Genre: Orchestral

SPELLS, a new retrospective collection highlighting the music of poet and composer Juli Nunlist, marks a touching journey through the earnest, romantic, and dramatic sounds of the late artist’s compositional language. The album’s works demonstrate Nunlist’s appreciation for tradition and grandeur, and are driven by her remarkable gift for melody and clear fascination with instrumental texture.

TRIPTYCH REVELATION, composer Sergio Cervetti’s seventh album with Navona, presents works from across four decades of his extensive career. Though a fair bit of time separates these pieces, the album’s three works all feature unique explorations of apocalyptic themes, inspired by themes drawn from the New Testament, nineteenth century French literature, and Flemish art of the sixteenth century.

Composer and pianist Jeffrey Jacob returns to Navona Records with REAWAKENING, a collection of varied works for orchestra and chamber ensembles. Jacob’s lush, mystical style pervades the album, often blending his piano’s sound with orchestral arrangements to create rich musical imagery, as in The Loch Before Sunrise and A Mirror Upon the Waters.

One of the central tenets of Albert Camus’ philosophy is the indomitability of the human spirit, a subject on which he famously mused that “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” This quote encapsulates the theme of WINTER’S WARMTH, Navona’s latest orchestral compilation featuring works from John A. Carollo, J.A. Kawarsky, Andrew Schultz, and R. Barry Ulrich. These composers present conceptual pieces that all act as soundtracks to our resiliency during the toughest moments of the human experience.

While speaking on Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole, Op.21, Pyotr Tchaikovsky posited that his colleague “does not strive after profundity, but carefully avoids routine, seeks out new forms, and thinks about musical beauty more than observing established traditions.” Acclaimed violinist Moonkyung Lee endeavors to emulate this approach on her Navona debut TCHAIKOVSKY – WORKS FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA, in which she presents several performances of beloved Tchaikovsky alongside the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Miran Vaupotić.

A persistent goal of Mark John McEncroe is to create compositions that elicit an emotional response, as is echoed in the titles of his works. This is particularly true of the Australian composer’s Navona debut DARK CLOUDS OF LIFE, a conceptual release focused on overcoming addiction and depression, challenges McEncroe has personally struggled with. His sessions in Ostrava, Czech Republic with the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra and pianist Helen Kennedy produced a cornerstone suite and three addendums that capture the essence of the record’s stated purpose.

2016 marks the 50th anniversary of composer Deems Taylor’s death (1885-1966), an opportune time to revisit his music by releasing his previously unrecorded piece Three Century Suite. This piece, in the form of a Baroque dance suite, is delightfully accessible, full of beautiful melodies, exquisite harmonies, and marvelous orchestration. Three Century Suite was performed once before, in Interlochen, Michigan, in 1961, conducted by A. Clyde Roller.

SPARKS, a compilation of orchestral miniature works by several composers, offers a sampling of much of what post-modern, contemporary orchestral music has to offer, and is most interesting to consider in contrast to nineteenth century orchestral transitions. Miniatures, in their brevity, defy the conventional bias that orchestral music must conform to the characteristics of large symphonies. More generally, the works on this album suggest a wide range of influences unique to contemporary postmodernism. These include the aesthetics of midcentury composers, as well as film scores and non-classical genres.

A composer equally accustomed to writing for orchestra, opera, film, theater, chorus, and chamber ensembles, Brian Wilbur Grundstrom’s voice includes a strong affinity for long melodic lines, distinctive tonal harmonic vocabulary, engaging rhythms, skillfully executed counterpoint, and dramatic imagery, all of which are reflected in the five orchestral works which span fourteen years on his debut release with Navona Records, AN ORCHESTRAL JOURNEY, to create a visionary and lyrical expedition that is quite accessible and easily travelled for the listener.

Australian composer, music educator, and pianist Margaret Brandman presents her debut Navona release SENSATIONS, featuring several of her celebrated compositions, each one presenting a unique musical experience and sensation. The Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra skilfully performs the orchestral portion, opening with the joyful Love Brings Change (Adagio for Strings). Pianist Lucie Kaucká joins the orchestra for Lyric Fantasy, an emotional and accessible two-movement work with contrasting moods for piano and strings.

The clichéd trope of the isolated artist toiling over their work in a virtual vacuum, alone and against the trends of the day, is not a new one. But in the case of Paula Diehl, it is as true as it comes. It isn’t an easy task to be a composer, a job which (to paraphrase Aaron Copland) holds few material rewards, and often even fewer good notices in the paper the next morning – it requires an inner strength and conviction in order to persevere through the challenges, be they artistic, financial, or social.

Depicting 12th-century Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar’s dramatic narrative, New York-based composer and GRAMMY-nominated conductor Jonathan Sheffer presents his orchestral work The Conference of the Birds, commissioned for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, on Navona Records. Attar’s poem of the same name is a journey of transformation and conviction, in which the birds of the world seek to find an illustrious leader, ultimately ending with new insight into their spiritual identities. The allegory portrays our own doubts, fears, and faults, how we confront these issues, and how we seek to understand identity and our relationships with other humans, the natural world, and what lies beyond.

The lineage of Western concert music is one which brims with tradition and history, through teachers and pupils, listeners and performers, spanning centuries and continents alike. But one of the common threads which runs through this lineage is the urge by composers, performers, and audiences to all be part of a transcendent emotional experience through music itself.

Music can possess the power to take hold of our emotions, guiding us along an imagined journey that stirs our inner being, a concurrently unique and familiar experience. New York composer Rain Worthington writes music to captivate the listener, creating textural and lyrical worlds that are inhabited by various colors and tones. On DREAM VAPORS, her full-length solo debut on Navona Records, the composer offers a selection of her orchestral works, presenting intense dreams, intangible perceptions, and musically evocative elaborations.

The modern romanticism of composer Craig Morris is one simultaneously deeply personal and broadly meaningful. His albums DREAMS (2011) and CIRCLE OF LOVE (2015), both on the Ravello Records label, in large part deal directly with musical representations of universal emotional states and concepts.

14 concerts, 12 venues, 4 days. The 2014 PARMA Music Festival featured a diverse range of events, from concert performances of orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments, and jazz groups, to an outdoor presentation of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and panel discussions about music licensing and multimedia composition, as well as improvised collaborations between indie rockers and classical instrumentalists.

The most recent recording of music by internationally renowned and critically acclaimed composer, Fredrick Kaufman, is a mystical journey through Kaufman's compositional explorations of the unknown, the natural order, and universal human experience. The two feature works are world premieres of his atmospheric choral & instrumental pieces that depict the cosmos in Stars & Distances and Seven Sisters.

With an innate sense of curiosity and a drive for knowledge, humans constantly push the boundaries of their physical and psychological environments, attempting to break through and discover the unexpected. On his debut Navona Records release ASTRAL TRAVELS, composer and double bassist David Arend explores several frontiers, including perceived boundaries between musical genres, earth and outer space, humanity and nature, and perception and reality.

Occasionally, moments of happiness and comfort can rise from experiences of anxiety and doubt, during which we learn about ourselves and our limits. Composer and pianist Jeffrey Jacob depicts the experiences of struggle and pain, and of triumph and joy on his debut Navona Records release DARKNESS TO LIGHT.

On his debut solo Navona Records release, THE REAL BEELER, composer Alan Beeler presents his refined and distinguishable orchestral voice, exploring various harmonic and melodic forms and structures as well as the serial techniques of the Second Viennese School. In Symphony No. 1 and No. 4, the composer creates intricate atmospheres and moving textural soundscapes, generally derived from the composer's preset tone rows.