Composer and guitarist David Leisner releases "Letter to the Word", a portrait album of his oeuvre for voice and instruments, featuring soprano Katherine Whyte, tenor Andrew Fuchs, baritone Michael Kelly, violinist Sarah Whitney, oboist Scott Bartucca, cellist Raman Ramikrishnan, Leisner on guitar, and pianists Lenore Fishman Davis and Dimitri Dover. Of his vocal writing The Boston Globe raves: "he shows imagination and taste in taking poems from disparate sources and putting them into cycles that trace emotional progress and develop dramatic shape. His prosody is excellent, and he sets words with an ear for sound, rhythm, and sense… Best of all, Leisner has a gift for eloquently shaping a vocal line that is also grateful to sing". Four examples of his vocal chamber music are included on this album, from different stages of his career: two from the 1980s, one from 2002, and one from 2011.

Jason Vieaux, "among the elite of today’s classical guitarists" (Gramophone), is described by NPR as "perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation". Among his extensive discography is the 2015 Grammy-winning album for "Best Classical Instrumental Solo", "Play". Vieaux’s multiple appearances over the years with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Strings Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Caramoor Festival, etc., have forged his reputation as a top-drawer chamber musician.Regular collaborators include the Escher String Quartet, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, and accordion/bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro. Now, Vieaux releases "Bach Volume 2", a follow-up to Volume 1. This is Jason's first release since the 2015 release of Grammy Award winning "Play".

"Five Minutes for Earth" is a project that both celebrates our planet and illuminates our challenge to preserve it. In 2020, I asked each of the composers featured in this collection if they would consider contributing a work for solo harp of approximately five minutes in length that expresses a powerful experience inspired by Earth in one of its many conditions or atmospheres. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of immediate responses and set about assembling this labor-of-love project. The endeavor quickly expanded to include a live, multi-media concert, fifteen unique videos for each track, a separate published collection of Earth-inspired solos for younger harpists, and most importantly, the opportunity for harpists all over the world to perform these innovative, Earth-inspired works for solo harp by some of today’s most lauded composers; in doing so, every verified performance of any of the works from the "Five Minutes for Earth" collection, anywhere in the world, will result in a monetary contribution to a recognized earth conservation organization, sponsored by my non-profit organization, Earth at Heart."Five Minutes for Earth" is also a metaphor for the urgent and compressed timeframe that remains for our global community to embrace and implement solutions to our fast-growing environmental crisis.

David Leisner is one of America's most respected guitarists and guitar teachers. He is also a noted composer. A graduate of Wesleyan University, he is primarily self-taught in music, although he has had short periods of study with guitarists John Duarte, David Starobin, and Angelo Gilardino and composers Virgil Thomson, Charles Turner, Richard Winslow, and David Del Tredici. Leisner won competitions at Toronto (1975) and at the Geneva International Guitar Competition (1981). The Boston Globe called him a "serious, exploratory and imaginative musician." In 1984, he noticed a loss in speed during the last two months of the concert season.

Anchored in an optimistic synthesis of classical, folk, rock and electronic music, "With Malice Toward None" elevates the idea of what it means to be human in the 21st century. Pamela Z artfully deconstructs her folk rock heroes while paying homage to youthful nostalgia and childhood songcraft, while Christopher Theofanidis and Mark Wingate partner to craft a jaggedly ethereal adaptation of poet Samuel Beckett’s haunting final masterpiece.

“It cannot be easy to write for solo piano: so many magnificent sounds of the 18th and 19th centuries abide in the ears of today’s pianists and concertgoers. By including some of his favorite Chopin miniatures alongside three major piano pieces from the 1990’s, Thomas Sauer could well stand accused of an all-too-common reluctance to break from the past. He prefers to treat with this vexed situation pragmatically, acknowledging the reality that most of his listeners will perceive the new refracted through the lens of the old, and that some will simply be more inclined to keep listening when given a dose of the familiar together with the strange. All three recent works recorded here bear some imprint of the pianistic past - each in a different way - and yet all three successfully outrun it.

The idea of writing classical concert music based on Native American materials dates back to the so-called "Indianist" school of the early 20th century, but the execution of the idea by Native American composers is much rarer and is devoutly to be wished. Composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and the Chickasaw Nation, and he is an important practitioner of this difficult art. Lowak Shoppala' is a multimedia piece in eight scenes, featuring orchestra, multiple narrators, a Chickasaw children's chorus, traditional Chickasaw and modern dancers and vocal soloists, and Native American storytellers. Each scene "depicts a part of Chickasaw culture and history," from traditional spiritual ideas to the removal of the tribe from its traditional Southeastern U.S. homelands. The narration is in English, but the musical sections in the libretto by Linda Hogan, are in the Chickasaw language. This is remarkable, for the number of fluent speakers of Chickasaw numbers only in the dozens; Tate and Hogan are two of these. Tate's basic mode is to expand the pitch and melodic content of traditional chants into larger orchestral and choral structures.

Over the course of time there have been many overlooked artists in classical music, because of their race and/or gender. It is important to acknowledge that we have not yet heard the whole story due to this sidelining of voices. Composers Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, William Grant Still, Florence B. Price, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, and George Walker, have all contributed beautifully crafted works to the repertoire, but are not widely celebrated. Another contributing factor to this unfortunate reality is access to their manuscripts and recordings of their work which we believe would lead to greater awareness and programming of their incredible music. UNCOVERED, concieved in 2018, is an ongoing performance and muti-volume anthology recorded on the Azica label. Vol. 1, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor with guest collaborators Stewart Goodyear (piano) and Anthony McGill (clarinet), releases on February 5th, 2021. Vol. 2 is devoted to Florence B. Price and future volumes will include Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, William Grant Still, and George Walker.