The personal and artistic trek of Mark Abel (b. 1948) is that of a restless Baby Boomer who was entranced by classical music and modern jazz at a young age. Deeply affected by the tumult of the 1960s, Abel dropped out of college at 20. He spent a dozen years on the treadmill of New York City’s rock-and-roll scene before rediscovering classical and changing his musical direction during a long period of working as a journalist in San Francisco. A maverick figure, Abel has over time developed an unusual, sturdily constructed hybrid of classical, rock and jazz, constantly working toward new and more refined expressions of that synthesis.

Abel is best known for his vocal music, which includes five highly praised collaborations with Grammy-winning soprano Hila Plitmann on the Delos label. But he has lately moved into chamber music, attracting such esteemed players as David Shifrin, Fred Sherry, Carol Rosenberger, and young “lions” Jonah Kim, and Dominic Cheli. In her review of Kim’s newest album, critic Lynn Renee Bayley hailed Abel’s cello-piano duo Approaching Autumn as “a modern American masterpiece.”

Abel’s style follows a consistent path in its attempts to directly engage listeners and be taken at face value while leaving something deeper to ponder later. The Journal of Singing has called him “a composer with bold and ambitious ideas …, (with) an impressive body of work that grows by the day,” while Pizzicato magazine labeled him “one of the most interesting figures in American contemporary music.”