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Listen to music for cello and voice on this edition of New Sounds.   We’ll hear a few selections from "The Escape Artist," a new opera by composer, vocalist & cellist Robert Een.  He worked with Meredith Monk for fifteen years, culminating the creation of their hour-long music-theater duet, "Facing North," and his writing, including this opera, employs extended techniques for both voice and cello. 

For this New Sounds, sample from Ballake Sissoko & Vincent Segal's "Chamber Music," a lovely, intimate album for kora and cello. Also, a Senegalese/Belgian collaboration from Malick Pathe Sow & Maoba, a medieval Moorish song played by Chicago clarinetist James Falzone's trio, a sarod/guitar duo by Ranajit Sengupta & Miguel Guldimann, and more.

This New Sounds brings us something from cellists Zoe Keating, Erik Friedlander, and Brent Arnold.   The San Francisco-based Keating loops layers upon layers of cello to create her own one-woman orchestra.  We'll hear from her latest, "Into the Trees."

“Chamber Music,” the quietly elegant record from Ballaké Sissoko, who plays the traditional kora, a lute-harp from Mali, and Vincent Ségal, the French cellist who plays for the trip-hop band Bumcello, came about because Sissoko approached Segal after a Chocolate Genius show.  Following improvisatory leads, they wrote intimate and warm global chamber music, which sounds like it came about in the still of the night. 

For this New Sounds, sample from Ballake Sissoko & Vincent Segal's "Chamber Music," a lovely, refined album for kora and cello. Also, a Senegalese/Belgian collaboration from Malick Pathe Sow & Maoba, a medieval Moorish song played by Chicago clarinetist James Falzone's trio, a sarod/guitar duo by Ranajit Sengupta & Miguel Guldimann, and more.

Musicians like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Sting earned career-defining acclaim early on, but produced bewildering or disappointing work later. But maybe they didn't "lose it." Perhaps we're just not smart enough to understand their art. Today: the Advanced Genius Theory, a brilliant pop-culture philosophy -- or a crazy idea hatched at a Pizza Hut. (Or both.) Also: Cellist Joshua Roman made a splash at age 22 by winning principal cello in the Seattle Symphony. Now a solo artist, Roman stops by perform live in our studio.

Tell us: What do you think of The Advanced Genius Theory? Leave a comment.

This New Sounds brings us something from cellists Zoe Keating, Erik Friedlander, and Brent Arnold.   The San Francisco-based Keating loops layers upon layers of cello to create her own one-woman orchestra.  We'll hear from her latest, "Into the Trees."