Perhaps best-known for his distinctive vocal style, Australian polymath Nick Cave here steps into the spotlight as librettist rather than performer, for a second operatic project with Belgian composer Nicholas Lens. Having collaborated on Shell Shock in 2014, they joined forces again during the global lockdown to create a new work, L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S.. At Lens’s request, Cave penned 12 litanies – “petitions to a divine maker” – simple, moving texts which the composer then wove into what he calls a “modest chamber opera of sleeping dreams”.

This album portraits the Finnish composer Sebastian Hilli, born in 1990 and thus one of the youngest composers ever to be featured on a KAIROS release. Hilli's works have in common the composer's fascination with structure, dynamism and carefully crafted details. Throughout, his music is characterized by complex woven textures and nuanced sonorities, long-span processes and a flair for extra-musical topics. The Uusinta Ensemble performs a diverse selection of three of Hilli's works - this is certainly a composer to watch!

Alexander Campkin is renowned as a leading young choral composer who has been commissioned by some of the most prestigious musical organisations in Britain. True Light reveals the energy and majestic sound world that he commands, as well as qualities of reflective intimacy. His Missa Brevis was inspired by seeing a beam of sunlight pierce a cloud of moving incense, the resultant music being built around a sustained pitch, ebbing and flowing. In The First Kiss, he sets two poignant and daring Epigrams by the Greek philosopher Strato.

Russian Contemporary composer Vladimir Ivanovich Martynov [born 1946], has written at least three string quartets, or works named as such. I believe his early music was in a modern, confrontational style, but after having spent time in a Spiritual Academy to study traditional Russian Orthodox chant, his works seem to have taken on a more spiritual nature. I regard Der Abschied (The Farewell) composed in 2006, as an essentially spiritually inspired work. Apparently it quotes from some of Mahler’s lieder, but as I never got past his symphonies, I don’t go there, so I can’t comment on that.

Composer Benjamin Louis Brody, described as “one of the most progressive and multi-faceted musicians in New York City,” creates sublime walls of sound through ambient textures that combine post- rock and modern minimalism to forge a dynamic resonance with his listeners. Working in what Brody describes as “meta-textual sonic DNA,” the 8 tracks on "Floating Into Infinity" invite deep listening into uncharted realms drenched in auditory perception for a kinetic connection between Brody and virtuosic drummer Ian Chang (Son Lux, Landlady) for an indescribable experience of undefinable sound worlds.

Two improvisations from an astonishing Munich performance in May 2019 by the Berlin-based duo of Lucio Capece & Werner Dafeldecker.

A unique and extraordinary 45-minute composition for piano & keyboards + percussion, written for the GBSR duo: George Barton & Siwan Rhys. Composed in 2018, and recorded in March 2020 by Mark Knoop.

As one-third of the composer-collective Bang on a Can, David Lang is something of a genial father figure of the indie-classical scene. Talk to any of the world's main players and you're likely to hear them tell you about their life-changing stint in Bang on a Can's summer festival, which has acted as a sort of feeder school and incubator for the group's try-anything mentality. Lang's music has undergone many stylistic shifts over the years: In the 80s, he wrote bristlier stuff, but in the last decade or so, he's shifted quietly into a more pensive register. The Little Match Girl Passion, his 2008 work that won him a Pulitzer, was written for only four voices and some hand bells. This Was Written By Hand, his most recent recording, is a collection of short solo piano works played by the British pianist Andrew Zolinsky. The album holds the same, sustained melancholy mood: thoughtful, searching, elegiac, minimalist. Lang's way with repetitive phrasing doesn't feel like that of minimalists like Glass or Reich's, though.

Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson releases the third volume in the Debussy • Rameau Reflections series, featuring reworks by Víkingur Ólafsson and other groundbreaking artists including Icelandic singer-songwriter Helgi Jónsson, genre-defying Icelandic duo Hugar, Texas-based post-rock minimalist ensemble Balmorhea and Christian Badzura, Vice President A&R New Repertoire at Deutsche Grammophon.

Alain Lefèvre is a story-teller. A story-teller who uses the piano to play a multitude of roles. These characters perform the chapters of an imaginary novel set to music in which the author lets us discover for ourselves how the story ends.

Epic album-length composition by Bryan Johanson, composed for and dedicated to The Duo (Eric Benzant-Feldra and Michael Kudirka, guitars). World premiere recording of all thirteen movements in three parts: Cool Cubed, Pentadigitopia, and Cube Squared.

This album features the first ever recordings of Sam Hayden's complete music for solo piano, performed by contemporary music specialist and indefatigable champion of new music, Ian Pace, a pianist with a formidable reputation for mastering the most challenging of new repertoire. The centrepiece is Haydens monumental 7-movement cycle, Becomings (Das Werden) I-VII (2016-18), the most recent work on the album and the most ambitious and demanding in terms of scale and sheer virtuosity. Becomings is accompanied by two shorter acoustic works, still time (1990) and Fragment (After Losses) (2003). . A different soundworld is provided by Piano Moves (1990) for amplified piano. His solo piano works have in common constant transformation, existing at the extremes of gesture, polyphony, density, register, dynamic range and textual juxtaposition, very much reflecting an aesthetic alignment with modernist traditions and very much at the cutting edge of the avant-garde, while retaining an open and interesting experience for even less adventurous listeners. Hayden has received commissions from many ensembles and the BBC and is Professor of Composition at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

For most of his life Eric Craven has kept a very low profile, concentrating on his teaching career and quietly developing his ‘non-prescriptive’ composing method, a sort of aleatory style but which allows the performer varying degrees of freedom. His earlier cycle of short pieces, ‘SET’, was recorded after Craven was persuaded by leading pianists to make his work available.