Aaron Lordson

This Aaron Martin's CD on Under the Spire features his tracks being reworked by Part Timer and it's called Grass Rewound. This CD is pretty nice, with the melancholy originals given an extra layer of sadness through the looping repetitions of the weepiest of strings and the super plaintive piano. Sadness electronically augmented.

Peter Sheppard Skaerved and Aaron Short have assembled an interesting program mostly of very rarely heard works. The sonata is, of course, standard repertoire and has been recorded by nearly every major violinist since Fritz Kreisler and Szymon Goldberg; and, whileSkaerved and Shorr don't have big-time soloist pizzazz, they know their way around classical scores better than most big-time soloists, and this is a very satisfying, intelligent interpretation of that score.

Pianist/composer Conrad Tao's third Warner Classics album, entitled American Rage, traces the roots of rebellion from the 1930s Harlan County labor disputes, through the trauma of 9/11, to the deep divisions of the present day. Bookended by two expansive works by Frederic Rzewski - Which Side Are You On?, based on Florence Reece’s 1931 protest song, and Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, an industrial folk song that reflects the unjust factory working conditions - the album centres on Julia Wolfe's Compassion, written in the wake of 9/11, and Aaron Copland's elegiac Piano Sonata.