• A Hopeful Place

    Catalog #: NV6045

    Release Date: June 10, 2016

    21st Century
    Orchestral
    Vocal Music
    String Orchestra
    Voice

    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.

  • The Vocal Music Of Alan Beeler

    Catalog #: NV6049

    Release Date: July 8, 2016

    21st Century
    Liturgical
    Vocal Music
    Choir
    Voice

    The music of Alan Beeler (1939-2016) is frequently a compact, tightly focused one, presenting sharp contrasts of color and mood in the context of clear, direct compositional structures. Although noticeably influenced by artistic movements in Europe and America during the first half of the 20th century, Beeler’s musical voice is an identifiable one – crisp, bold, and pointedly quirky.

  • The Road Of Promise

    Catalog #: NV6059

    Release Date: November 18, 2016

    20th Century
    Opera
    Stage Works
    Choir
    Voice

    THE ROAD OF PROMISE represents a concert adaptation of Kurt Weill’s 1937 opera-oratorio The Eternal Road. Performed by members of the New York City-based performing arts organization MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale), under the baton of Ted Sperling, this pseudo-allegorical work was conceived by European Jewish emigrants in the US as an attempt to inform the American public about Adolf Hitler’s persecution of German Jews.

  • Cadence

    Catalog #: NV6061

    Release Date: October 14, 2016

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Liturgical
    Vocal Music
    Piano
    Voice

    CADENCE, the new vocal music compilation from Navona Records, offers a set of inspired, emotive premiere recordings by composers Christopher J. Hoh, David Kirtley, Joanne D. Carey, and Timothy Kramer in works juxtaposing the ethereal and the earthy, the diaphanous and the muscular, and the serene and the agile.

  • The Great God Pan

    Catalog #: NV6115

    Release Date: August 25, 2017

    21st Century
    Opera
    Stage Works
    Voice

    Chicago-based composer Ross Crean’s opera The Great God Pan soars in this new release, the first collaboration between the composer and PARMA recordings. The Great God Pan takes its story from an eponymous 1890 novella by Welsh author Arthur Machen, which explores themes of scientific hubris, transcendental medicine, and unexplainable supernatural behavior. Impressively, Crean adapted Machen’s narrative into the work’s libretto himself, an ambitious and rare undertaking for a composer. Crean’s familiarity with the story shows through in the emotional resonance of his music, which matches and communicates the character’s concerns and feelings with unflinching precision.

  • Loose, Wet, Perforated

    Catalog #: NV6124

    Release Date: October 13, 2017

    21st Century
    Opera
    Stage Works
    Voice

    Composer Nicholas Vines’ surreal opera Loose, Wet, Perforated comes to life in this Navona Records release. Commissioned by the Boston-based experimental opera company Guerilla Opera, and premiered in 2011, this recording coincides with a new production of Loose, Wet, Perforated that involves video projection and audience interaction.

  • Ask the Moon

    Catalog #: NV6133

    Release Date: January 12, 2018

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Piano
    Voice

    Composer Garth Baxter makes his PARMA debut with a collection of his exquisite works for voice entitled Ask the Moon. This album is about the human condition and the pursuit of light in darkness. A setting of Sara Teasdale’s “Nights Without Sleep,” for voice and piano commences the album’s journey of introspection.

  • No Enemy but Winter and Rough Weather

    Catalog #: NV6134

    Release Date: January 12, 2018

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Vocal Music
    Voice

    Even the most fearful of the cold will draw warmth from Joe Summer’s comforting NO ENEMY BUT WINTER AND ROUGH WEATHER, the sixth album honoring The Shakespeare Concerts Series, of which he is founder and executive director. Track 1 is Summer’s own Concert Overture for Piano, an icy introduction performed by SangYoung Kim. Following are two settings of “Under the Greenwood Tree.” Track 2 is the inviting setting by William Walton performed by soprano Kathryn Guthrie and pianist John McGinn. Alluring, too, is Track 3 the Erich Wolfgang Korngold setting of the text performed by Kim and mezzo-soprano Thea Lobo. Kim stays at the piano for Track 4—“When Birds Do Sing”—also by  Korngold; Guthrie delivers this spritely tune.

  • She

    Catalog #: NV6150

    Release Date: April 13, 2018

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Vocal Music
    Piano
    Voice

    For her debut album on PARMA recordings SHE, Emily Sternfeld-Dunn serves as the voice of two of history’s strongest female characters. The poetic musings in the lyrics soar with Sternfeld-Dunn’s unmistakable soprano under the current of the tender, delicate melodies performed by pianist Amanda Pfenninger.

  • The Life Before Us

    Catalog #: NV6153

    Release Date: April 13, 2018

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Vocal Music
    Piano
    Voice

    Bearing musical witness to the versatile talents of two acclaimed northern California-based composers, THE LIFE BEFORE US combines works from John G. Bilotta and Allan Crossman. Bilotta’s cycle of Yeats Songs, performed by baritone Andrew R. White, highlights five of the poet’s shorter lyrics in predominantly bi-tonal or atonal settings. His collection of Renaissance Songs is based on the work of several Elizabethan poets, including John Donne and Thomas Lodge (whose poem “Rosalynde” was the source of Shakespeare’s As You Like It). They’re brilliantly delivered by tenor Justin Marsh.

  • Cosmic Wheel of the Zodiac

    Catalog #: NV6160

    Release Date: May 11, 2018

    21st Century
    Vocal Music
    Choir
    Piano
    Voice

    So many of us wonder about the big picture questions in life. Why are we here? What is the best I can do in my lifetime? COSMIC WHEEL OF THE ZODIAC, with lyrics by astrologer Benita Rainer, presents a cosmic rumination for meditation upon these great questions. These songs guide you through the labyrinth of the Cosmos, which, as perfectly attested to in “As above, so below,” is also the labyrinth of your mind; as what is without has its genesis in what is within.

  • Emergence

    Catalog #: NV6161

    Release Date: May 11, 2018

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Solo Instrumental
    Choir
    Piano
    Voice

    Composer/arranger/lyricist Joanna Estelle presents EMERGENCE: a compilation of works produced under her personal philosophy that “quality music uplifts humankind.” The album includes a generous list of collaborators: John Gordon Armstrong (arranger), Laurence Ewashko (baritone), Morgan Strickland, Susan Elizabeth Brown and Laura Dziubaniuk (soprano), Brandon Wilkie and Roland Gjernes (cello), Frédéric Lacroix (piano), and two choral ensembles, Ewashko Singers and Capital Chamber Choir.

  • 40 Years of Contemporary Music

    Catalog #: NV6172

    Release Date: July 13, 2018

    20th Century
    21st Century
    Chamber
    Large Ensemble
    Percussion
    Voice

    Since 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).

  • Two Cells In Sevilla

    Catalog #: NV6174

    Release Date: August 10, 2018

    21st Century
    Opera
    Voice

    In many ways, Walter Steffens' TWO CELLS IN SEVILLA is a work of polar opposites. Quasi-tonal but modern, traditional but minimalist, the German composer has created an opera uniting two historical protagonists as multi-faceted as the music itself.

  • Pictures of the Hidden

    Catalog #: NV6180

    Release Date: September 14, 2018

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Vocal Music
    String Quartet
    Voice
    Wind Ensemble

    Kamyar Mohajer’s PICTURES OF THE HIDDEN honors the composer’s “four Grand Masters:" Johann Sebastian Bach, Persian poet Hafez, and his parents. In this album, Mohajer shares his artistic upbringing by combining his roots in Persian modality with his love of Western classical music.

  • Butterfly Effects

    Catalog #: NV6196

    Release Date: November 9, 2018

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Flute
    Piano
    Voice

    BUTTERFLY EFFECTS AND OTHER WORKS contains four pieces of music, each with its own personality. Vercoe composed Butterfly Effects using evocative melodies reminiscent of a butterfly in flight. The mood of each of the seven movements, set by the interplay of harp and flute (piccolo, bass, alto, or concert flute), is at times somber and reflective, and at other times bluesy and brilliant. Vercoe experiments with various techniques, sometimes with soaring melodies and trills in the flute, and at other times with more primal, percussive sounds such as beat boxing and key slaps.

  • Whispers of Heavenly Death

    Catalog #: NV6198

    Release Date: November 9, 2018

    21st Century
    Vocal Music
    Piano
    Voice

    First up in this compelling collection is a selection of Walt Whitman's oeuvre, including the work that inspired the album's title, which Perkins' music hauntingly elucidates as the lament of a soul hovering on the brink between life and death. Intriguingly, the composer preserves the mood for the Holy Sonnets by John Donne, a Petrarch-style, English Renaissance collection of sonnets auguring the later Baroque period's preoccupation with the contrast between carnality and mortality.

  • From the Valley of Baca

    Catalog #: NV6208

    Release Date: February 8, 2019

    21st Century
    Chamber
    Solo Instrumental
    Piano
    Violin
    Voice

    Composer David Carpenter’s PARMA debut, FROM THE VALLEY OF BACA, features three works that illustrate the expansive scope of his compositional style. From the lyrical Trio, to the powerfully poetic title work for baritone and piano, to the romantically-inclined Sonata, FROM THE VALLEY OF BACA demonstrates the composer’s ability to express his artistic vision in a wide variety of musical genres.

  • The Mask in the Mirror

    Catalog #: NV6209

    Release Date: February 8, 2019

    21st Century
    Opera
    Piano
    Voice

    Composer Richard Thompson’s three-act opera presents the life behind the name of Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of the most prominent African American poets of the early 20th Century. This dramatic performance, inspired by the hundreds of letters exchanged between Dunbar and his wife, Alice Ruth Moore, removes the masks of fame and social identity to investigate the psychological realities of the people underneath.

  • Suenos De Espana

    Catalog #: NV6211

    Release Date: February 8, 2019

    Romantic
    Vocal Music
    Guitar
    Piano
    Voice

    Soprano Shudong Braamse blends vocal artistry with technical skill in her recording of SUEÑOS DE ESPAÑA. This treasury of Spanish art song relates stories of passionate love, broken promises, and heartfelt prayers. Braamse's performance demonstrates both an understanding of the rich Spanish culture and its 19th-century romantic poetry.