Robert Honstein - Evergreen  Evergreen  is a beautiful addition to the pitched percussion duo repertoire.  Across the span of thirty minutes, Evergreen  personifies the experience of the winter solstice in five movements. Robert Honstein 's work for keyboard percussion duo (marimba, vibraphone, and glockenspiel/crotales) implements minimalist tropes common in pitched percussion writing, invoking the sense of lightness succumbing to darkness and vice-versa. Written for and recorded by arx duo , Evergreen matches the emotional aesthetic of the ensemble, which is also enforced by the performance video released by Vic Firth (watch and listen here ). The first movement, "Fading Light", introduces the motor of consistent eighths, heard throughout most of the piece. Opening with the interval of a fifth, the marimba slowly expands and contracts, with the vibraphone eventually layering overtop. While incredibly simplistic, Honstein's writing in this section is idiomatic...

 East Chamber Music - artsongLAB - Fall 2022 February 11, 2023  Premieres by:  Heather Savage , Hannah Sobel, D. Wesley Unruh East Chamber Music  is a for-profit group which hosts workshops, festivals, and lessons to promote contemporary music. Their recent artsongLAB features three different settings of the same poem, Who Has Seen the Wind? , by Christina Rossetti . The concept of a singular poem being set by multiple poems is not necessarily a new one, but has become more popular in recent decades, mostly as a gimmick to attract audiences. Performed by soprano,  Maghan McPhee , and pianist, Valerie Dueck , the virtual concert is provides excellent recordings for the three composers (important since that's what they paid for). Surprisingly, McPhee voice sounds increasingly strained as the three pieces progress; maybe it would have been better to record over a multiple day period. All three settings of the Rossetti are relatively straightforward, simple, and ple...

 Michael Nix - "Aperçu" Album Review Overall,  Aperçu  is an interesting experiment in the world of classical banjo music, but does not live up to Nix's vision. Michael Nix is a composer and performer on classical guitar, banjo, and banjo variants. Featured on his new album is an instrument of his own invention, the seven-string banjar. A combination of a classical guitar and a banjo, the banjar lends itself to Nix's background and style.  Aperçu , released by Parma Recording's Big Round Records  (where it is available for streaming and/or purchase), is an album dedicated to Nix's vision of the New Classic Banjo Project and features works by himself alongside four other contemporary composers. All works were written specifically for Nix and his hybrid banjar. Nix's mission for the New Classic Banjo Project is to 'develop and record a modern classical banjo repertoire'. However, his own compositions do not align with this narrative.  Aperçu has over...