Catalog

Few forms in classical music are as underrated as the song cycle. It is easy to be betrayed by the seemingly-modest set-up – piano and solo voice – requiring well-calculated finesse from a composer to seize its minimalist power and bring it into full bloom. UNHOLY SONNETS, a collection of songs by German-born American Samuel Adler, succeeds greatly in this effort. Although all works presented are in English and the tonal language is decidedly modern, there is much that harks back to the German art song tradition of the 19th century. Despite the title, these are largely quiet, pensive pieces, confidently resting in a tranquil serenity.

Featuring cellist Thomas Mesa and pianist Michelle Cann, OUR STORIES from Navona Records aims to raise the voices of composers and performers from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in classical music. Made possible by PARMA Recordings and a Sphinx MPower Grant, this release musically conveys a diverse mixture of themes and topics, from the intricacies and curiosities of human communication to fear-inducing information prevalent in the media, reflections on the acceptance of life's inevitable changes and losses, and more. Dive in and explore the masterful contemporary works of Andrea Casarrubios, Carlos Carrillo, Kevin Day, Sebastian Quesada, and Mario Oyanadel.

On LET’S TANGO, Duo Cello e Basso with French double bassist Pascale Delache-Feldman and cellist Emmanuel Feldman invites listeners to experience some of the celebrated genre’s greatest masterpieces. Joined by pianist Victor Cayres, the centerpiece of the album is the duos’ arrangement of Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires that they perform in concerts around the United States including a recent appearance at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Other Piazzolla works with piano include Kicho, an original work for solo double bass and Le Grand Tango, written originally for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. The album also includes a trio arrangement of Por una Cabeza and El Dia que me Quieras by famed 20th century tango composer Carlos Gardel. Full of the longing and passion characteristic of tango music and paired with the rich dynamic range of the bass and cello, LET’S TANGO offers fresh new interpretations of these classic works.

Caitlin Edwards and Daniel Schlosberg work in collaboration to bring us MERE MORTALS, an exceptional performance and intuitive study on works for violin and piano by composers of marginalized identities with a brilliant legacy to share with the world. In a world that often grinds us to the bone, MERE MORTALS asks us to slow down, step back, and appreciate the fruits of our labor, reminding us that although our time on this earth is fleeting, it can also be a rich and exploratory experience that enables us to leave an immortal and vital legacy behind.

Multi-genre composer Gary Smart explores a wide range of styles and transforms them into his own musical language on COLUMBIAN HARMONY. His soundscapes are sweeping, billowing meadows, often vast in their ambition and scope. At times richly textured, at times sparse, almost threadbare, Smart’s carefully designed works meander between grand rhapsody and heart rending simplicity. There is enough familiarity in this music to keep the listener anchored, but the element of surprise reigns supreme.

BUXTEHUDE Trio Sonatas op.1 is the debut album of Québécoise violinist Noémy Gagnon-Lafrenais, who joins forces with viola da gambist Margaret Little and keyboardist Christophe Gauthier to form Ensemble Spinoza and celebrate the seminal work of 17th-century composer Dietrich Buxtehude. VII Suonate a due, violin & viola da gamba, con cembalo Op.1. highlights Buxtehude’s distinctive compositional style and stands as a testament to his contribution to the instrumental repertoire of the Baroque era. Featuring North German, French, and Italian influences, the music is an aesthetic masterpiece of musicological significance. Through its historically informed performance, Ensemble Spinoza gives a thoughtful and heartfelt reading of each of the beautiful sonatas in this collection.

Sarah Wallin Huff returns to Navona Records with SHARDS, a wide variety of compositions that explore life, love, death, and the philosophy and mysticism that make up the in-betweens. True to the unique identity of Wallin Huff’s admirable body of work, the compositions building SHARDS structure themselves around brilliantly original frameworks while also delivering a philosophical, thoughtful structure to the album. Wallin Huff sufficiently and spectacularly elaborates upon her identity as a self-described “stream-of-consciousness composer” in this contemplative and explorative journey, a comprehensive album sure to make waves with its mystical nature.

Diane Maltester and Nancy Bachmann take listeners on a mesmerizing musical journey with WILD SWANS. Contemporary composer Nancy Bachmann’s exquisite music entices listeners with an artist’s pallet of expressive and progressive sounds. Released under Navona Records, this extraordinary album showcases Bachmann’s compositions for the superbly talented clarinetist, Diane Maltester. WILD SWANS takes flight through compositions for voice, woodwind quintet, trios, duos, and unaccompanied clarinet. The wings of Bachmann’s imaginative energy and Maltester’s interpretive virtuosity transport the listener to beautiful and exotic destinations. As one explores the transcendent compositions on WILD SWANS Bachmann’s brilliance and versatility shine through on every track, illuminated by the extraordinary artistry of Maltester and all her collaborators. A captivating mix of wildness and grace!

Navona Records is proud to present CHORINHO, the new album by violist Georgina Rossi and pianist Silvie Cheng. Saturated with Brazil’s rich musical heritage, CHORINHO presents a slew of under-recognized works for viola, including world-premiere recordings of works by João de Souza Lima, Lindembergue Cardoso, and Ernani Aguiar. A solo piano interlude honors Heitor Villa-Lobos, the titan of Brazil’s 20th century musical scene. The concluding track, an arrangement of Chiquinha Gonzaga’s song Lua Branca by the two soloists themselves, hangs over the collection like a light. Vibrant, soulful, and expressive, CHORINHO offers a spectacular glimpse into a little-known area of Brazilian contemporary music.

Ukrainian violinist Myroslava Khomik highlights the eternal power of standing for freedom and defiance against oppression in PROTEST, an album featuring the music of four key representatives of 20th century composers from Ukraine and Poland. Expressing strength and resilience through the beauty and search for truth, PROTEST taps into the spiritual essence of human existence and vigilance in the midst of its disruption. This music is equally representative of the nation’s history of suffering and protest, as well as it is timely in the world of today.

Fall immersed into a collection of innovative stories and sounds on David Colson’s CONVERSING WITH SPIRITS. Colson’s distinctive push-and-pull textures are both an inviting and invigorating in the aptly named Un raz-de-marée de terreur et de joie (A tidal wave of terror and of joy) for bari sax and marimba, a welcome that drifts into a call back to classical trumpet repertoire: the long lamentations and surges of havoc discovered within Duo for Trumpet and Piano. This being closely followed by Ghost Music, a virtuosic marimba solo featuring Matthew Coley, a composition most reminiscent of uncanny whisperings in shadowy atmospheres—no doubt with a touch of whimsy, and a whimsy that is no stranger to the nature of cats, or more specifically, Cat Tales, a touching tongue-in-cheek collection of saxophone and piano vignettes invoking the personality of eight cats familiar to Colson. The River within Us concludes the collection, an at-once bubbly and fluttering two-movement work featuring the Western Michigan University Percussion Ensemble. Treat yourself to CONVERSING WITH SPIRITS, and enjoy the endless surprises it has to offer.

OCEAN CALLING from composer Meira Warshauer is a moving trilogy for two pianos dedicated to the ocean. The three installments — “Waves and Currents,” “From the Depths,” and “The Giant Blue” — speak to the vast majesty of the aquatic world and the many challenges that face it. Innovative performance techniques coax unique sounds out of the instruments; a metal chain rustles on vibrating strings to mimic the white noise of breakers in “Waves and Currents,” while “From the Depths” utilizes coloristic “inside piano” techniques, and bowed tones recall sounds from the blue whale in "The Giant Blue." Against the backdrop of large-scale contaminations, overfishing, acidification, and rising temperatures, OCEAN CALLING is an impassioned plea on behalf of Earth’s greatest natural resource.

Tenor Brian Smith Walters is a force to be reckoned with — endowed with a dark, thundering timbre and magnificent, towering style, he is the embodiment of a Heldentenor. His first Navona Records release is a challenging cross-section of chansons and Lieder spanning five centuries, and Walters navigates them with stunning bravado. It doesn't matter whether he sings Purcell or Copland, Schubert or Saint Saens, Tchaikovsky or Barber, Wagner or Szymanowski – the energetic grip Walters has on every single piece is awe-inducing, every rendition buzzing with vibrance and profundity. Accompanied here by only the piano, there is only one word to describe the tenor and A PHOENIX RISING: intense.

Véronique Mathieu and Stephanie Chua present INVOCATION, a collection of works for violin and piano written by female-identifying composers of unique heritages, backgrounds, and cultures. With a wide range of aesthetics and a variety of compositional eras, INVOCATION presents a collection of wonderfully animated performances that provide a fantastic model for the exploration of these composers’ works. Mathieu and Chua carry on the ever-growing tradition of bringing female-identifying composers from all musical eras out of the shadows. Their delicate, tender, and thoughtful iterations of these compositions solidify INVOCATION as a function of its title; a message to the women of this collection to step forward and shine.

CHAMBER WORKS FOR VIOLA from composer David Jaeger gathers together some of Jaeger’s most defiantly creative compositions and demonstrates the vast possibilities of the viola and the chamber music genre as a whole. The album includes pieces like Diptych for viola and piano, lamenting at one moment and brazen the next. Six Miniatures on poems by David Cameron, for solo viola brings to life the poetic works of David Cameron, winner of the 2014 Hennessy Literary Award for Poetry. The album features the tasteful virtuosity of violist Carol Gimbel and pianist Cullan Bryant. Jaeger’s music will surely remind listeners—and perhaps even some other composers—of the rich tonal palate the viola offers.

There are many composers who intertwine eclectic influences into one coherent picture, but few people do it as ambitiously and convincingly as New York City based composer Debra Kaye. On IKARUS AMONG THE STARS, she vibrantly explores themes both real and surreal, perpetual and fleeting, nonchalant, and profound. Kaye's sources of inspiration are unnumbered; it seems there is nothing which she cannot turn into a composition. The works presented (two of them multiple award winners) draw their inspiration from Spanish poetry, real-life tragedy, and from the pieces of fellow contemporary composers. All of these sources are woven together by Kaye's measured choice of tonality, and the resulting tapestry is remarkable.

Navona Records is proud to present ROMANCE AL CAMPESINO PORTEÑO, an album threading saxophonist José Antonio Zayas Cabán’s childhood memories with music both old and new. The tunes of his childhood and his culture sonically surround a newly-composed piece, the GRAMMY®-nominated El País Invisible, that addresses Puerto Rico’s political status as a commonwealth of the United States Empire. Featuring Miguel Zenón, Ryan Smith, Casey Rafn, and Zayas Cabán himself, ROMANCE AL CAMPESINO PORTEÑO explores the textures of Puerto Rico and Latin America, and the sounds of both struggle and celebration. “ROMANCE AL CAMPESINO PORTEÑO is an artful scream into the void of forgetting,” says essayist Katheryn Lawson. “We hope you will listen. We hope you will remember.”

What do you get when you tailor both music and lyrics to a tenor of brilliant clarity? A profound, cerebral, sensuous and at times even mystical experience, as demonstrated by vocalist Timothy Stoddard on his riveting new album TAROT. Born out of a year-long, close-knit collaboration between Stoddard, pianist Ellen Fast, and a diverse assortment of composers and librettists, TAROT proves the Aristotelian assertion that the whole is even more than the sum of its parts. These scintillating new vocal compositions all touch upon the vast mysteries of the great unknown wherever it overlaps with the human condition – be it in love, in death or in the occult. TAROT conjures an enchanting, dizzying, dreamlike universe – and Stoddard’s crystal-clear tenor is the effervescent guide.

On BOWED COLORS 2, violist Brett Deubner tackles a vibrant collection of Bach-inspired compositions for the viola. A bonafide virtuoso of international acclaim, Deubner set his sights on the works of seven American composers, and the result is a dynamic album of showstoppers for the alto voice of the string family. Baroque structure unites with contemporary fervor in this program, and Deubner's solo viola (occasionally accompanied by piano) entwines both, brimming with vigor and precision.

If there is one thing that is important to Richard E Brown, it’s clarity; it would be impossible to listen to any of his compositions without finding one’s emotions immediately and intuitively seized, no explanations necessary. Brown’s music is at once neoclassical and aesthetic, and his selection of TRIOS & SONATINAS makes for a perfect introduction. Aforementioned clarity is also the secret ingredient which allows Brown to breezily and naturally unite polar opposites: the Western classical piano trio with Korean folk themes, the simple sonatina form with musical complexity, and the frail violin and resounding horn as equals in another trio. Simplicity is supposedly the ultimate form of sophistication, and TRIOS & SONATINAS makes a strong point indeed.