From soil to stars, the new Aizuri Quartet album offers a space to think

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/29/ [login to see] /aizuri-quartet-earthdrawn-skies-review
On its new album, Earthdrawn Skies, the Aizuri Quartet convincingly connects the dots in wildly diverse music stretching over eight centuries. There are moments of serene reverie, clamorous esprit and sober self-scrutiny, even a folk dance or two — yet it all makes sense on a recording that functions as well on paper as it sounds in practice.

In the liner notes, the band points to an intellectual theme that threads the album's disparate pieces together. Earthdrawn Skies, it writes, is a showcase of "deep connections between humankind and the natural world through the distinct lenses of four composers forging personal relationships with the soil and the stars." While that may be true — and fascinating in itself — you don't need that information to hear how well the individual works flow naturally from one to the next, like a good mixtape.