Joël-François Durand Geister Kairos Music Olivia De Prato, violin; Victor Lowrie Tafoya, viola; Constance Volk, flute; Szilárd Benes and Katherine Jimoh, clarinet Mivos Quartet, Quatuor Bozzini Ensemble Dal Niente, Michael Lewanski, conductor On Geister, a double-CD release on Kairos, the music of Joël-François Durand receives benchmark performances by some of the best performers in contemporary classical music today. It features works from 2005-2022. Originally from France and currently based in the United States, Durand is Professor of Composition and Director of the School of Music at the University of Washington. Over the course of his career, Durand has
Read moreMarta Sanchez Perpetual Void Intakt CD 421 Jazz pianist and composer Marta Sanchez was born in Madrid and now resides in Brooklyn. She presents eleven originals on her fifth recording, Perpetual Void (Intakt, 2024). Usually Sanchez performs and records with a quintet featuring two saxophonists. Here, in her first trio outing, she is joined by bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Savannah Harris. The leaner lineup works well, as it allows Sanchez abundant room to solo and, moreover, to express elements of the emotional journey that transpired during the time she composed the works on Perpetual Void. She had lost her
Read moreQueen of Hearts Gesualdo Six, Owain Park, director Alasdair Austin, countertenor (final track only) Hyperion Records, 2024 On Queen of Hearts, the low male vocal ensemble Gesualdo Six explores pieces devoted to queens, both the Virgin Mary (in her guise as Queen of Heaven), and queens from England and Continental Europe during the renaissance era. Some of the selections blur identities, linking the saintly actions of earthly monarchs with those of Mary. The Song of Songs, from the Hebrew Bible, has an interesting place in both sacred and secular music of the Renaissance. In liturgical pieces, it is an
Read moreVideo: Guided by Voices: “I Am A Scientist,” 30th Anniversary Version Guided by Voices celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of their album Bee Thousand with a remake of one of their early, most-beloved songs, “I Am A Scientist,” via Rolling Stone. In an interview with RS, frontman and principal songwriter Robert Pollard describes “I Am A Scientist” and Bee Thousand as follows:“The song and the album opened the door for me and allowed me to play rock music for a living.” Prior to that, he was a science teacher. Guided by Voices Strut of Kings GBV Inc. (2024) The ever-prolific
Read moreDonald Berman Ives Avie, 2024 Pianist and scholar Donald Berman has made a special inquiry into the music of American hyper-modernist composers, Charles Ives chief among them. This year marks the sesquicentenary of Ives’s birth, and Berman celebrates the occasion with an Avie CD of the original piano version of St. Guadens (“The Black March”), best known as one of the movements of the orchestra piece Three Places in New England, and his own scholarly edition of the totemic Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord Mass., 1840-1860, usually known by its nickname, the “Concord Sonata.” One of the challenges
Read moreMessiaen Barbara Hannigan, soprano Bertrand Chamayou, piano Charles Sy, tenor; Vilde Frang, violin Alpha (ALPHA1033, 2024) Soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan is an extraordinarily talented and versatile performer. Bertrand Chamayou is a superlative player of the French repertoire. Putting the two together in a recital of vocal works by Olivier Messiaen is inspired programming. The CD’s gestation is detailed in Hannigan’s program note, which describes the two artists’ first meeting and subsequent decision to collaborate. The soprano’s longtime duo partner, Reinbert de Leeuw, was too ill to continue performing, and by the time that Messiaen was recorded, it was
Read moreLukas Foss – Symphony 1 Amy Porter, Flute; Nikki Chooi, Violin Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, JoAnn Falletta, conductor Naxos American Classics Lukas Foss (1922-2009) was an omnivorous composer who, over the course of his career, went through multiple style periods. When he was a teenager, he studied with Hindemith at Yale and then made close contacts at the Berkshire Music Center (now Tanglewood) with Serge Koussivitzky, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein (a lifelong friend and supporter). In the 1940s, his music resembled the Americana and neoclassical styles being pursued by a plethora of American composers. In Ode (1944, revised 1958)
Read moreNiels Lyhne Løkkegaard and Quatuor Bozzini – Colliding Bubbles: Surface Tension and Release (Important) Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard is a composer based in Copenhagen. On his latest EP he joins forces with the premiere Canadian string quartet for new music, Quatuor Bozzini, to create a piece that deals with the perception of bubbles replicating the human experience. In addition to the harmonics played by the strings, the players are required to play harmonicas at the same time. At first blush, this might sound like a gimmick, but the conception of the piece as instability and friction emerging from continuous sound, like
Read moreComposer, vocalist, and instrumentalist Caroline Shaw rejoins Sō Percussion for Rectangles and Circumstance, a new full length recording out today on Nonesuch. To celebrate the release, a video for the lead-off single, “Sing On,” has been released on YouTube today. Rectangles and Circumstance combines imaginative percussion writing with abundant electronics and Shaw’s pop-adjacent singing. Shaw takes on an assured and distinctive role. Her voice is sometimes treated to make it nearly unrecognizable. Elsewhere, her singing is presented in its natural, fetchingly lyrical guise. Sō has developed a sound world that befits Shaw’s heterogeneous compositions, using a plethora of pitched percussion, drums, and electronics. Whether
Read moreNancy Galbraith Everything Flows BMOP Sound Published by Sequenza 21 Nancy Galbraith has taught for a number of years at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. During that time, she has created a body of compelling orchestral works. Colorfully scored and post-minimal in approach, Galbraith’s music has received prominent performances but been relatively underserved on recording. As a corrective, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose, has recorded for BMOPsound three of her concertos, all written in the past eight years. Violin Concerto No. 1 (2017) was premiered by its soloist here, Alyssa Wang, with the Carnegie Mellon
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