Best Modern Classical Composer

Former Hello Ocho pianist/percussionist and Faun and a Pan Flute marimba player CHRIS CHILDS didn’t take much time off over the last year. In June, Childs released a 30-minute composition, titled “If I Were a Little Boy, I’d Be a Girl.” He composed the music amid a tight schedule bookended by touring with Hello Ocho, while also staying on the road with and releasing Faun’s second album, 2014-2016. When not working on his own material, Childs wrote pieces for Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. Somewhere in there he found time team up with cellist Ben Shirley and English horn player Carolyn Johnston as the Chris Childs Trio. The outfit was assembled to perform “If I Were a Little Boy, I’d Be a Girl,” placing Childs’ modern classical work on stages everywhere from dive bars to DIY venues along the East Coast. The music embraces the freeness of a small ensemble, while facing the musical challenges inherent in boiling the music down to just three instruments. But the ability to adapt is Childs’ strong suit, as he shuns the notions of academic stagnation by allowing the piece to continue growing with each performance, no matter what obstacles life stacks in front of it. www.chrischildsmusic.com. less...

You have to know the rules before you can effectively break them, and Qurious seems to operate on a higher level of consciousness than its electro peers. Between Mike Netland’s starry-eyed production and Catherine Quesenberry’s spellbinding voice, the duo delves deep into the realm of pure atmospherics with a sense of sophistication that eludes the rest. Each song on the group’s full-length 2010 debut, Planet Plant, slowly drifts through the ether with a celestial ambiance as massive and mysterious as the universe itself. It’s a sound that gives new meaning to the word ambient. qurious.bandcamp.com.

Listen: Qurious “Another Language”

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