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This week’s picks of the week bring us some patriotic tunes for your Memorial Day weekend, some genuinely cosmic music, and a survivor from Tibet ... and a song download!

Abraham Lincoln Portraits – Nashville Symphony, Nashville Symphony Chorus, Leonard Slatkin

The bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth is being celebrated this year with a new CD: “Abraham Lincoln Portraits” is a collection of eight works performed by the Nashville Symphony under conductor Leonard Slatkin. It includes this rarity by Morton Gould, an evocative 1942 work called A Lincoln Legend. That’s “A Lincoln Legend,” by Morton Gould. In 1973, the Nixon administration commissioned composer Vincent Persichetti to write a piece for his second inauguration. The performance of the work, called A Lincoln Address, was scrapped because of its anti-war text. Here’s a bit of the offending work. Finally, it wouldn’t be a Lincoln tribute without Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait. Whether you find it stirring or a bit corny, this performance might win you over.

Respect Sextet: Sirius Respect – the Music of Sun Ra and Stockhausen (Mode/Avant Records)

The late avant-garde jazz bandleader Sun Ra claimed he was born on the planet Saturn. His birth certificate said Alabama, but that must’ve been a government cover-up. Now, Sun Ra’s music has been paired with another “child of the cosmos,” the late German avant-garde classical composer and provocateur Karlheinz Stockhausen. Thanks to New York’s Respect Sextet, the combination works. The Respect Sextet displays the formal structure and melodic gifts of Sun Ra’s music, and focuses on Stockhausen’s Zodiac pieces, like this one. It’s neither jazz nor classical, but something cosmically both.

Download "Angels and Demons at Play"

Soname – Plateau (World Village)

It takes way more than American Idol to discover talents around the world. Singer Soname was born of a noble family in Tibet in the 70s, but was separated from her parents under Chinese occupation and faced a life of servitude. She escaped and eventually made it to London, where she worked as a cleaner and got “discovered” while singing at a wedding reception. Soname has since toured the world, written the autobiography Child in Tibet, but her native country is always present in her music, as with this new album, Plateau.