Constellation Men's Ensemble - Man Up / Man Down Constellation's impeccable blend and intonation brings out a resonant beauty for the duration of the album. After ten years, Constellation Men's Ensemble  has released their debut album, Man Up / Man Down  on the Sono Luminus label. The album's longer and intense titular work is bookended by two shorter bursts of peaceful reflection, Home and manifesto . Constellation's impeccable blend and intonation brings out a resonant beauty for the duration of the album, and are becoming a prominent force within the new music vocal community. Jeffrey Derus ' Home , setting text by Carl Sandburg, opens the album with beauty and tonal simplicity. Derus' music is drawn from his personal experience with choirs, resulting in Constellation creating a beautiful resonance with stellar intonation. Home is in a traditional three-part form, with the middle section in a pulsating quintuple meter. Derus' repetitive text setting...

 Pathos Trio - Polarity album review Polarity  is such a highly polished example of how rewarding it can be to merge contemporary classical music with electronica. Released September 15th on the Imaginary Animals label, Polarity wedges itself in a specific niche between contemporary classical music and electronica. The collaborative album combines the performance capabilities of  Pathos Trio with six composers, all of whom have written pieces specifically for the trio, and Four/Ten Media , which is creating accompanying music videos for each track. With the only unifying feature being the implementation of electronics, it is quite impressive how the six new works form such a cohesive collection. Pathos Trio, made up of two percussionists and a pianist, completely reimagines the idiom of the chamber ensemble, embracing the possibilities of electronic integration within live performance. For many non-classical audiences, these instruments and setup may already be com...

 Jessica Meyer - GAEA Concerto for Amplified Viola GAEA  truly shows off Meyer's chops as a performer/composer. Jessica Meyer , recently appointed viola faculty member at Manhattan School of Music , is both an accomplished composer and violist. Her recent endeavor has combined the two together, creating GAEA , a twelve-minute programmatic concerto for amplified viola and chamber orchestra in a single movement.  Opening with a timpani bang and some impressive bass clarinet playing, GAEA grabs the audience's attention from the get-go. Performed by The Orchestra of The League of Composers  under the baton of director Louis Karchin , the ensemble effectively navigates the tonal, yet tricky music. Unfortunately, the ensemble is not without flaw. Recurring intonation issues become increasingly apparent within the brass trio as the work develops. Meyer astonishes with her pure tone and meaningful lyricism, clear in both her performance and composition. As she mentions ...

 Eric Nathan - Some Favored Nook Some Favored Nook , the latest release by composer Eric Nathan , is a dramatic, fifty-minute long song cycle for soprano, baritone and piano. Using a libretto by Mark Campbell , Some Favored Nook  dramatizes the relationship between poet Emily Dickinson and abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson, using Dickinson's poetry and various letters as source material. The extended song cycle features some incredible performers, who do their best to salvage the music. Tony Arnold , soprano, and William Sharp , baritone, trade off songs all accompanied by pianist Seth Knopp. In his music, Nathan favors the use of space and recitative-style text setting. Often it results in him being too careful. Clearly he is favoring simplistic lines in order to ensure the text is understood immediately. Unfortunately, his choice works against him. The vocal lines are forgettable and plain boring, with the added space breaking the natural flow of the text. Similarly, t...