Catalog

Santa Barbara-based composer Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927) is a fixture in the Californian classical music community, having received commissions and performances from orchestras and ensembles throughout the state and worked throughout her career to advance the musical community.

The highly lauded and honored USD Chamber Singers, directed by Dr. David Holdhusen, bear a message of resilience to Navona Records with their newest release OUT OF THE ASHES, a collection of beloved choral works given a refreshing new voice. Featuring choral favorites like Biebl’s Ave Maria, Hogan’s Ain’t That Good News, and Whitacre’s Sleep, the Chamber Singers, like a phoenix, paint a narrative of rising from the ashes after a time of destruction, rising on the wings of a song. The artists wish that these recordings would provide comfort and reassurance after times of struggle, and offer a modicum of hope to those still facing great challenges of faith and courage. The Chamber Singers have given a new life to treasured gems of the choral repertoire and portray a bright future for artists and listeners alike.

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 the fourth offering in Navona Records' The Shakespeare Concerts Series, ORPHEUS WITH HIS LUTE MADE TREES, executive director and composer Joseph Summer presents original works and pieces by composers from the 18th through the 21st centuries that celebrate the myth of Orpheus.

Composer-performer Giovanni Piacentini’s ORÍGENES is an exploration of the spirit of the Americas through the guitar. Spanish colonizers introduced string instruments like guitars and vihuelas when they arrived in America, which in turn gave rise to a series of indigenous instruments across the continent such as the Colombian tiple, the Mexican jarana, and the Panamanian mejoranera, to name a few. This blending of American and European cultures is at the heart of ORÍGENES. Drawing on the contributions of legendary guitar composers like Manuel M. Ponce, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Astor Piazzolla, Piacentini’s ORÍGENES contributes a fresh perspective to this musical legacy.

Their fourth release with Navona Records, OPENINGS by the Jitro Czech Girls Choir and conductor Jiří Skopal presents the rich beauty of the Czech Republic’s national dances, folk texts, and songs for audiences around the world.

Navona Records presents ONYX, the 29th edition of the acclaimed Society of Composers, Inc. CD Series and the fifth SCI release on the label. Founded in 1965, SCI celebrates their 50 year anniversary with the release of this album, marking their continued dedication to the promotion, performance, understanding, and dissemination of new and contemporary music.

On September 2, 1998, 229 passengers and crew members lost their lives when Swissair Flight 111 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Nova Scotia. Composer Matt Frey, who identified with the Swissair tragedy due to his own brush with a plane malfunction, explores the human relationship to air travel while also commemorating the lives lost in the chamber opera ONE-ELEVEN HEAVY.

ON AN OVERGROWN PATH from pianist Jennifer Elowsky-Fox features music by composers Leoš Janáček and Larry Thomas Bell. Janáček gives the album its title piece, a programmatic work that evokes the composer’s memories from early 20th century Moravia. The piano cycle, performed with masterful sensitivity by Elowsky-Fox, blends the eastern and western cultural influences of the region. Based on hymn tunes included in Bell’s A Hymnbook for Congregational Singing, op. 169, Bell’s Piano Sonata No. 5, A Landscape of Small Ruins, op. 166, was composed in 2020 specifically for Elowsky-Fox. Her performances have been described in print as “buoyant”, “fun” and “gorgeous in all respects,” all sentiments that resonate in this Navona Records release.

U.S. immigrants live in the dualities of cultures and identities. ON & BETWEEN is a musical exploration of the dualities and the accompanying anticipation, agony, pride and compromise – poignantly capturing the states of mind of an immigrant on the journey of home-seeking and assimilation. Award winning composer Zhen Chen explores new possibilities by weaving traditional Chinese music instruments and folk tone with piano and Western style chamber music. A sweeping and at times epic recording, ON & BETWEEN is a masterstroke of sophisticated storytelling performed by a stellar ensemble of musicians.

Composer Carl Vollrath and Navona Records presents OLD & NEW POETRY VOL II, a compelling musical-literary experience featuring the works of seminal poet William Blake and contemporary writer John Gracen Brown. An enticing follow-up to his 2021 release of the same title, Vollrath employs piano and clarinet with various vocal ranges in this recording, each an intimate setting reflecting his close relationship with the text itself. Deeply in tune to nature and captured from the lens of the human experience, Vollrath’s musical response to this poetic language shows his dedication to and passion for these works.

Carl Vollrath’s OLD AND NEW POETRY from Navona Records is a lovingly-prepared setting of the works of seminal poets William Blake and Sara Teasdale, as well as the contemporary writer John Gracen Brown. The verses chosen by Vollrath—including such varied selections as Blake’s “The Fly,” Teasdale’s “Dusk In War Time,” and Brown’s “The Coming of a Summer Rainstorm”—all reflect the composer’s belief in the interdependency of all life on earth. Employing piano, saxophone, and mezzo-soprano, Vollrath thoughtfully pushes tonal boundaries in response to the poetic language.

Argentinian composer, conductor, and scholar Alicia Terzian’s new Navona release OFF THE EDGE is an incredible journey into the heart of the string orchestra. The four works on the album introduce listeners to Terzian’s captivating compositional perspective and enchanting treatment of this ensemble’s sonic potential. Her writing focuses heavily on the drama, nuance, and contrasts accessible through instrumental color, and OFF THE EDGE showcases numerous audacious textures involving the string orchestra, with different percussion instruments,chorus,soloists and voice.

Composer Monica Houghton has a musical and academic resume that is made even more exceptional by her experiences as a true citizen of the world. Her travels around the globe have led her to incorporate non-Western instruments and musical practices into several of her compositions as well as to find inspiration trekking through Peru, or by exploring the remote and desolate areas of the American West. On CHAMBER WORKS, her debut on Navona Records, Houghton incorporates these influences along with many others to deliver eight stunning performances showcased in a variety of musical configurations.

With OF BIRDS AND LEMONS, Navona Records presents the diverse orchestral works of two composers united by their affinity for energetic, stylistic, and rhythmic composition. José Elizondo and David Tanner, whose respective works simultaneously complement and challenge those of the other, share their varied backgrounds and experiences to create a glorious whole with international appeal.

A primeval forest, unaltered by man and teeming with natural greens and ancient oaks, and its power struggle between chaos and order is unearthed in OERBOS from composer Peter Greve. His third volume of all original compositions, the composer offers a wide variety of works for solo, chamber, choral, and orchestral performers, along with a riveting narrative of forest life in the album's titular symphonic poem. Join the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava as they guide you through a turbulent passage of music, beginning with a calm sunrise and ending with an ode to the unity of mankind and nature, a celebratory movement after a ravaging storm.

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.

What do you get when a Puerto Rican-American oboist falls in love with the music of a French oboist-composer? The answer is OBOE IN HUES, on which accomplished oboe virtuoso Nermis Mieses champions rarely-heard compositions for solo oboe by Gilles Silvestrini with astounding empathy and bravado. Silvestrini may hark back to certain traditions by using Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and other Russians as sources of inspiration, but his musical concept is almost non-Western in its focus on exploiting the entire gamut of the instrument. Mieses excels at this challenge. An intriguing exploration of the oboe and all that it is capable of.

Navona Records is proud to present NOVA, the 27th edition of the acclaimed Society of Composers, Inc. CD Series and the third SCI release on Navona. This entry in the series features chamber works by eight SCI composers.

On her new album NOUVELLE VIE, flutist Michelle Batty Stanley and pianist Margaret McDonald breathe new life into classic 19th and 20th century compositions. The duo dream up new interpretations of both familiar French favorites as well as works by lesser known composers.