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For this New Sounds program, listen to some celestial music, but also works that are much darker.  We'll hear a bit of the flowing, dreamlike and epic "Angel of Light" by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara along with an excerpt from Jürgen Knieper's original score for the film "Wings of Desire."

Hear some Icelandic electronic chamber music with a delicate undercurrent of minimalism from the young Olafur Arnalds on this New Sounds.  The rest of this Northern edition of the show includes music from Norway and Sweden, and more from Iceland.

For this New Sounds program, listen to some celestial music, but also works that are much darker.  We'll hear a bit of the flowing, dreamlike and epic "Angel of Light" by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara along with an excerpt from Jürgen Knieper's original score for the film "Wings of Desire." 

There’s music from Finland for this New Sounds, which is a musical hotbed of many genres: classical, folk, weirdly dressed heavy metal rock bands, and some of the less easily defined new music types.  We’ll hear from accordion virtuoso Maria Kalaniemi along with something else for accordion (& electronics) by Kimmo Pohjonen.  Plus, there’s also music by multi-instrumentalist Pekka Pohjola, who was best known as a bass player, of the jazz-inflected (maybe even proggy) variety.  We might also hear music by Einojuhani Rautavaara, and perhaps even  “Winter was Hard,” by composer Aulis Sallinen in a Kronos Quartet performance.   All that, and more.

Here's the rebuttal to last night’s program where the listeners weigh in on the best new music releases of 2010. First off, a big thank you to all of the listeners who voted! We found that there were some hard-fought battles this year between well-waged Facebook (and other social media) campaigns and other organized mailing list calls-to-action. However, we have a clear front-runner, with some unexpected and predictable results.  The voting closed at noon today.  Tonight's 25th annual New Sounds Listener Poll show will contain the music that emerged victorious from this year's contest.

For this New Sounds, listen to some small ensemble works revolving around the sounds of Persian and Arabic instruments and melodies.  We'll hear "Silent City" from Kayhan Kalhor with Brooklyn Rider, along with some music from Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble.  Plus, listen to the Kronos Quarte recording, "Floodplain", and more.

For this New Sounds, hear some works that make use of the actual sounds of electricity, whether man-made or naturally occurring.  Christine Southworth uses the sounds of a Van Der Graaf Generator and two Tesla Coils in her collection called “Zap!”  Also, Annie Gosfield and Terry Riley look at the charged sounds made beyond the earth’s atmosphere.  And Johanna Beyer, an overlooked figure from the 1930s, is represented by a celestial work for early electric instruments.

For this New Sounds, we'll hear from the Kronos Quartet's recent release "Floodplain." This record is full of music from Serbia, Azerbajan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Lebanon, incorporating other sounds, live and taped. 

Hear some Icelandic electronic chamber music with a delicate undercurrent of minimalism from the young Olafur Arnalds on this New Sounds.  The rest of this Northern edition of the show includes music from Norway and Sweden, and more from Iceland.

From the Soundcheck archives, we'll hear live performances of music for string quartet by Fred Frith, Huang Ruo, and Sir John Tavener.