Denmark Vesey
Catalog #: NV6676
Release Date: November 8, 2024
21st CenturyChamberString QuartetComposer Thomas Cabaniss and the Charleston Symphony String Quartet bring a new and exquisite recording of Cabaniss's third, fourth, and sixth string quartets to Navona Records. A complementary record to the previously released FOUR ELEMENTS, DENMARK VESEY completes Cabaniss's six-quartet series. Bearing endless musical complexities masked in an air of exquisite melodic simplicity, the Charleston Symphony String Quartet effectively captures the evolving story between each movement and each quartet. Just as easily as they lean into the melancholy lines of the sixth, whose narrative tells the viscerally emotional story of Denmark Vesey, a slave revolt leader, they capture the harsh futuristic elements of the fourth and the flowing dance movements of the third. No doubt, DENMARK VESEY again proves Cabaniss to be a composer of wide variety, a collaboration that cements his legacy in the string ensemble genre.
Second Nature
Catalog #: NV6672
Release Date: November 8, 2024
21st CenturyChamberBrass EnsembleAs a musical ensemble and non-profit organization, Calliope Brass flourishes in its joint mission of cultivating both entertainment and education. And with the freshly-commissioned contemporary works on SECOND NATURE, this vibrant ensemble proves that innovation lies at the very core of its existence. Leaning heavily into tailor-made commissions can be an artistic gamble for any musical group, but in this case it pays off. The compositions’ motives are diverse in their representations of nature — meditations on mushrooms, Greek mythology, and modern dating, to name a few — but the performance given by Calliope Brass is one thing only: comprehensively flawless.
From the Sea to the Stars
Catalog #: NV6666
Release Date: October 25, 2024
20th Century21st CenturyChamberOboePianoOutside of Russian ballets and Mozart symphonies, the oboe is an instrument that generally does not get a lot of credit. But on FROM THE SEA TO THE STARS, the instrument is thrust into the spotlight it deserves. The driving force? Accomplished American oboists Lindsay Flowers and Andrew Parker. Center stage, it turns out, is a surprisingly merited place for the oboe and its bigger sister, the English horn — especially in contemporary composition. Flowers and Parker have curated a moody selection of beautiful, minimalist pieces that allow the respective instruments to shine on their own — accompanied only here and there by a pleasingly subtle piano. Delicate, lyrical, and utterly charming.
Esfahân
Catalog #: NV6647
Release Date: October 25, 2024
21st CenturyFolk MusicChamberGuitarString QuartetVoiceESFAHÂN features eight cross-cultural compositions by Reza Vali. Blending Persian and Western classical traditions, the album is the first commercial recording of these works. Highlights include Hajiani, for Karnâ and electronics, as well as Sornâ (Folk Songs, Set No. 17) for Persian wind instruments and ensemble, featuring traditional Persian wind instruments. Highlights also include Four Persian Mystic Poems for mezzo-soprano and ensemble, and Esfahân for string quartet. Vali’s music is both highly innovative and deeply rooted in tradition; the unique modal system he uses borrows from the ancient Persian Dastgâh-Maqâm system, which was rediscovered through his extensive study of Iranian folk music. Despite eschewing Western approaches to counterpoint and musical form, Vali’s music is polyphonic and highly structured. The result is a compelling marriage of East and West, old and new.
Ink Traces
Catalog #: NV6670
Release Date: October 4, 2024
21st CenturyChamberSolo InstrumentalPianoViolinInspiring curiosity, cultural interaction, and deep listening, INK TRACES reflects violinist Julia Glenn’s 15-year journey exploring Chinese culture and interactions between Chinese language and music, fueled by frequent trips and three years living in China. This Navona Records release reflects a greater interdisciplinary approach seen in Chinese arts - one that blends poetry, dance, painting, calligraphy, and music and shows fascinating interchanges between gesture and sound. The title, inspired in part by Pan Kai's Ink Traces of Sigh for solo violin, is a nod to such interplay. The album explores three threads: probing the musical-linguistic play possible in the music of Chinese speakers, broadening perspectives on Chinese music, and fostering cultural dialogue between China and the United States. It features works by Chinese and Chinese-speaking composers, stretching traditional Western musical boundaries to create rich, imaginative soundscapes and processes.
Polyglot
Catalog #: NV6655
Release Date: October 4, 2024
21st CenturyRomanticChamberCelloClarinetPianoEric Schultz’s masterful clarinet playing speaks in new and known tongues on POLYGLOT, a concept album celebrating music as a language of cultural identity and the self. A strong advocate of living composers, Schultz opens with an engrossing performance of Iván Enrique Rodríguez’s Sonata Santera, exploring the development and evolution of three Caribbean Santeria rituals. Schultz captures the enchanting, mystical nature of the rituals between the rhythmic, driving movements, occasionally accompanied by percussive elements. Schultz follows with Críptico no. 9: DAVЯTHAN, an interpretive piece that centralizes language and text-setting at the core of its composition. Shortly followed is Johnny Navarro’s romantic Danzón, a nostalgic work punctuated by fleeting moments of sensuality. The same intimacy is carried into Chiayu Hsu’s Summer Night in a Deep Valley, showcasing meditative episodes on the natural beauty expressed in Guo Xi’s Chinese landscape paintings. Likewise, Gabriel Bouche Caro’s Escenas explores a meditation on self-identity and its existence as a product of culture, the clarinet never languishing in melancholic passages, but always remaining reflective and curious. POLYGLOT culminates with the Brahms Trio, Op. 114, a composition inspired by the clarinet playing of friend Richard Mühlfeld, an inspiration so strong it served to pull the composer from retirement. To Schultz, a quarterfinalist for the 2025 GRAMMY® Music Educator of the Year, music is a hallmark of metamorphosis that drives cultural change across history, the performer and composer working in tandem to create something inspired and new — speaking each other’s language, you might say.
New Enchantments
Catalog #: NV6665
Release Date: September 20, 2024
21st CenturyRomanticChamberBaroque EnsembleBassoonPianoFairy tales have deeply and consistently fascinated humanity throughout the centuries. Enter NEW ENCHANTMENTS, bassoonist Cornelia Sommer's exploration of magical archetypes that features music by living composers along with new arrangements by Sommer herself across six world premiere recordings. Sommer has also written a prize-winning dissertation on the subject of fairy tales in music, adding further depth to this performance that showcases her musical virtuosity, great feeling for nuance, lyrical storytelling, and profound expertise to illuminate every last detail. Enriching and engrossing, this album could not be more aptly titled.
Mirórs
Catalog #: NV6658S1
Release Date: September 20, 2024
21st CenturyChamberClarinetFluteViolinNavona Records is pleased to present Mirórs, the first single from composer Michael Slayton’s forthcoming album SAGE BRUSHES. Mirórs seeks to honor the visionary work of Spanish painter and sculptor Joan Miró (1893–1983). Each movement highlights the flute, violin, and clarinet, respectively, attempting to aurally render the thematic heartbeat of Miró’s work.
Voices from the Other Side
Catalog #: NV6662
Release Date: September 6, 2024
20th Century21st CenturyChamberVocal MusicCelloVoiceVOICES FROM THE OTHER SIDE is a collection of evocative chamber works performed by cello octet — several with soprano soloist Gabrielle Haigh. Included are Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli-style Fratres as well as his L’abbé Agathon, inspired by the remains of a 12th-century leper hospital near Beauvais, France; as well as the beloved Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 by Heitor Villa-Lobos. Two works by American composer Margi Griebling-Haigh are featured: the title piece is a setting of three otherworldly poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and a single-movement work called Cantilena allows the cellists to shine individually as well as together. Griebling-Haigh’s music has been praised for memorable melodies and strong rhythms; her colorful scoring and harmonic language have been compared to Barber, Ravel, and Poulenc.
LiveWire and Meeting of Minds
Catalog #: NV6660
Release Date: September 6, 2024
21st CenturyChamberString QuartetAnthony Brandt’s LIVEWIRE and MEETING OF MINDS features two innovative dance scores created for collaborations with NobleMotion Dance and the University of Houston IUCRC BRAIN Center that were part performance and part scientific experiment. In order to better understand how brains interact, several dancers wore mobile brain-body imaging devices, with live visualizations of the neural synchrony between their brains displayed in real time. Brandt’s music offers “sonic brain scans” that explore our mental lives and how we engage with others, from our most automated behavior to our most flexible and dynamic. These string quartets celebrate the human mind and the way it shapes our reality.
Book of Brass
Catalog #: NV6651
Release Date: August 16, 2024
21st CenturyChamberBrass EnsembleLyrebird Brass presents the world premieres of five new contemporary brass quintets in BOOK OF BRASS, an album shaking up the scene with an assortment of boundary-pushing works by highly lauded and awarded composers. Opening with three time GRAMMY® award winner Jennifer Higdon’s Book of Brass, this titular composition can be played and listened to in any order one pleases. From the intense energy of “Ramp Up” to the puzzling, slowly unfolding maze of “Acrostic,” Higdon certainly knows how to sell a story. Alice Humphries is no stranger to puzzlings in Uncertain Meditations, which considers ideas in isolation, reflecting on their vast possibilities. Reflection is at the core of Grace-Evangeline Mason’s poetic As Bronze, too, and found even in Kate Neal’s Fanfare, which, composed during the 2020 lockdown period, challenges what a fanfare represents. Alan Holley rounds out the recording with The Goodchild Canzonas, a four movement work exploring atriums, cathedrals, and the heavens above, but perhaps most appropriately: the Lyrebird. BOOK OF BRASS is a winning installment in Lyrebird Brass's already impressive oeuvre, pulling out all the stops with spirited fanfares and contemplative odes.
The Book of Spells
Catalog #: NV6644
Release Date: August 2, 2024
21st CenturyChamberClarinetFluteOboePassion and intellect meld in THE BOOK OF SPELLS, the Merian Ensemble’s hotly anticipated debut album. The album is comprised entirely of world premiere recordings, with works by Clarice Assad, Nicole Chamberlain, Jennifer Higdon, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Soon Hee Newbold, Kimberly R. Osberg, and Lynne Plowman, each but one* commissioned by the Merian Ensemble. The Book of Spells offers a gripping and intimate portrait of modern chamber music, performed with brilliance and precision by an ensemble of world-class soloists who are dedicated to the elevation of women’s voices in classical music. Clarice Assad’s titular composition, The Book of Spells, opens the recording with three movements “inspired by rituals that deal with magic, which is done to achieve a particular goal, righteous or wicked” (Assad). The album continues, weaving together elements of folklore, faith, and science, with Nicole Chamberlain’s Atalanta, Lynne Plowman’s Small World, Jennifer Higdon’s The Sound of Light, Mary Kouyoumdjian’s A Boy and a Makeshift Toy*, Kimberly Osberg’s Just Another Climb, Soon Hee Newbold’s Alis Volat Propriis (She Flies With Her Own Wings), and Clarice Assad’s Solais. And in meridian, Leilehua Lanzilotti explores the themes of metamorphosis, inspired by the Merian Ensemble’s namesake, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), a German entomologist, naturalist, and scientific illustrator, whose work is featured on the album’s cover and book. Taken as a whole, The Book of Spells offers a finely-drawn portrait of 21st century chamber music — the compelling repertoire, composers, and performers — while also highlighting the still-underrepresented voices of women in classical music. *Mary Kouyoumdjian’s A Boy and a Makeshift Toy was originally commissioned by Michael Hall as a piece for viola and piano; it is presented here in a new Merian Ensemble arrangement.
Joy, Too
Catalog #: NV6642
Release Date: August 2, 2024
21st CenturyChamberVocal MusicPianoVoiceMusic about grief is a bit like medicine: most people don't reach for it until they find themselves in need. The Vertex Duo, composed of mezzo-soprano Kristin Gornstein and pianist Jeremy Chan, might sympathize, having created just this medicine for the soul in the wake of some of their darkest biographical hours. The result is JOY, TOO, a curiously wonderful collection of melancholy songs — so lyrical and beautiful, one doesn't have to be sad to want to listen to it. In case of misfortune however, it may well be sanity-saving: with its stirring melodies and poignant lyrics, JOY, TOO serves as a testament to the universal experience of sorrow, offering solace and understanding to those grappling with its impact.
Resurgence
Catalog #: NV6646
Release Date: July 26, 2024
21st CenturyChamberCelloPianoWhat happens when two world class performers unite in their efforts to carry on the traditions and collaborative spirit of classical music? Cellist Ovidiu Marinescu and pianist Noreen Cassidy-Polera share a shining example on RESURGENCE. Featuring the works of several contemporary composers, this Navona Records release offers reflections on emergence and transformation, the throes of long distance love, the great artists of our past and present, the fusion of several musical influences, and more. Leveraging refined elegance in sound and raw virtuosity in approach, RESURGENCE is a thoughtful exploration into the expressive capabilities of the cello and the piano both as individual entities and a cohesive voice.
Unseen Paths
Catalog #: NV6633
Release Date: June 14, 2024
21st CenturyChamberVocal MusicClarinetFluteVoiceNavona Records is pleased to present UNSEEN PATHS, a variegated collection of works by late composer Lawrence K. Moss. Well known for his diverse musical oeuvre spanning vocal, instrumental, and electronic works, UNSEEN PATHS shows us a deeper look into his mastery in the chamber music genre, from flute and piano duos to music for string quartet, operas, and more. As a valediction to a remarkable career, this collection is a timeless tribute to Moss' enduring legacy, inviting listeners to savor the depth and brilliance of his artistic voice.
The Music of Melissa C. Shiflett
Catalog #: NV6621
Release Date: June 14, 2024
21st CenturyChamberPianoVoiceTHE MUSIC OF MELISSA C. SHIFLETT is an impressive showcase of the lyricism that contemporary American serious music has to offer. As she reflects upon natural beauty, Melissa C. Shiflett nonchalantly intertwines the musical with the poetic in this release. The Horses’ Quintet is a captivating and physically riveting quintet for English horn, violin, cello, piano, and percussion, an homage to the expansive Indiana plains, five spirited horses, and the equestrian artistry displayed by their nimble trainer. The second piece, a three-part song cycle titled The Rose Saga, showcases three lyric sopranos and pianist. Slightly more urban, this piece chronicles the fate of a rosebush in a Manhattan garden over several years. Using simple but incredibly deft strokes, Shiflett creates a musical environment for her private outdoor worlds that is highly theatrical. She has endowed these fleeting, triumphant scenes with an artistic sense of permanence.
Elevate
Catalog #: NV6625
Release Date: May 10, 2024
21st CenturyChamberFluteString QuartetViolinNavona Records is pleased to present ELEVATE, the second installment of All Classical Radio’s award-winning Recording Inclusivity Initiative. A response to the industry’s inequities in classical music recordings, the RII highlights music from underrepresented communities to build a more diverse and inclusive soundscape around the world. Bringing to life the sonatas of Yuko Uébayashi and Nobu Kōda and a string quartet by Damien Geter, ELEVATE pairs deserving compositional talent with several of today’s leading classical performers — a synergetic testament to the power of uplifting each other in the arts.
Turning Point
Catalog #: NV6620
Release Date: May 10, 2024
21st CenturyChamberSolo InstrumentalElectroacousticFluteVoiceFerdinando DeSena’s TURNING POINT is an experimental odyssey, an enticing collection of music that reimagines the timbres of familiar instruments like flute, piano, the human voice, and more. The title piece uses the audio synthesis technique called “convolution” in which musical audio samples are digitally joined with the sound of cymbal strikes and crashes to dramatic effect. In Sonorous Earth, DeSena conducts a different sort of experiment, this time by scoring for all the lower relatives of a woodwind quintet. An impressive tour de force, TURNING POINT leaves listeners with an expanded sense of what is possible in the realm of chamber music.
Songs for a New Century
Catalog #: NV6623
Release Date: May 3, 2024
21st CenturyRomanticChamberSolo InstrumentalCelloPianoViolinThe singing quality of string instruments ties together SONGS FOR A NEW CENTURY, a program featuring both world premiere recordings of new music commissioned for the artists and world premiere recordings of masterpieces by Mendelssohn. The program opens with a set of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, beginning with the Opus 109 written by the composer for cello and piano. It continues with a set of arrangements for cello and piano, some recorded for the first time, by the 19th century cellist Alfredo Piatti, a personal friend of Mendelssohn’s upon whose cello Jonathan Miller plays. Gabriela Lena Frank’s Operetta for violin and cello, the composer writes, expands upon Mendelssohn’s concept of the “song without words,” creating opera without words that evokes scenes and characters through singing music for the duo of violin (Lucia Lin) and cello. Scott Wheeler’s second cello sonata, Songs Without Words, was inspired by Miller’s singing cello tone. Finally, Judith Weir’s Three Chorales for cello and piano meditate on religious poetry, departing from hymn texts –– and in the third Chorale, a melody from Hildegard of Bingen –– in a triptych that evokes the human condition.
Four Sonatas for Flute & Piano
Catalog #: NV6611
Release Date: April 5, 2024
21st CenturyRomanticChamberFlutePianoVirtuoso Linda Wiley performs four flute sonatas from 19th and 20th century composers on FOUR SONATAS FOR FLUTE AND PIANO. The album fulfills her aspiration to record pieces that are both challenging and also personally meaningful to her. These include Sonata For Flute And Piano by Francis Poulenc, Sonate Pour Flûte Et Piano by Jindřich Feld, Sonata In A Major by César Franck, and Recuerdos De Mexico, Sonata for Flute and Piano by Arthur Gottschalk. Many of the works share a connection to legendary French flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal; Wiley’s flute mentor Jan Cole studied under Rampal for five years, and Wiley is proud to carry on her musical lineage in this Navona Records release.