Group photo of Juventas New Music ensemble, with members holding their instruments.

photo: James Jones Photography

Juventas New Music Ensemble is a contemporary chamber group with a special focus on emerging voices. Juventas shares classical music as a vibrant, living art form. They bring audiences music from a diverse array of composers that live in today’s world and respond to our time.

Since its founding in 2005, Juventas has performed the music of more than 300 living composers. The ensemble has earned a reputation as a curator with a keen eye for new talent. It opens doors for composers with top-notch professional performances that present their work in the best possible light.

Recognition for the ensemble’s work includes the American Prize in Opera Performance and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Boston Foundation. Juventas is featured on albums by Innova Recordings, PARMA Recordings, and New Dynamic Records, and has held residencies at Boston Conservatory, Harvard University, Longy School of Music, Middlebury College, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Juventas has a storied history of dynamic collaboration with artists in other media, including dancers, painters, scientists, poets, puppeteers, and robotics engineers. A leader in the field, Juventas also facilitates the Boston New Music Festival, a week-long showcase of Boston’s contemporary music scene.

Albums

Turning Point

Release Date: May 10, 2024
Catalog Number: NV6620
21st Century
Chamber
Solo Instrumental
Electroacoustic
Flute
Voice
Ferdinando DeSena’s TURNING POINT is an experimental odyssey, an enticing collection of music that reimagines the timbres of familiar instruments like flute, piano, the human voice, and more. The title piece uses the audio synthesis technique called “convolution” in which musical audio samples are digitally joined with the sound of cymbal strikes and crashes to dramatic effect. In Sonorous Earth, DeSena conducts a different sort of experiment, this time by scoring for all the lower relatives of a woodwind quintet. An impressive tour de force, TURNING POINT leaves listeners with an expanded sense of what is possible in the realm of chamber music.

Lock & Key Vol. III

Release Date: October 27, 2023
Catalog Number: NV6561
21st Century
Chamber
Clarinet
Percussion
String Quartet
The critically acclaimed LOCK & KEY series once again opens its doors in this third installment, featuring an all-new roster of contemporary composers with an emphasis on new music and its connection to our ever-evolving ethos. Clever arrangements and unique compositional personalities are met with impeccable performances in this release, touching on wide-ranging themes from turmoil to introspection, meditation, and ultimately, unity in the human experience. In an exhilarating burst of energy, LOCK & KEY VOL. III resonates with raw authenticity, a testament to the depth and complexity of our shared humanity.
Brass Tacks 2

Brass Tacks 2

Release Date: September 8, 2023
Catalog Number: NV6556
21st Century
Orchestral
Solo Instrumental
Large Ensemble
Trombone
Trumpet
It's no secret that brass instruments can infuse any musical setting with a hair-raising surge of untamed energy and fervor. On BRASS TACKS VOL 2 from Navona Records, the brass family finds itself the spotlight, showcasing unique tones and unhindered expressiveness that’ve been carefully extracted by a variety of seasoned composers and performers. Spanning joy rides in stylish sports cars, jazz-influenced passages, fusions with percussive instruments, and more, this release explores a wide range of emotions and compositional styles, each uncovering an inherent intensity and bravado that pushes the boundaries of brass repertoire.
Voices of the Land

Voices of the Land

Release Date: September 8, 2023
Catalog Number: NV6553
21st Century
Orchestral
Large Ensemble
VOICES OF THE LAND from composer Christina Rusnak guides listeners on a journey through America, celebrating its landscape and its people. Featuring the Juventas New Music Ensemble, the pieces on this album explore the emotions and experiences of settlers, miners, and indigenous people as they navigated the challenges, triumphs, and indignities of early American history. Drawing inspiration from the Homestead Act and the Klondike Gold Rush to the John Day River and Pine Meadow Ranch, Rusnak’s music weaves together the rhythms and sounds of nature with the stories of the nation’s early inhabitants. This album is in keeping with Rusnak’s other work as a composer, focusing on the intersection of place, nature, culture, history, and art. A powerful tribute to the land and the people who shaped it, VOICES OF THE LAND invites listeners to reflect on the complex history of America.
Shards

Shards

Release Date: August 11, 2023
Catalog Number: NV6549
21st Century
Chamber
Flute
Piano
Violin
Sarah Wallin Huff returns to Navona Records with SHARDS, a wide variety of compositions that explore life, love, death, and the philosophy and mysticism that make up the in-betweens. True to the unique identity of Wallin Huff’s admirable body of work, the compositions building SHARDS structure themselves around brilliantly original frameworks while also delivering a philosophical, thoughtful structure to the album. Wallin Huff sufficiently and spectacularly elaborates upon her identity as a self-described “stream-of-consciousness composer” in this contemplative and explorative journey, a comprehensive album sure to make waves with its mystical nature.

Trios & Sonatinas

Release Date: March 24, 2023
Catalog Number: NV6511
21st Century
Chamber
Piano
Piano Trio
Viola
If there is one thing that is important to Richard E Brown, it’s clarity; it would be impossible to listen to any of his compositions without finding one’s emotions immediately and intuitively seized, no explanations necessary. Brown’s music is at once neoclassical and aesthetic, and his selection of TRIOS & SONATINAS makes for a perfect introduction. Aforementioned clarity is also the secret ingredient which allows Brown to breezily and naturally unite polar opposites: the Western classical piano trio with Korean folk themes, the simple sonatina form with musical complexity, and the frail violin and resounding horn as equals in another trio. Simplicity is supposedly the ultimate form of sophistication, and TRIOS & SONATINAS makes a strong point indeed.

Figments Vol. 3

Release Date: May 27, 2022
Catalog Number: NV6419
21st Century
Chamber
Oboe
Piano Trio
Violin
On FIGMENTS VOL. 3 from Navona Records, the imaginations of composers Jacob E. Goodman, Gary D. Belshaw, Andrew Lewinter, Thomas Mann Jr, Elliott Miles McKinley, and Eleanor Alberga are brought to life in a dynamic breadth of emotional performances, from soothing to exhilarating and natural to mythical. A dynamic assortment of contemporary chamber music, fantasy and reality collide to bring forth exhilarating stories spanning scenes from Greek Mythology to those of spirited animals and surreal scenic portraits. Universal melodies and rhythms find their form, short sketches evoke seasonal qualities, and fantasies float into reality in this collection.

Raspberry Man

Release Date: August 1, 2011
Catalog Number: NV5857
21st Century
Stage Works
Vocal Music
Large Ensemble
RASPBERRY MAN is an Enhanced EP featuring two works for narrator and instrumental ensemble by composer William Vollinger. The first, Raspberry Man, draws its inspiration from a man who made a loud raspberry noise at passersby outside a bar in New York. The second, Emmanuel Changed, draws from the change Vollinger witnessed in a troublesome chorus student.

Sculpting the Air

Release Date: June 1, 2011
Catalog Number: NV5852
20th Century
Chamber
Large Ensemble
Wind Ensemble
SCULPTING THE AIR is a collection of modern works featuring brass and flute instrumentations from composers Samuel Barber, James Adler, Russ Lombardi, Jan Van der Roost, Barry Seroff, Brian Gillett, Juan Sebastian Lach Lau and Richard Crosby. The works on this disc range from a rhapsodic wind quintet originally composed for winds, strings and piano to a musical representation of a familial argument to a spectral piece based on one of Satie's Gymnopédies.