz big bands, orchestras, chamber ensembles, and soloists. She has been described as “[a] musical impressionist and supreme colorist” (Hot House Magazine) and her music as “the overflowing world of inspirational melody” (DownBeat Magazine). Kakitani has been the recipient of several grants, fellowships, and awards, including the New Music USA Creator Fund, the Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, the McKnight Composer Fellowship, the Jerome Fund for New Music Grant (ACF |create), American Music Center’s Composer Assistance Grants, the BMI Charlie Parker Jazz Composition Prize, Brooklyn Arts Council Grant, and Minnesota State Arts Board Grants.

Quince Ensemble is a treble voice quartet dedicated to changing the paradigm for contemporary vocal chamber music. Described as “the Anonymous 4 of new music” by Opera News, Quince continually pushes the boundaries of vocal ensemble literature. By performing almost exclusively the music of living composers, and actively commissioning works with a broad and curious aesthetic ear, they seek to create a landscape of contemporary vocal music that is embodied, complex, and expressive, with the musical boldness and virtuosity that is often reserved for instrumental groups.

As dedicated advocates of new music, Quince regularly commissions new works for voices, providing wider exposure for the music of living composers. In 2019, they launched the Quince New Music Commissioning Fund, a fund to grow the repertoire for women and treble voices. Through educational activities, Quince works to bring this music to a larger community of singers and listeners, offering new and empowering pathways to vocal excellence. Quince has released four studio albums, Realign the Time, Hushers, Motherland, and David Lang’s love fail, all available on iTunes, CD Baby, Spotify, Bandcamp, and Amazon.

Consolation is a song cycle composed by Samn Johnson for vocalist Tis Kaoru Zamler-Carhart, setting Latin poetry from Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. It features layers of Tis’s voice accompanied by Samn’s electronics and instrumental recordings. 

Boethius wrote the Consolation in 524 AD while awaiting execution after his political downfall. He is visited in prison by the feminine allegorical character of Philosophy. Through their imagined dialogue, it is apparent that both characters are in fact himself, both male and female, both free and captive, facing his own questions about his life choices: money, fame, power—did they make him happy?

Consolation—the album—has been described by composer and music critic Alex Temple as “wildly polystylistic,” but the same can perhaps be said of Boethius’s original. Its mix of poetry and prose carried ancient readers along in the visceral flow of Latin meter, careening between intellectual elegance and sheer terror. Samn’s music hews closely to the maelstrom of Boethius’s emotions, but renders it with different devices. Tis’s voice, the backbone of the album, is pushed to virtuosic limits of range and timbre, spanning over four octaves with an astonishing array of colors and tuning systems. Interviewed by WMBR radio about Samn’s writing for the trans nonbinary voice, Tis says: 

Around Tis’s voice, Samn’s electronic orchestra deploys echoes of Renaissance polyphony alongside 808 kick drums and synthesizers, flashes of romanticism, and washes of ambience. Early tuning systems—from Just Intonation to Meantone temperaments—are omnipresent in Samn’s music. For Boethius, who was also a music theorist, these would have not only been shimmering worlds of musical color, but allegories for how the cosmos is ordered. Perhaps the same is ultimately true for Samn, and is part of what binds him to Boethius across the centuries.

Describing this connection, Samn says, “When I first read the Consolation, it immediately drew me in. The practical philosophy felt so accessible, and the huge range of emotion and poetic rhythm was an exciting challenge to adapt. I knew this would push me to draw on a similar range of musical styles, and writing for Tis, whose voice transcends the gendered categories of classical vocal music, felt perfectly aligned with this aim. It’s also a vehicle to explore my religious and spiritual thoughts. We know from other sources that Boethius was a Christian, yet he does not evoke explicitly Christian concepts in his Consolation, instead describing God in the terms of neoplatonic philosophy. Whatever his intent may have been, I find this lack of doctrine to impart an appealing universality to his message, and is part of what makes me want to adapt it for the world I live in. In this text, written from prison, I find something transcendent and liberatory.” 

Samn Johnson(he/they) is a composer, producer, and historical linguist. Their work often harnesses research on acoustics and historical phonology to set texts in ancient languages like Latin, Old English, Hittite, and Gothic. Samn has written for a range of performers including Chromic Duo, Righteous GIRLS, and harpsichordist Nathan Mondry. His latest two recordings, both self-released, are Ageless Sea (2022), for chamber choir, chamber orchestra, electronics, and rock band, and First Book for Piano (2022), performing his own piano works. Samn is also half of the synth pop duo Acraea, together with Leora Mandel. He holds degrees in composition from the University of Michigan and NYU, and has taken courses in Indo-European historical linguistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Samn lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where this album was recorded. (www.samnjohnsonmusic.com

Tis Kaoru Zamler-Carhart (they/them) is a singer, composer, writer, designer, visual artist, and medievalist. Tis regularly works with composers who write specifically for their voice. Tis’s own composition output includes opera, chamber. and vocal music, and has been performed around the world. Tis’s books are published by Punctum Books and revolve around Africa, Byzantium, and the fragile boundaries of seriousness (The Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and Parsons School of Design in New York.