Catalog

Navona Records presents LAST NOTES, an album tracing the musical footprint of composer Eric Biddington’s compositional history through revived works of the past. Some written nearly 30 years ago, the unearthed gems featured on this album speak in a fresh tone, effusing elegance and thoughtfulness across varied orchestrations and moods. From the tender sentiments teeming in Peace for Julie to the playful nature of A Little Dance and his deeply moving passages for bassoon and piano, Biddington covers a wide gamut of expression in these chamber works.

KEYBOARD3 Navona's second all-Sergio Cervetti album takes the listener to a world of kinetic and emotionally charged sound forged from three keyboard instruments. Sometimes it is the pianoforte, the king of instruments or the double keyboard of the harpsichord.

In the nearly 200 years since its composition for voice and piano, many have tackled Schubert’s Winterreise. Steinway artist Hilary Demske, however, transforms the cycle into a series of works for solo piano on JOURNEY FOR ONE on Navona Records, focusing on the instrument’s poignant ability to represent the original composition’s lyricism and complexity. By freely experimenting with melodic fragments and manipulating the placement and length of gestures—along with translating the meaning of Müller’s poetry to music—Demske adds a fresh, unique perspective to classic repertoire.

On her debut Navona Records album, JOHN CAGE: SONATAS AND INTERLUDES / IN A LANDSCAPE, pianist Kate Boyd performs two pieces by John Cage (1912-1992) that exemplify his range of compositional intuition and invention.

Curt Cacioppo composer Impressioni venexiane (Impressions of Venice) Andrea Vio, violin Alberto Battiston, violin Luca Morassutti, viola Angelo Zanin, cello Recorded May 20, 2009, Preganziol (TV), Italy Sulla Via dei Sette Ponti (On the Road of the Seven Bridges) Recorded June 1, 2009, [...]

Navona Live is proud to announce the release of INDIANA COLLECTANEA, which celebrates and preserves composer Michael G. Cunningham’s residency at Indiana University School of Music from 1969-1973. This live recording of Cunningham’s work comes on the heels of his acclaimed album ECUMENICAL SPIRIT from Navona Live earlier this year. This latest release captures a significant moment in time, when Cunningham’s work helped channel the talents of 30 burgeoning musicians.

Acclaimed piano four-hand duo Dana Muller and Gary Steigerwalt come together once more for IN YOUR HEAD, a collection featuring the work of six composers that highlights both fresh compositional talents and earlier successful works. Each piece demonstrates the unique synergy between the two performers. With twice the hands, twice the talent, and twice the interpretation, the piano is pushed to dynamic and sonoric extremes.

Introducing the album is Lee Actor’s Duo for Violin and Cello. The track, which won the Eva Thompson Phillips Award for Composition in 1979, is a short, textured, and powerful piece. In ABA form, the energy of the stringed instruments swings like a parabola from the height of sharp, angular rhythms down into deep and gentle expressions and builds up to a sharp, explosive climax.

ICE & FIRE, the debut Navona Records album by Stephen Scott, showcases a variety of works for bowed piano. The album features The Bowed Piano Ensemble, an experimental piano group based at Colorado College in Colorado Springs that was founded by Scott.

With her Navona debut I CLOSE MY EYES IN ORDER TO SEE, accomplished Canadian flutist Sara Hahn demonstrates her exceptional sensitivity for emotional nuance coupled with great virtuosic capability, but most of all: the healing power of music itself. Hahn, currently the Principal Flutist for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, is rightly known for her refined and beautiful tone, and I CLOSE MY EYES TO SEE indubitably attests to this. But extraordinarily, there is even more to Hahn's musicianship: An exquisite ability to get right into the heart of a composition.

Ruth Lomon (1930-2017), Composer and Resident Scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and Composer-in-Residence with Boston Secession, and her friend Iris Graffman Wenglin, Florida-based pianist and lecturer, came to a stunning realization after Ruth traveled to London, where she looked for music written by women. There were very few scores to be found, and even fewer that were properly printed. With that, the duo set out on a mission to uncover the buried works of female composers over the years and bring them deserved recognition. The results of this endeavor come to life in HOMMAGE TO WOMEN COMPOSERS.

Nicholas Vines presents HIPSTER ZOMBIES FROM MARS, his third PARMA Recordings album. This collection of three major piano works by Dr. Vines was recorded on location at Cornell University with artist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough at the piano. For all of the flash one might expect from the album title, Vines bypasses gimmickry in order to capture something sophisticated.

HEAVY PEDAL is an all-organ disc featuring the compositions of Tadd Russo, Curt Cacioppo, Ron Nagorcka, Wilhelm Middleschulte, and Michael Summers performed by organists Michael Kraft, Robert Gallagher, David Scott Hamnes, Brink Bush, and Karel Martinek. As the title implies, the pieces on this disc are on the heavier side of classical music, reaching climaxes with real stopping power.

When listening to keyboardist Patrick Hawkins playing an 1831 William Geib square piano on his debut Navona Records release, HAYDN AND THE ENGLISH LADY, one can imagine men and women in elegant silk gowns and suits gathered in an opulently decorated drawing room of an 18th-century English estate. This collection of piano works by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and Maria Hester Park (1760-1813) illustrate the diversity and refinement of Classical repertoire.

Navona Records artist Bruce Leto’s newest album of solo piano works synthesizes the tribulations and perseverance of the human spirit in the age of COVID-19 while also taking a look at some of the more bewildering aspects of the global response. GOMITOLO! — named after the Italian expression that loosely translates to “the incomprehensibility of human life" — is a fitting tribute to the European countries heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, featuring solo piano performances of works by Poulenc, Ravel, and fellow PARMA artist Curt Cacioppo.

Described by the Oskar Morawetz Award jurors as a “legend” of Canadian musicians, Christina Petrowska Quilico joins lauded composer and champion of new music David Jaeger on GAMES OF THE NIGHT WIND, a dreamy musical landscape premiering 12 of Jaeger’s original nocturnes in addition to seven 20th century solo piano works. Each nocturne invokes a different spirit of the night: deception, memory, redemption, realization, and many more, each brought to fruition by Petrowska Quilico’s evocative musicality. Sharp staccato and an increasingly startled momentum drives the image of an encounter with the shadows in Nocturne 11, The Alarm Bell, a weighty contrast to the deep rubato and heaving nostalgia in Nocturne 1, In Memory Of — yet both hail from the same thematic darkness that expands across the entirety of the album. These sensations are ever present in Tōru Takemitsu’s starry Les yeux clos, Alexandre Tansman’s complex and lyrical nocturnes, and two works by Górecki, whose Lullaby sings GAMES OF THE NIGHT WIND off to sleep. GAMES OF THE NIGHT WIND plays to the unfettered wildness of the night, a force of nature encapsulated in every aspect of Petrowska Quilico and Jaeger’s musical and poetic collaboration, an elegant exploration for the night owl in us all.

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.

Composer, author, and educator Fred Broer presents his String Quartet No. 8, as well as four colorful piano works, on his Navona release FRED BROER: MUSIC FOR STRING QUARTET AND PIANO SOLO. Broer’s adventurous String Quartet No. 8 is performed masterfully by the New England String Quartet  and is dedicated to the memory of his good friend Hilda Ayer.

FOREVER BEELER represents a sampling of composer Alan Beeler’s prolific output throughout his musical career, which is generally defined by his commitment to compositional craft and structural clarity. The works featured on this album also reveal a playfulness lying just under the surface of Beeler’s compositional perspective. This quality of Beeler’s music is most notable in the seven sonatas for piano, often accompanied by another instrument, included in FOREVER BEELER.

Composer and pianist Antonija Pacek impresses with FOREVER, an album of soulful, aesthetic piano music – in a minimalist style somewhere between classical and popular music. Pacek, who holds a degree in psychology, is no stranger to the conditio humana, and while the temperament of her pieces is distinctly melancholy, their gentle expressiveness spans the whole gamut of human emotions.