Genre: Solo Instrumental

Composer Michael K. Slayton continues his quest of lending a musical voice to the paintings of 20th century artists with KLEEMATION, the second single from his upcoming Navona Records album, SAGE BRUSHES. Commissioned by oboist Jared Hauser, this piece features responses to the highly imaginative and evocative work of the Swiss-German Expressionist/Cubist/Surrealist artist Paul Klee (1879–1940). The twinkle-in-the-eye of “Senecio,” the stark, cubed contrasts of “Ancient Harmony,” and the optical expressive energy of “Kettledrummer” served as catalysts.

Inspiring curiosity, cultural interaction, and deep listening, INK TRACES reflects violinist Julia Glenn’s 15-year journey exploring Chinese culture and interactions between Chinese language and music, fueled by frequent trips and three years living in China. This Navona Records release reflects a greater interdisciplinary approach seen in Chinese arts - one that blends poetry, dance, painting, calligraphy, and music and shows fascinating interchanges between gesture and sound. The title, inspired in part by Pan Kai's Ink Traces of Sigh for solo violin, is a nod to such interplay. The album explores three threads: probing the musical-linguistic play possible in the music of Chinese speakers, broadening perspectives on Chinese music, and fostering cultural dialogue between China and the United States. It features works by Chinese and Chinese-speaking composers, stretching traditional Western musical boundaries to create rich, imaginative soundscapes and processes.

“Masterful music invites performers to accept and rise to all challenges,” says flutist Lindsey Goodman, who along with pianist Clare Longendyke brings an exhilarating cross section of contemporary chamber works to life on IN THE COMPANY OF MUSIC. From evocative miniatures to pensive, multi-movement works, this Navona Records release showcases the breadth of compositional styles in which the flute can shine, exploring traditional expressions, the avant garde, and everywhere in between. These pieces are remarkably diverse, and so are the inspirations behind them — from major events in human history to pure musical curiosity and more.

FROM SOMEWHERE by composer Laurie Altman and pianist Clipper Erickson finds common ground between the global and the personal. Altman's compositions — ranging from sonatas and fugues to heartfelt solos — draw on diverse musical influences, including jazz, classical, and boogie. Through music, Altman contemplates the devastating war in Aleppo, the impact of COVID-19, and the death of George Floyd, as well as the most meaningful personal relationships in his own life. At the outset of this recording project, Altman considered where his music comes from; the album’s title is his cheeky reply. Anchored by Erickson's exceptional piano performances, FROM SOMEWHERE transcends the boundaries of classical music to make the personal universal and vice versa.

Pianist Kristín Jónína Taylor dives deep into the lyrical, evocative, and hauntingly beautiful works of three leading composers and educators from the Midwest United States on MIDWEST PIANO SONATAS. A blend of neo-classical and neo-romantic styles are presented in this Navona Records release, exploring compositional concepts ranging from bitonality to mixed meters, and life’s inscrutable emotions, particularly, anguish and bereavement. These profound spectrums of musicality and feeling are conveyed with stunning clarity by Taylor, an award-winning pianist lauded for her mesmerizing performances of nuance and depth.

What do you get when a Puerto Rican-American oboist falls in love with the music of a French oboist-composer? The answer is OBOE IN HUES, on which accomplished oboe virtuoso Nermis Mieses champions rarely-heard compositions for solo oboe by Gilles Silvestrini with astounding empathy and bravado. Silvestrini may hark back to certain traditions by using Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and other Russians as sources of inspiration, but his musical concept is almost non-Western in its focus on exploiting the entire gamut of the instrument. Mieses excels at this challenge. An intriguing exploration of the oboe and all that it is capable of.

ON AN OVERGROWN PATH from pianist Jennifer Elowsky-Fox features music by composers Leoš Janáček and Larry Thomas Bell. Janáček gives the album its title piece, a programmatic work that evokes the composer’s memories from early 20th century Moravia. The piano cycle, performed with masterful sensitivity by Elowsky-Fox, blends the eastern and western cultural influences of the region. Based on hymn tunes included in Bell’s A Hymnbook for Congregational Singing, op. 169, Bell’s Piano Sonata No. 5, A Landscape of Small Ruins, op. 166, was composed in 2020 specifically for Elowsky-Fox. Her performances have been described in print as “buoyant”, “fun” and “gorgeous in all respects,” all sentiments that resonate in this Navona Records release.

Saxophonist Dan Goble and pianist Russell Hirshfield join forces on SECOND FLIGHT to deliver virtuosic performances of works by a variety of today’s leading composers, several of them winners of GRAMMY® awards, the Pulitzer Prize, and more. The title track is Joan Tower’s exhilarating sequel to the popular clarinet piece Wings; written explicitly for the saxophone, echoing the grandeur of flight and the vastness of the human spirit. Jennifer Higdon's dynamic Yes, No, Maybe? captivates with its intricate melodies and compelling rhythms, a testament to her mastery of contemporary composition. James David’s Pradakshina: Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano takes inspiration from the Buddhist architecture of Colorado’s Great Stupa, finding connection between the seemingly disparate composition and improvisation. Three-time Academy Award winner Philip Glass and Pulitzer Prize for Music laureate John Adams contribute pieces that resonate with depth and humanity, while critically-acclaimed composer David Biedenbender's Images offers a glimpse into the ethereal realms of dreams and imagination. Produced by multiple GRAMMY®-winner Judith Sherman, SECOND FLIGHT unites today’s foremost compositional figures with the inimitable talents of Goble and Hirshfield, who celebrate 20 years of collaboration in the arts with this release.

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.

The singing quality of string instruments ties together SONGS FOR A NEW CENTURY, a program featuring both world premiere recordings of new music commissioned for the artists and world premiere recordings of masterpieces by Mendelssohn. The program opens with a set of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, beginning with the Opus 109 written by the composer for cello and piano. It continues with a set of arrangements for cello and piano, some recorded for the first time, by the 19th century cellist Alfredo Piatti, a personal friend of Mendelssohn’s upon whose cello Jonathan Miller plays. Gabriela Lena Frank’s Operetta for violin and cello, the composer writes, expands upon Mendelssohn’s concept of the “song without words,” creating opera without words that evokes scenes and characters through singing music for the duo of violin (Lucia Lin) and cello. Scott Wheeler’s second cello sonata, Songs Without Words, was inspired by Miller’s singing cello tone. Finally, Judith Weir’s Three Chorales for cello and piano meditate on religious poetry, departing from hymn texts –– and in the third Chorale, a melody from Hildegard of Bingen –– in a triptych that evokes the human condition.

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.

From mysterious and elusive moods (such as those in Apparition), to the blues (Drehleier), spiritual motifs (Old Swedes), emotional (Julian’s Song), pensive (Prelude in A Minor & Consolatio), to waltzes (Valses Nobles et Sentimentales), Leto’s latest release is meant to convey poetry; reminiscent of and inspired by his recent wedding, invigorating Costa Rican Honeymoon, and dedicated to the upcoming birth of his son in June 2024. He masterfully draws upon poetic elements throughout, using vivid imagery, deep emotion, and narrative flow to give listeners an introspective, meditative, and poignant sonic experience.

American concert pianist Steven Masi explores the depths of Romantic and Impressionist piano literature on BALLADES & OTHER MUSINGS. Emotive, evocative, and deeply stirring, Masi uncovers previously unheard nuances in both Chopin and Debussy, as well as in their contemporary colleague, Sarah Kirkland Snider, whose musical language seamlessly blends with that of her predecessors. The precision in Masi's performance is breathtaking. It lends an extraordinary clarity to works that are, by their inherent nature, wayward and exalted. Still, generous rubato and creativity in pedaling shine in this program, as does Masi's crystal-clear tone.

Pianist Carlos Vargas gives the public a rare glimpse into the depths of a musician's soul with his intimate new solo album SOUVENIRS. It is a truly eclectic selection of pianistic gems, expertly collected across several centuries and countries, yet interconnected by profound virtuosity and sweeping romanticism. SOUVENIRS travels to France, Russia, the United States, and (perhaps most importantly) Latin America; Poulenc makes an appearance, as do Scriabin, Gershwin, and Dominican composer Rafael Bullumba Landestoy, among others. Strikingly, Vargas rotates the kaleidoscope: his interpretation brings Latin flamboyance to Poulenc, Russian drama to Gershwin, and American spontaneity to Scriabin, to name but a few. All the pieces on SOUVENIRS are highly idiosyncratic; and yet, Vargas effortlessly unites them in their individual brilliance.

Society of Composers, Inc. presents 10 works from boundary-defying composers on TRANSITION AND APOTHEOSIS, the 35th installment of their celebrated Composers’ Series. SCI renews its decades-long mission to promote and disseminate contemporary music in this Navona Records release.

If there were two words to describe Nathan Froebe’s musical output, they would be: exuberant and ruminative. In fact, these two attributes might arrive at a tie on TWO BY THREE, a selection of energetic freetonal, programmatic pieces for a myriad of flutes and piano. The thoughtful nature of these works is apparent even in their respective titles: Meditation, Three Scenes for Wind and Hammer, and Essay for Piccolo, Piano, and Alto Flute, to name but a few. Meticulously composed by Froebe and impeccably performed by flutists Jessica Raposo and Mihoko Watanabe with pianist Michael Seregow, TWO BY THREE sweeps through the mind like a fresh breeze on a crisp April morning.

Lyricism and melody are often vainly sought in contemporary composition. American composer Richard Crosby goes against the grain on BY THE WATERS OF MEMORY, a selection of compositions so aesthetically sublime, yet so profound, one wonders if this is still music, or someone mesmerizingly peeling back the layers on existence itself. BY THE WATERS OF MEMORY features two scintillating chamber duos with piano – one a viola, the other a cello sonata – as well as a charming tetralogy of Latin dances for piano and oboe. But perhaps the greatest revelation arrives in the form of trenchantly beautiful solo piano pieces, which bear all the hallmarks of unadulterated classical-romantic genius. If Schubert had been an American, he would have sounded like this.

Praised for her “incisive technique and an exceptionally rich and beautiful tone,” violinist Wanchi Huang performs a diverse range of compositions written by living composers on IMAGINING WORLDS from Navona Records. Huang’s virtuosic performance takes listeners on a dynamic voyage through the elegant grandeur of the baroque era to the historic hilltops of Italy, passing through reflections on our darkest moments and soaring towards the brighter days that lie ahead. Featuring new music by composers Adolphus Hailstork, Jeffrey Mumford, John Corigliano, Judith Shatin, and Meira Warshauer, IMAGINING WORLDS is a stunning showcase of Huang’s artistry and the compelling voices in contemporary American music.

Peter Dickson Lopez returns to Navona Records with his first solo release; PIECES FROM A DISTANT LAND, a touching solo piano memoriam to his late mother, who had once requested piano pieces for herself to play at church. A touching and emotionally prolific piece given a loving performance by Anna Kislitsyna, Lopez — an ever-experimental composer — channels the “Distant Land” of tonal music familiar to his childhood self and compositional roots, while still honoring the special and often haunting sound so intimate to his musical oeuvre. Those with an ear for the sonically experimental will instantly recognize Lopez’s salient touches while being treated to an especially graceful and compassionate tribute to the happy, hazy days of childhood, and the warm music that so often accompanies them.

Navona Records is proud to present PIANO SONATA #4, a solo piano work by composer Eric Price fusing 19th and 20th Century elements with authentic touches of personal compositional style. Performed by the critically-acclaimed pianist Anna Kislitsyna, this piece stays true to the long standing traditions of the form, amplified with Price’s unique cascading lines that resolve in savory moments of authentic beauty. From highly technical displays of pianistic and compositional prowess to triumphant passages and more, Piano Sonata No. 4 offers an enticing look at Price’s musical footprint and Kislitsyna’s stunning interpretation.