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.
Kleemation
Catalog #: NV6658s2
Release Date: December 13, 2024
21st CenturyChamberSolo InstrumentalOboeViolinComposer Michael K. Slayton continues his quest of lending a musical voice to the paintings of 20th century artists with KLEEMATION, the second single from his upcoming Navona Records album, SAGE BRUSHES. Commissioned by oboist Jared Hauser, this piece features responses to the highly imaginative and evocative work of the Swiss-German Expressionist/Cubist/Surrealist artist Paul Klee (1879–1940). The twinkle-in-the-eye of “Senecio,” the stark, cubed contrasts of “Ancient Harmony,” and the optical expressive energy of “Kettledrummer” served as catalysts.
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.
Angels Rising
Catalog #: NV6657
Release Date: August 16, 2024
20th Century21st CenturyConcertosPianoWind EnsembleFollowing their 2023 United Kingdom Remembrance tour, The Syracuse University Wind Ensemble returns to the airwaves with two world premiere recordings on ANGELS RISING: MUSIC OF REMEMBRANCE AND LIGHT. The ensemble has commissioned dozens of new works for their genre, the two most recent being Frank Ticheli’s Angels Rising and Energy and Light by Syracuse’s own Natalie Draper, both of which commemorate the 35 Syracuse University students lost in the 1988 Lockerbie bombings. Draper and Ticheli’s tributes to the 270 total lives lost in the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 are bookended by performances of George Gershwin’s An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue in this Navona Records release, and are all available to experience in both stereo and Dolby Atmos immersive audio formats.
In the Company of Music
Catalog #: NV6656
Release Date: September 6, 2024
21st CenturySolo InstrumentalFlute“Masterful music invites performers to accept and rise to all challenges,” says flutist Lindsey Goodman, who along with pianist Clare Longendyke brings an exhilarating cross section of contemporary chamber works to life on IN THE COMPANY OF MUSIC. From evocative miniatures to pensive, multi-movement works, this Navona Records release showcases the breadth of compositional styles in which the flute can shine, exploring traditional expressions, the avant garde, and everywhere in between. These pieces are remarkably diverse, and so are the inspirations behind them — from major events in human history to pure musical curiosity and more.
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.
Midwest Piano Sonatas
Catalog #: NV6653
Release Date: August 2, 2024
21st CenturySolo InstrumentalPianoPianist Kristín Jónína Taylor dives deep into the lyrical, evocative, and hauntingly beautiful works of three leading composers and educators from the Midwest United States on MIDWEST PIANO SONATAS. A blend of neo-classical and neo-romantic styles are presented in this Navona Records release, exploring compositional concepts ranging from bitonality to mixed meters, and life’s inscrutable emotions, particularly, anguish and bereavement. These profound spectrums of musicality and feeling are conveyed with stunning clarity by Taylor, an award-winning pianist lauded for her mesmerizing performances of nuance and depth.
Royal Coronation Overture
Catalog #: NV6652
Release Date: August 16, 2024
21st CenturyOrchestralOrchestraOrganROYAL CORONATION OVERTURE by Dr. Patrick Brill is a contemporary take on the program overture model of the 19th Century, a genre most commonly heard in concert hall performances, as well as church services and royal coronation ceremonies. Dr. Brill, an expert in Medieval and Renaissance music, capitalized on his extensive background in classical music and experience crafting large-scale orchestral pieces to compose this opulent overture. This studio recording of the piece is also available in a Dolby Atmos immersive audio format, placing listeners directly into the lavish fanfare by which this music is historically accompanied. Carrying on the 200-year tradition of the program overture, this work is a majestic delight for the modern ear.
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.
Dream Vapors Suite (Live)
Catalog #: NV6649
Release Date: August 16, 2024
21st CenturyOrchestralOrchestraMusic can possess the power to take hold of our emotions, guiding us along an imagined journey that stirs our inner being, a concurrently unique and familiar experience. Critically-acclaimed composer Rain Worthington writes music to captivate the listener, creating textural and lyrical worlds that are inhabited by various colors and tones. In this live performance of her piece Dream Vapors Suite from the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, the composer presents intense dreams, intangible perceptions, and musically evocative elaborations.
Ways You Went
Catalog #: NV6648
Release Date: September 20, 2024
21st CenturyVocal MusicChoirOrganSaxophoneRecently named Musical America's 2024 Ensemble of the Year, Donald Nally's chamber choir The Crossing stuns with their latest studio album, WAYS YOU WENT. Vibrant, exhilarating, and uplifting, this new release features original compositions by composers Martin Bresnick and Mason Bates. WAYS YOU WENT is a yin and yang of interconnected opposites. Bresnick's song cycle Self-Portraits 1964 exclusively deals with the life and personality of a single man: young and intellectual, working as a trash collector to put himself through college, and escaping into literature at night. Bates' trilogy Mass Transmission takes a telegraph conversation between mother and daughter in the 1920s and sets it to music, contrasting the warmth of human communication and a mechanistic medium. Both of these cycles, one introspective, the other socially oriented, are snapshots of a time gone by. The Crossing brings both to life with perfect mastery.
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.
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.
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.
Ochre
Catalog #: NV6643
Release Date: July 12, 2024
21st CenturyVocal MusicChoirDisplaying their characteristic, fearless virtuosity, multiple-GRAMMY®-winning ensemble The Crossing offers a new album born of cultural resonance, with new works by three of the most creative composers working today. The performances on OCHRE are both rigorous and supple, moving from the intriguing, foggy textures of George Lewis to Caroline Shaw’s primarily wordless, quiet contemplation of the Earth, to Ayanna Woods’ inspired determination to live in a better world. This is The Crossing’s 13th release on Navona Records, and it is a special one. Topical, timely, and forward-looking, these performances of the 24-voice ensemble led by conductor Donald Nally demonstrate why Gramophone recently observed the group's ability to “sustain long lines, clarify layers of dense counterpoint and pinpoint the expressive intent of every detail, however minute or cataclysmic."
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.
On an Overgrown Path
Catalog #: NV6640
Release Date: June 14, 2024
20th Century21st CenturySolo InstrumentalPianoON 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.
Felt, Metal, Wood
Catalog #: NV6639
Release Date: June 28, 2024
21st CenturyConcertosPianoSaxophoneFELT, METAL, WOOD, featuring John Mackey’s Concerto for Soprano Saxophone, is a thorough exploration into the many expressive and technical facets of the Saxophone. Mackey, who has garnered widespread critical acclaim as one of today’s leading composers, notes that the saxophone is a hybrid instrument; it is essentially a brass instrument with a woodwind reed. With that in mind, Mackey composed this concerto by focusing several movements on unique characteristics of the instrument. After the prelude comes “Felt,” a movement focused on the keys of the instrument and all the ways a player can use them as an interface. “Metal,” the third movement, demonstrates the saxophone’s soaring range in a lyrical, introspective manner, while “Wood,” a tango highlighting the saxophone’s strengths in an intimate setting, transitions to an exhilarating display of virtuosity in the “Finale.” Performed by saxophonist Stephen Page and pianist Liz Ames, Mackey stirs a greater appreciation for the versatile instrument in this release.
Oboe in Hues
Catalog #: NV6638
Release Date: June 28, 2024
21st CenturySolo InstrumentalOboeWhat 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.