Three Perspectives
Catalog #: NV6279
Release Date: January 22, 2021
21st CenturyChamberPiano TrioThe piano trio Pangaea Chamber Players explores the fickle nexus between music and visual art in their Navona release THREE PERSPECTIVES. While the ensemble's flute-cello-piano setup might evoke ideas of Baroque music, there are no such reminiscences to be found. Instead, the young trio presents three new compositions by contemporary composers. Although recent works, all pieces on THREE PERSPECTIVES are tonal – perhaps owing to their descriptive, illustrative purpose.
Three Scenes
Catalog #: NV6238
Release Date: July 12, 2019
21st CenturyChamberBrass EnsemblePercussionSaxophoneAward-winning composer Elliott McKinley’s music has been performed throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. On THREE SCENES, he presents three powerful pieces of modern chamber music of the caliber that has earned him global recognition.
Three String Quartets
Catalog #: NV6048
Release Date: July 8, 2016
21st CenturyChamberString QuartetComposer Jeffrey Stadelman presents three string quartets on Navona Records, each offering distinct perspectives on his career and versatile style of composition. Performed by the New England String Quartet, these works illustrate the composer’s intense, lyrical, and sensuous modes of expression.
Through Glass
Catalog #: NV6289
Release Date: June 12, 2020
21st CenturyChamberSolo InstrumentalPianoPiano TrioNavona Records presents some of the finest American voices of modern serious music on THROUGH GLASS, a brand-new compilation of recently-created works for piano – both solo and in chamber setups.
Time And The Hour
Catalog #: NV6439
Release Date: July 22, 2022
21st CenturyChamberCelloFlutePianoTIME AND THE HOUR from Israeli-born composer Ayala Asherov is a selection of chamber works tied together by the theme of the passing of time. Asherov’s acknowledgment of time moving us forward in constant motion is a significant piece of the composer’s compositional process, translated into her work with titles such as Seasons and Crystal Watch. This carefully curated collection of Asherov’s pieces commissioned and performed throughout the years provides a thorough taste of the composer’s communicative and powerful musical style.
Time is the Sea We Swim In
Catalog #: NV6604
Release Date: March 1, 2024
21st CenturyChamberJazzPianoSaxophoneString QuartetFollowing her first Navona Records release, IKARUS AMONG THE STARS, New York-based composer Debra Kaye has curated an ever-varying mix of chamber and solo pieces with TIME IS THE SEA WE SWIM IN. Kaye’s inspirations are seemingly endless, from the improvisatory piano solo At Liberty (1988) where Kaye returns to her roots as a performer, to the jazzy Colossus 1067 (2021) written to accompany Gus Foster’s time-distorting panoramic photograph taken on a roller coaster with a rotary camera; from current events to the poetry of Zen monks, European Romanticism to a philosophical, even metaphysical meditation on time and the creative process. Kaye’s eclectic collection showcases and reconciles heterogeneous influences by way of a sonic language that is wholly, uncompromisingly her own. Her confident embrace of diverse sounds and styles invite and challenge listeners to join her on this voyage of discovery and dip a toe into this sea that we all swim in.
Time, Still
Catalog #: NV5998
Release Date: April 14, 2015
21st CenturyChamberSolo InstrumentalChoirPianoSaxophoneDon't mistake the inference in the title of Emmy Award-winning composer Bruce Babcock's multi-faceted new Navona Records album TIME, STILL - the music is serious and contemplative at points to be sure, but the effervescence of Babcock's metrically shifting style and sound percolates to the surface throughout.
Toccata Miami
Catalog #: NV6433
Release Date: June 10, 2022
21st CenturyChamberSolo InstrumentalGuitarPianoViolinComposer Ferdinando DeSena is no stranger to variation; from his previous electro-acoustic concoctions to this dynamic blend of chamber orchestrations in TOCCATA MIAMI, a world of enticing conversation between tonal opposites begs to be uncovered in these expressive compositions. Oboe and piano dance in an ominous sonata soundscape, harps and flutes seek to sooth in Three Attitudes, and solo piano works shine with a latin flair in the album’s titular track.
Transfiguration
Catalog #: NV6355
Release Date: July 23, 2021
21st CenturyChamberViolaFrom online performances to benefit albums, musicians kept their art alive throughout the most dire days of the coronavirus pandemic. Among them are composer Stanley Grill and violist Brett Deubner, who collaborated via remote recording sessions to transform Grill’s multi-instrumental chamber pieces into an intimate collection of multilayered works for viola. The resulting album, TRANSFIGURATION, showcases a singular connection between composer and performer.
Transit Voices
Catalog #: NV6332
Release Date: February 12, 2021
21st CenturyChamberCelloClarinetPianoNavona Records is proud to release TRANSIT VOICES from composer Carl Vollrath. Featuring a series of works for clarinet, the album grapples with existential questions; who were the humans of prehistory, and what defining qualities do our spirits share in common with theirs? Vollrath imagines these clarinet pieces as found archaeological objects, voices from long ago that have somehow made their way to our present-day ears. Inspired by Andrew Robinson's book Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts, the music plums a cavernous underworld for clues toward a deeper understanding of human existence.
Transits
Catalog #: NV6001
Release Date: May 1, 2015
21st CenturyChamberClarinetFluteTRANSITS: Minimal to Mayhem, his fifth full Navona Records release, is an abridged sequence of five works from a set time and concrete place that maps composer Sergio Cervetti's creative progression over four decades of composing.
Transmutation
Catalog #: NV6559
Release Date: October 27, 2023
21st CenturyChamberVocal MusicOrchestraPiano TrioVoiceTransmutation: “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.
Transparent Boundaries
Catalog #: NV6290
Release Date: June 12, 2020
21st CenturyChamberVocal MusicCelloPianoVoiceFor 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.
Trio Celeste
Catalog #: NV6030
Release Date: March 11, 2016
21st CenturyChamberPiano TrioThe nucleus of the program on Trio Céleste’s self-titled debut release on Navona Records is a collection of variations on the well-known and stately opening theme of the second movement from Beethoven’s Piano Trio in G Major, Op. 1, No. 2. Consisting of Iryna Krechkovsky, violin; Ross Gasworth, cello; and Kevin Kwan Loucks, piano; the Trio has been praised as “a first-class ensemble” (Orange County Register) and “exuberant and technically dazzling” (Long Beach Gazette) and “one of the best young chamber groups around today” (Philip Setzer, Emerson String Quartet).
Trios & Sonatinas
Catalog #: NV6511
Release Date: March 24, 2023
21st CenturyChamberPianoPiano TrioViolaIf 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.
Turbulent Sky
Catalog #: NV6012
Release Date: November 13, 2015
21st CenturyChamberOrchestralString OrchestraNavona Records’ compilation of contemporary works for orchestra, TURBULENT SKY, presents works by composers Fred Broer, William Coble, and Stephen Yip that explore and celebrate the dramatic fanfare, intricate textures, and variety of timbres possible with the orchestra.
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.
Two by Three
Catalog #: NV6601
Release Date: February 2, 2024
21st CenturyChamberSolo InstrumentalFlutePianoIf there were two words to describe Nathan Froebe’s musical output, they would be: exuberant and ruminative. In fact, these two attributes might arrive at a tie on TWO BY THREE, a selection of energetic freetonal, programmatic pieces for a myriad of flutes and piano. The thoughtful nature of these works is apparent even in their respective titles: Meditation, Three Scenes for Wind and Hammer, and Essay for Piccolo, Piano, and Alto Flute, to name but a few. Meticulously composed by Froebe and impeccably performed by flutists Jessica Raposo and Mihoko Watanabe with pianist Michael Seregow, TWO BY THREE sweeps through the mind like a fresh breeze on a crisp April morning.
Unbridled
Catalog #: NV5958
Release Date: June 1, 2014
21st CenturyChamberSolo InstrumentalLarge EnsembleString QuartetViolinWall Street. Salvador Dali. Gustav Mahler. Some of the sources of inspiration for composer Sergio Cervetti on his fourth solo Navona release, UNBRIDLED. Spanning over forty years of his career, the works represent Cervetti's continued aesthetic of combining traditional and postmodern techniques and instrumentation.