Catalog

PARMA Recordings, together with the esteemed Croatian Chamber Orchestra, is proud to release BENEATH THE TIDE, a reflection on human emotion and experience through a collection of five concertos. As the title suggests, BENEATH THE TIDE looks under the surface, examining underlying human realities that rise to the surface with the arrival of life’s changes.

BEE-SHARP HONEYBEE from composer Rae Howell is an immersive journey through the secret life of bees, performed here by the Sunwrae String Orchestra, intertwined with the hum of a live honeybee hive. It is the foundation of a large-scale multimedia work, featuring live animated projections synchronized with the music, and a real-time stream of honeybees, filmed, amplified, and intermittently fed through the live performance. Developed from extensive research into bee (buzz) rhythm, pitch, and "waggle dance" patterns (the sophisticated system of communication between bees, detailing the distance and direction of nectar in the environment), BEE-SHARP HONEYBEE magnifies the subtle intricacies of the beehive, highlighting these distinct patterns, identified through field recordings made during the initial research and development of the project.

Reed Chamberlin’s AVE MARIS STELLA is a rare 21st-century recasting of beloved motets and secular works from the 14th and 16th centuries. Works by du Fay, Gabrieli, de Machaut, and more are reimagined through a double lens — the time-held tradition of setting renaissance work for wind bands, and, especially to the genre, the addition of post-production audio effects. AVE MARIS STELLA’s impressive variety of auditory experiences are recorded at such a high level of performance that it is nothing but a complete delight, from track to track and as a whole body of work.

AT THE PRECIPICE, the third release on Navona Records featuring the music of the late composer Yves Ramette (1921-2012), showcases four world premiere recordings of the composer's works. Recorded with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra in the summer of 2013 after his passing, these four orchestral pieces follow on the heels of Ramette's albums CASCADING INTO REVERIE for piano and orchestra and WITH PASSION for solo piano, and offer interesting insight into not only the composer himself but also the times in which he worked.

With an innate sense of curiosity and a drive for knowledge, humans constantly push the boundaries of their physical and psychological environments, attempting to break through and discover the unexpected. On his debut Navona Records release ASTRAL TRAVELS, composer and double bassist David Arend explores several frontiers, including perceived boundaries between musical genres, earth and outer space, humanity and nature, and perception and reality.

A composer equally accustomed to writing for orchestra, opera, film, theater, chorus, and chamber ensembles, Brian Wilbur Grundstrom’s voice includes a strong affinity for long melodic lines, distinctive tonal harmonic vocabulary, engaging rhythms, skillfully executed counterpoint, and dramatic imagery, all of which are reflected in the five orchestral works which span fourteen years on his debut release with Navona Records, AN ORCHESTRAL JOURNEY, to create a visionary and lyrical expedition that is quite accessible and easily travelled for the listener.

AMERICAN SCENES, from composer Samuel A. Livingston is, as its title suggests, a painterly tribute to America. The album’s title piece, Three American Scenes, is a three-movement suite that expresses the grandeur of the American west, the serenity of a mountain lake at dawn, and the bustle of a busy day in a large city. The album opens with Celebrating the Fourth, which depicts an American Fourth of July celebration. The final two selections feature works for concert band with a solo instrument – the flute, in Silvertube Variations, and the clarinet, in Balkan Dance. In that last selection, Livingston turns his attention beyond our shores, to the harmonies and rhythms of the folk music of the Balkan countries, especially Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Altogether, AMERICAN SCENES is thoughtfully-crafted and unabashedly jubilant, expressing appreciation for America and the world beyond with refreshing sincerity.

A champion of repertoire and lauded by the New York Times as a virtuoso, double bassist Richard Fredrickson brings his instrument to the forefront on ALL AMERICAN BASS, an album of works composed specifically for him. Joining the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Kirk Trevor, Fredrickson flawlessly navigates the works by Vittorio Giannini, John Carbon, and William Thomas McKinley. From Giannini’s darkly profound and agitated Psalm 130 to Carbon’s Endangered Species, which portrays the double bass as a wild and powerful beast that gracefully reins itself in, to McKinley’s modern, somber-then-lively Passacaglia, Fredrickson’s command of tone and melody creates an unforgettable recording and serves as an encapsulation of the instrument’s potential.

What do you get when you cross a composer, a bassist, and a conductor? It's no joke, and neither is Aleksander Sternfeld-Dunn. It is, however, a piece called Joker's Wild which opens up Sternfeld-Dunn's debut Navona Records release FIREWORKS, and it's a doozy, a crackerjack double concertino expertly crafted and written to showcase the talents of the Cameradschaft Duo. The piece won Best in Show from the Global Music Awards in 2012.

AL COMBATE, the debut release from the Chicago Arts Orchestra (Javier José Mendoza, Artistic Director), highlights New Spain as a mecca of baroque and galant music through a handpicked selection of works from two of eighteenth-century colonial Mexico's most prolific and influential composers, whose music explores the period's transatlantic cultural flow from Europe to New Spain: Ignacio Jerusalem, a master of the galant style who brought modern European styles and techniques across the Atlantic; and Santiago Billoni, whose harmonic experimentation and erudite voice helped shape late baroque repertoire.

The music of Irish composer Gráinne Mulvey explores the juxtaposition of polar opposites, pitting the real against the synthetic in finely crafted and thought-provoking works. AKANOS, an all-Mulvey album on Navona Records, includes seven of her works.

Composer Dan Redfeld presents A HOPEFUL PLACE: A SONG CYCLE FOR SOPRANO & CHAMBER ORCHESTRA, his debut release on Navona records showcasing his nine-movement song cycle of the same name. A Hopeful Place follows a woman’s journey through life from birth to death—a life-cycle-song-cycle, as librettist John Gabriel Koladziej describes the piece.

Jonathan Sacks composer “Incantations: Book V” Recorded August 2003 with the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra. Conducted by Carl St. Clair “Litanies” and “Ghost Horses” Recorded December 2006 at Futura Productions in Boston, MA. Produced by Bob Lord “5th (S)eason” Recorded July 2000 [...]

It is tempting to compare Matej Meštrović's compositional style to his great predecessors in the late-Romantic tradition. After all, much of the Croatian composer's style and techniques would be right at home in Rachmaninoff’s concertos, Tchaikovsky's works, or Prokofiev's neoclassicism; and the name of the album's first work, Danube Rhapsody, naturally evokes associations with Smetana's similarly river-themed Vltava. Add to all of this that Meštrović, like most of his great musical ancestors, is a talented virtuoso pianist, and it's easy to see why 3 RHAPSODIES is bound to meet with enthusiasm.