Hersch - Hersch / Images from a Closed WardComposer Michael Hersch's string quartet, performed here with absolute commitment by the New York based FLUX Quartet, is inextricably connected to his friendship with the late American artist Michael Mazur. More specifically, Hersch was inspired by a series of etchings and lithographs Mazur did of inmates in a Rhode Island mental asylum in the 1960's. In his musical depiction of these images, Hersch writes music that is at times aggressive and

expressive phrasing

brings the neo-Classical aspect of Bloch's music to the fore through it's use of partita form

The stories told in the Sephardic Romancero-the repertoire from which the album's program is drawn-conjure up portraits of life in medieval Spain and the universal truths that undergird them

4 was considered by the composer himself as one of his best works and it is until today one his most performed ones

Carrie is a true multi-format

2020 release from the Americiana singer/songwriter

is regarded as a masterpiece of devout Lutheran church music

A one-act opera

one of his successors

"a casually wonderful band

Music from Hälsingland thus truly brings to mind a "rough pearl"

What A Shame (Cocaine) (5:04)B-Side:7