The music in this album sings and dances, in Abel’s “colorful blend of styles that serve the emotional nature of each work to bracing and poignant effect” (Gramophone). It further clarifies why Abel is “one of the most interesting figures in American contemporary music” (Pizzicato). Composer Mark Abel has been based in California for the past three decades. Abel’s idiom eludes easy pigeon-holing. It includes chamber music and vocal works, whose contours extend from art song to larger forms with orchestra to a 103-minute chamber opera, Home Is a Harbor. This is Mark’s fifth release on Delos. The incomparable David Shifrin begins the program with Intuition’s Dance, a combination of frolic and dreamy ruminations in which he is joined by pianist Carol Rosenberger. (This is the first time Shifrin and Rosenberger have recorded together since their memorable albums in 1984!) Next comes the remarkable Hila Plitmann singing the powerfully moving Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva — the first-ever setting of Tsvetaeva’s po