Blending classical cello lineage with fearless experimentalism, Daniel Levin presents a solo performance recorded at Dropa House in Antwerp, exploring the instrument's full expressive range through extended techniques, resonant bow work, and theatrical gestures using paper, chair, and stage, creating a fluid dialogue between structured tone, abstract texture, and the physical presence of sound.

Presenting two extended solo performances recorded at Cafe Oto, cellist Hannah Marshall draws on classical training, theatre, and jazz to shape a deeply immersive free improv work, where patient explorations of tone evolve into tense constellations of harmonics and release through propulsive bowing, balancing immediacy, physicality, and a thoughtfully unfolding sonic narrative.

Uniting legendary tenor saxophonist Don Dietrich with cellist Camille Dietrich, this fierce duo performance surges with overwhelming intensity, as lung-shaking sax eruptions collide with raw, textural cello force to engulf the sonic space in dense, high-velocity, noise-driven free improv, captured live at the 2025 Ear We Are festival in Biel, Switzerland.

A debut release from New York-based duo Goal Weight, bassist Maggie Cox and violinist Jennifer Gersten deliver a wildly inventive session of acoustic string free improv, merging gut-strung resonance and prepared violin textures into a raw, playful, and sharply expressive dialog that balances abrasive sonorities with lyrical interplay and a mischievous, genre-defying spirit.

Two distinctive tracks from the Norwegian duo of Katariin Raska-Torupill on Estonian bagpipe and Christian Meaas Svendsen on double bass: "Melting With Butterflies" is a work of ecstatic repetition, filled with chaos and joy, building in intensity; "The Way Mountains Make Love" is an immense, profoud and potent lower register work of dark solidity.

Recorded live in Lisbon, violist Ernesto Rodrigues joins vocalist Maria Radich and violinist Maria do Mar in a free improv trio where close-range string interplay and crackle box electronics create high-register tension, while voice moves within the texture through whispers and cries, shaping an intimate, spatially focused performance balancing density, restraint, and evolving interaction.

A powerful chamber work from Ukrainian pianist and composer Vadim Neselovskyi, this release blends classical composition and improvisation, as piano and string trio merge structured writing with spontaneous expression, aligning his lyrical, introspective voice with modular, improvisation-driven aesthetics shaped by the tensions and resilience of his homeland.

A Berlin-recorded trio of violin, viola, and cello with voice, where Gerhard Uebele, Ernesto Rodrigues, and Guilherme Rodrigues shape twelve concise movements of hushed, textural free improv, blending extended string techniques and subtle vocalizations into a fragile, reductionist sound world of intimate interplay, suspended time, and finely detailed sonic nuance.

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Two days across 2 CDs capture trio sessions featuring Pauline Oliveros on Roland V-accordion, Miya Masaoka on 21-string koto, and Issui Minegishi on ichigenkin (a single-string koto), in a richly textured and immersive dialogue of cross-cultural instrumentation unfolding with patient sensitivity and Deep Listening, where expressive interplay balances tradition, experimentation, and sonic intimacy.

Captured live at London's The Vortex in 2025, violinist Mandhira de Saram, pianist Steve Beresford, and bassist John Edwards engage in detailed free improv that unfolds with the coherence and clarity of spontaneous composition, balancing chamber-like restraint, abstract textural interplay, lyrical precision, and sharply responsive exchanges in intuitively structured collective dialog.

The duo of pianist Christine Wodrascka and bassist Bernard Santacruz create an intricate and mercurial dialog of free improv, balancing lyrical abstraction, percussive tension, and elastic interplay as the two musicians continuously reshape parallel narratives through intimate exchanges, textural contrasts, and restless sonic transformations that drift between delirious energy, shadowy atmospheres, and moments of fragile silence.

A deeply personal solo violin work dedicated to Hind Rajab, Mike Khoury uses extended techniques, sparse lyricism, tense silences, and raw timbral exploration to transform the violin into a vehicle for mourning, reflection, and fragile emotional resonance, balancing meditative stillness with moments of unsettling intensity in a haunting and highly expressive contemporary string performance.

Cellist Khabat Abas and violist Ivor Kallin engage in a taut, exploratory duo dialogue built from extended techniques, fractured vocalizations, and deliberate use of space, where cantankerous textures, unconventional pacing, and carefully placed silences shape a curiously absorbing improvisation that balances raw intensity with focused restraint.

Vocalist and composer Anna Gadt joins the Warsaw Cello Quartet in a carefully balanced encounter between composed structure and improvisational expression, where layered cellos and an extended vocal presence explore contrast and convergence through restraint, silence, and a continuously shifting dialogue between sound and abstraction, captured live at Hashtag Lab, in Warszawa.

Italian violinist and viola d'amore explorer Marco Fusi meets Canadian bass guitarist and electronics performer Pierre Alexandre Tremblay in a first free improvisation recorded at Huddersfield, where bowed resonance, baroque memory, electric bass vibration and electronic transformation merge into a tactile electroacoustic dialogue of gesture, space, memory and shifting emotional tension.

Bringing together Greg Kelley's extended-technique trumpet with Yoona Kim's non-traditional approach to the ajaeng, this Boston duo explores breath, bow, friction, resonance, and near-silence through taut improvisations where fragile tones, coarse strings, microscopic air bursts, and sudden ruptures forge a focused, unpredictable shared language.

Joelle Leandre on double bass and Remy Belanger de Beauport on violoncello engage in eight finely attuned live improvisations, moving between visceral arco attacks, percussive pizzicato, string scrape, fragile micro-gestures, resonant drones, and sudden silences, dissolving conventional instrumental roles through an alert, risk-taking dialog that balances raw intensity with spaciousness, textural detail, and quietly unfolding form.

The first volume in an ongoing collaboration between composers Kenneth Kirschner and Joseph Branciforte, this work explores the application of software-based compositional techniques — including algorithmic processes, generative systems, and indeterminacy — performed in a superb ensemble including members of Flux Quartet and International Contemporary Ensemble.

Recorded during cellist Okkyung Lee's 2019 residency at OTO Cafe, this album presents two duos: the A side with Jerome Noetinger performing on tapes & electronics, processing Lee's cello live to create a virtual trio of incredible technical skill; the B side with a master of the historic keyboard Ondes Martenot, Nadia Ratsimandresy, in an uncommon dialog of strings and synthetics.

Portuguese improvisers Ernesto Rodrigues and son Guilherme Rodrigues juxtapose a live Berlin performance with field recordings from Pico Island in a quietly probing duo set where viola, cello, crackle box, and environmental sound blend in austere, texture-driven improvisations that move between subtle acoustic detail and atmospheric ambiguity.

Poet and theorist Fred Moten joins bassist Brandon Lopez in their first duo recording, a powerful and searching dialog of voice, text, and bass, recorded at Greyfade Studios, where Moten's incisive spoken word and Lopez's deeply expressive playing fuse into an evocative exploration of Black cultural production, resistance, and creative solidarity.

Composer Alexandre David brings together Quatuor Bozzini, Plaisirs du clavecin, Orchestre de l'Agora, conductor Nicolas Ellis, and Innu poet and vocalist Natasha Kanape Fontaine in 3 works that balance concentrated string writing, voice & text, and vivid orchestral color, reflecting David's fascination with sonority, collaborative creation, and the transformation of personal musical memories.

Montreal-based Quatuor Bozzini records Jurg Frey's Streichquartett (1988) at Radiostudio Zurich, shaping spare scales, measured intervals, and quietly sustained tones into music of unusual clarity and concentration, where seemingly anonymous material reveals its own distinct character through space, duration, resonance, and the tactile presence of sound.

Quatuor Bozzini performs works by Canadian composer Owen Underhill, joined by countertenor Daniel Cabena and sackbut player Jeremy Berkman in settings of 17th-century poetry, alongside two string quartets shaped by encounters with John Cage, quoted musical fragments, natural landscapes, specific places, and personal memory, balancing lucid formal design with vocal expression and finely detailed instrumental color.

Drone-based electroacoustic improvisations led by Jonathan Segel on Halldorophone, guitar, and Buchla synth, joined by an expanded Chaos Butterfly ensemble in longform, time-dilating works where evolving feedback, percussion, winds, and electronics blur structure and narrative into immersive, densely active yet often beautifully delicate sonic landscapes.

French double bassist Bruno Chevillon presents only his second solo album in four decades, using bowed resonance, grainy harmonics, percussive attacks, low pizzicato and carefully measured silence to engage the long natural reverberation of a Paris church, treating its stone surfaces, ambient sounds and returning echoes as active partners in a rigorous and deeply expressive acoustic improvisation.

Drawing on live performances shaped by changing audiences, weather, and landscape, J.J. Gregg's sitar and Ravi Albright's tabla unfold through intricate rhythmic cycles, resonant drones, and spacious melodic exploration, balancing North Indian classical traditions with an open improvisational sensibility that lets environmental sound and spontaneous interaction become part of the music's quietly immersive flow.

Recorded live in Lisbon, violist Ernesto Rodrigues joins vocalist Maria Radich and violinist Maria do Mar in a free improv trio where close-range string interplay and crackle box electronics create high-register tension, while voice moves within the texture through whispers and cries, shaping an intimate, spatially focused performance balancing density, restraint, and evolving interaction.

Portuguese string improvisers João Madeira on double bass and Miguel Mira on cello move from extended solo statements into a long-form duo and encore, using bowed drones, elastic pizzicato, harmonics, friction, percussive attacks and resonant textures to shape a patient, highly controlled exchange of shifting lyrical forms, contrasts, irregular cadences and finely detailed acoustic interaction.