360 Staff Pick: Byrne Country

Composer Andrew Byrne spends most of his time in the U.S., but White Bone Country is about the ferocious, almost abstract deserts of his native Australia.  The instrumentation of piano and percussion sounds austere, but -- played by crack musicians Stephen Gosling and David Shively -- the result is a delirious swoon: somehow lush and minimal, soothing and ominous.  And to offer one more opposition -- this is contemporary music that's at once highly approachable and totally uncompromising.