Soundcheck

Born in Guatemala but active in Mexico City’s bustling music scene, cellist, electronic music producer, and singer Mabe Fratti has been making music for several years that could lean toward the exper…

The Midwest band Cloud Cult is more than a band – it’s a creative collective who continually celebrates life and love, and catharsis through music and multimedia performances (CloudCult.com.) They’re…

Nashville-based artist Conner Youngblood is a singer, multi-instrumentalist and producer; his new record, called Cascades, Cascading, Cascadingly, is full of richly textured songs – in multiple langu…

Vocalist and composer Meredith Monk is a multi-disciplinary artist, whose work involves music, dance, film, theatre, and now: biology meets anthropology. In her recent large-scale work, Cellular Song…

The New York band Crumb creates playful and brooding swirls of sounds, somewhere at a crossroads of psychedelia, pop, jazz, and rock. Their latest album AMAMA (Grandmother) [self-released via their o…

American classical pianist and educator Christopher O’Riley has spent his career gleefully ignoring musical boundaries and playing whatever turned him on. In addition to playing Beethoven, Busoni, Ra…

Mehrnam Rastegari is a New York-based master of the traditional Persian spike fiddle, the kamancheh.  She is also a composer, writing film scores and ensemble works that draw on both Eastern and West…

Guitarist, composer, and teacher Benjamin Verdery seems to know everybody who’s ever picked up the instrument. Ben is a classical guitarist himself, but his musical friends include Andy Summers of th…

Christopher Rountree is probably best known as the conductor of the LA-based new music ensemble known as Wild Up. Over the last 14 years he and that band have played with Bjork, done live film scores…

Brooklyn native Bette Smith reconnects with her Memphis and Mississippi roots on her latest, "Goodthing", full of songs that show off her voice -rich and raspy- and her band’s vintage soul and blues-…

The band called LA LOM is a trio of LA natives who play an instrumental blend of twangy guitar melodies over Latin rhythms like the cumbia and bolero, drawing on the sounds of their city. The band go…

Angélica Garcia has been on a journey – a musical journey – from “gothic storytelling, and swampy, blues-inflected rock” (Schaefer, 2016) to dance-floor Latin pop bangers with moody electronics, sung…

Cinder Well is the musical project of singer and songwriter Amelia Baker, who is from California but who fell under the spell of Irish folk music and eventually moved to County Clare on Ireland’s wes…

The artist STEFA* is a classically-trained vocalist who combines punk, experimental rage-pop, loops, and somatic jazz as they channel their ancestors. Based in Queens and born to Colombian immigrant …

Although he’s based in Iceland, singer/songwriter John Grant is American, and his experience growing up gay in a conservative religious family in Colorado has colored his music since he began releasi…

The duo of Marc Ribot, the New York guitarist, and Leyla McCalla, the New Orleans cellist and banjo player, may seem unlikely at first. Ribot is known for his work with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, his…

Akusmi is the name of the recent project by the French-born London-based producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Pascal Bideau. His work blends the churning rhythms of minimalism with the sound…

The vintage sounds and energy of Cuban dance music of the mid-20th century live on in the music of Orquesta Akokán, a group of Cuban and American musicians who made a big splash with their debut reco…

Sample collaborative music by Pulitzer Prize-winning vocalist/composer Caroline Shaw and the versatile quartet Sō Percussion from their latest release, Rectangles and Circumstance, as played in-studi…

Cuban singer, percussionist, and bandleader Ivan Llanes is now based here in New York, and on his debut LP, called La Vida Misma, you hear a reflection of Ivan’s musical interests, which begin with C…