Fight for Light
Catalog #: NV6459
Release Date: October 28, 2022
21st CenturyConcertosOrchestraPercussionPianoOn FIGHT FOR LIGHT, Dutch composer Jesse Passenier explores the peripheries of jazz and classical, marrying the two genres together through symphonic music. The music presents a struggle for strength, goodness, and clarity, in which moments for great energy and urgency give way to quiet purity. Containing three works by Passenier: Piano Concerto No. 1 "Levensdrift” (a Dutch word meaning “the primal urge to live”); Vibraphone & Marimba Concerto No. 1 "Becoming the Colour"; and Duo for Vibraphone & Piano “Unraveling Confusion,” these pieces taken together as a whole reveal Passenier’s breadth as a composer, offering a musical commentary on the realities we face in today’s society.
Conversing With Spirits
Catalog #: NV6540
Release Date: July 28, 2023
21st CenturyChamberSolo InstrumentalPercussionPianoSaxophoneFall immersed into a collection of innovative stories and sounds on David Colson’s CONVERSING WITH SPIRITS. Colson’s distinctive push-and-pull textures are both an inviting and invigorating in the aptly named Un raz-de-marée de terreur et de joie (A tidal wave of terror and of joy) for bari sax and marimba, a welcome that drifts into a call back to classical trumpet repertoire: the long lamentations and surges of havoc discovered within Duo for Trumpet and Piano. This being closely followed by Ghost Music, a virtuosic marimba solo featuring Matthew Coley, a composition most reminiscent of uncanny whisperings in shadowy atmospheres—no doubt with a touch of whimsy, and a whimsy that is no stranger to the nature of cats, or more specifically, Cat Tales, a touching tongue-in-cheek collection of saxophone and piano vignettes invoking the personality of eight cats familiar to Colson. The River within Us concludes the collection, an at-once bubbly and fluttering two-movement work featuring the Western Michigan University Percussion Ensemble. Treat yourself to CONVERSING WITH SPIRITS, and enjoy the endless surprises it has to offer.
40 Years of Contemporary Music
Catalog #: NV6172
Release Date: July 13, 2018
20th Century21st CenturyChamberLarge EnsemblePercussionVoiceSince composer, conductor and musicologist Alicia Terzian founded Grupos Encuentros in 1978, the six-person group has garnered international acclaim for its success at bringing the music of avant-garde Argentinian and Latin American composers to the world. On 40 YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC, their debut recording for NAVONA RECORDS, the group combines compositions from such well-known Latin American composers as Heitor Villa-Lobos, Alberto Ginaslera, and Terzian herself with works by an international array of composers that ranges from Anton Webern (Germany) to Luciano Berio (Italy) to Franz Schreker (Austria) to Pierre Boulez (France).