• Words Adorned

    Catalog #: NV6356

    Release Date: July 9, 2021

    21st Century
    Vocal Music
    Voice

    The Grammy-winning professional chamber choir The Crossing, Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, and Navona Records present WORDS ADORNED. Conducted by Donald Nally, with Takht musical direction by Hanna Khoury, the combined forces interpret lush scores from Kinan Abou-afach and Kareem Roustom; the music is at times driven and passionate, at others mystical and lyrical, responding to ancient Andalusian poetry in the Muwashshah tradition. The takht – masterfully handling the oud, qanun, violin, cello, and percussion – guides the kaleidoscopic sounds and colors in these poems of love, revelry, and war, with additional solo work by the virtuosic singer Dalal Abu Amneh. True to their commitment to honor tradition while constantly blazing new ground, The Crossing’s latest offering is steeped in history, deeply relevant to modern listeners, and bridges cultures seamlessly.

  • Window Panes

    Catalog #: NV6304

    Release Date: August 14, 2020

    21st Century
    Orchestral
    Solo Instrumental
    Orchestra
    Piano
    Voice

    Navona presents WINDOW PANES, a cross section of works by compositional veteran Elizabeth R. Austin. The collection is the first to comprise a lifetime of the American's works into one album: and as the title insinuates, it is an album full of interwoven associations, subconscious reminiscences and intense melodic reflections, with decades of labor condensed into an hour of listening.

  • Wild Swans

    Wild Swans

    Catalog #: NV6547

    Release Date: August 11, 2023

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Vocal Music
    Clarinet
    Harp
    Piano
    Voice

    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!

  • Who is Sylvia

    Catalog #: NV6282

    Release Date: May 8, 2020

    21st Century
    Vocal Music
    Piano
    String Quartet
    Voice

    Joseph Summer’s WHO IS SYLVIA, new from Navona Records, is a collection of Shakespeare’s works set to music that will make you question everything you thought you learned in high school English. Summer believes that the famous playwright’s true identity is not William Shakespeare but rather Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Many of the songs found on WHO IS SYLVIA come from Summer’s aptly-named The Oxford Songs, a collection of scenes, sonnets, songs, and Summer’s original opera version of Hamlet. These are paired with music from the likes of Schubert and Schumann to create a dynamic and colorful musical experience worthy of the Bard himself.

  • Whispers of Heavenly Death

    Catalog #: NV6198

    Release Date: November 9, 2018

    21st Century
    Vocal Music
    Piano
    Voice

    First up in this compelling collection is a selection of Walt Whitman's oeuvre, including the work that inspired the album's title, which Perkins' music hauntingly elucidates as the lament of a soul hovering on the brink between life and death. Intriguingly, the composer preserves the mood for the Holy Sonnets by John Donne, a Petrarch-style, English Renaissance collection of sonnets auguring the later Baroque period's preoccupation with the contrast between carnality and mortality.

  • Voix Suprême: Mélodies of Jules Massenet

    Catalog #: NV6017

    Release Date: January 8, 2016

    Romantic
    Vocal Music
    Voice

    On her debut release on Navona Records, VOIX SUPRÊME: MÉLODIES OF JULES MASSENET, coloratura soprano Shudong Braamse presents a selection of Romantic French art songs, illustrating Massenet’s arresting motives, graceful vocal lines, and well-placed accompaniments. Exhibiting Massenet’s meticulous style, Braamse creates tender and dynamic imagery, intertwining punctuated piano lines with her sensitive voice, which suggests the colors of a flute, while turbulent textures denote climactic moments of emotion.

  • Voices of Earth and Air Vol V

    Voices of Earth and Air Vol V

    Catalog #: NV6538

    Release Date: August 25, 2023

    21st Century
    Vocal Music
    Choir
    Piano
    Voice

    Navona Records presents VOICES OF EARTH AND AIR VOL V, a dynamic album showcasing the human voice and the powerful storytelling capabilities that vocal music wields. Six contemporary composers from around the world offer breathtaking works that stir the senses in this release, from hauntingly beautiful ballads to uplifting choral arrangements and climactic moments of triumph. With intimate settings of the human voice with instrumental accompaniment, full-fledged choir works, and everything in between, the composers and performers on VOICES OF EARTH AND AIR VOL V deliver unique and impactful moments that are sure to strike a chord.

  • Unholy Sonnets

    Catalog #: NV6578

    Release Date: November 10, 2023

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Vocal Music
    Piano
    Voice
    Wind Ensemble

    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.

  • Two Cells In Sevilla

    Catalog #: NV6174

    Release Date: August 10, 2018

    21st Century
    Opera
    Voice

    In many ways, Walter Steffens' TWO CELLS IN SEVILLA is a work of polar opposites. Quasi-tonal but modern, traditional but minimalist, the German composer has created an opera uniting two historical protagonists as multi-faceted as the music itself.

  • Tristan Und Isolde

    Catalog #: NV6321

    Release Date: November 20, 2020

    Romantic
    Opera
    Stage Works
    Orchestra
    Voice

    The Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava stuns with a new recording of Richard Wagner's three-act opera TRISTAN AND ISOLDE. Skillfully conducted by German conductor Robert Reimer, this new, vibrant performance is likely to claim its place as one of the reference recordings of Wagner's innovative work.

  • Transparent Boundaries

    Catalog #: NV6290

    Release Date: June 12, 2020

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Vocal Music
    Cello
    Piano
    Voice

    For centuries, writers have documented the awe brought about by the pristine wilderness and untamed expanses of the American Midwest and West. Three authors in particular—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson—beautifully documented the boundless optimism and sense of opportunity that the country’s vast natural resources inspired and heralded a new era of American thought.

  • Transmutation

    Catalog #: NV6559

    Release Date: October 27, 2023

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Vocal Music
    Orchestra
    Piano Trio
    Voice

    Transmutation: “to change or alter in form, appearance, or nature, especially to a higher form.” Joanna Estelle embodies this definition in her deeply personal and profound compositions on TRANSMUTATION, a communal effort featuring various talented performers coming together to transmute their message to you. With music as vulnerable and exposed as the stories it tells, TRANSMUTATION is a reflection on the patterns of life through periods of both rain and shine, and the constants that keep us grounded through the changes that they bring. Estelle’s message is clear: to allow for change is to allow for healing.

  • Through Time and Place

    Catalog #: NV6273

    Release Date: March 13, 2020

    20th Century
    21st Century
    Orchestral
    Orchestra
    Voice

    PARMA is proud to present THROUGH TIME AND PLACE, an ambitious cross-section of James Lentini's extensive catalog. The award-winning guitarist and composer impresses with massive tonal landscapes which can be considered exemplary in contemporary American serious music. THROUGH TIME AND PLACE's title is aptly chosen: the album contains a collection of previously unreleased recordings made over the course of Lentini's long career.

  • Three Songs to Poems

    Catalog #: NV6617

    Release Date: April 5, 2024

    21st Century
    Vocal Music
    Piano
    Voice

    THREE SONGS TO POEMS brings to life poems written by clinical psychiatrist Dr. Frank Clark set to music by Gordon (Dick) Goodwin. The themes are as emotionally complex as life itself, and so is the music. The pieces illuminate the reflections of a son whose mother suffers from dementia, the joys of becoming a father, as well as the healing of an emotionally neglected child. Heart-wrenchingly performed by tenor Johnnie Felder and pianist Winifred Goodwin, this brief but complete set of songs is bound to leave a lasting impression.

  • The Vocal Music Of Alan Beeler

    Catalog #: NV6049

    Release Date: July 8, 2016

    21st Century
    Liturgical
    Vocal Music
    Choir
    Voice

    The music of Alan Beeler (1939-2016) is frequently a compact, tightly focused one, presenting sharp contrasts of color and mood in the context of clear, direct compositional structures. Although noticeably influenced by artistic movements in Europe and America during the first half of the 20th century, Beeler’s musical voice is an identifiable one – crisp, bold, and pointedly quirky.

  • The Road Of Promise

    Catalog #: NV6059

    Release Date: November 18, 2016

    20th Century
    Opera
    Stage Works
    Choir
    Voice

    THE ROAD OF PROMISE represents a concert adaptation of Kurt Weill’s 1937 opera-oratorio The Eternal Road. Performed by members of the New York City-based performing arts organization MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale), under the baton of Ted Sperling, this pseudo-allegorical work was conceived by European Jewish emigrants in the US as an attempt to inform the American public about Adolf Hitler’s persecution of German Jews.

  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

    Catalog #: NV6590

    Release Date: February 2, 2024

    21st Century
    Concertos
    Orchestral
    Orchestra
    Voice

    Renowned composer Gustav Hoyer comes to Navona Records with an ambitious and harrowing seven-part orchestral setting of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. Hoyer melds the spoken word and musical text-setting traditions into a hauntingly atmospheric narrative concerto, the Budapest Film Orchestra coming to life as supernatural forces and creatures in the text. Meanwhile, the narrator speaks of the Mariner’s eternal penance, a stark contrast to the roiling orchestral timbres that puts listeners in the shoes of the frightened wedding guest fated to hear the Mariner’s tale. An undoubtedly ghoulish but incredibly sophisticated musical illustration of Coleridge’s famed narrative, Hoyer is no-holds-barred in his talent for the narrative orchestra, producing a musical journey packed with all the intensity and horror of the text from which it hails.

  • The Priestess of Morphine

    Catalog #: NV6343

    Release Date: March 12, 2021

    21st Century
    Opera
    Cello
    Violin
    Voice

    On THE PRIESTESS OF MORPHINE, composer Rosśa Crean and librettist Aiden K. Feltkamp create a beautifully haunting portrait of a Gertrud Günther, a young Jewish lesbian caught between her two selves during the Third Reich, who bravely sought her inner truth and passions while forced to live in the shadows.

  • The Mask in the Mirror

    Catalog #: NV6209

    Release Date: February 8, 2019

    21st Century
    Opera
    Piano
    Voice

    Composer Richard Thompson’s three-act opera presents the life behind the name of Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of the most prominent African American poets of the early 20th Century. This dramatic performance, inspired by the hundreds of letters exchanged between Dunbar and his wife, Alice Ruth Moore, removes the masks of fame and social identity to investigate the psychological realities of the people underneath.

  • The Life Before Us

    Catalog #: NV6153

    Release Date: April 13, 2018

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Vocal Music
    Piano
    Voice

    Bearing musical witness to the versatile talents of two acclaimed northern California-based composers, THE LIFE BEFORE US combines works from John G. Bilotta and Allan Crossman. Bilotta’s cycle of Yeats Songs, performed by baritone Andrew R. White, highlights five of the poet’s shorter lyrics in predominantly bi-tonal or atonal settings. His collection of Renaissance Songs is based on the work of several Elizabethan poets, including John Donne and Thomas Lodge (whose poem “Rosalynde” was the source of Shakespeare’s As You Like It). They’re brilliantly delivered by tenor Justin Marsh.