Genre: Vocal Music

Estonian composer Toivo Tulev is an idiosyncratic visionary in contemporary composition, and this Navona Records disc, DAWN, ALMOST DAWN, delves into themes of imagination and transcendence. The album could be considered an immersive journey through Tulev's oeuvre, one not least afforded by its heterodox instrumentation, including solo violin with scordatura, ney, kaval, a symphonic orchestra, and the bare human voice. The strings featured in this album lend an ethereal dissonance to the program, while the breathy tones of the ney and kaval add a strange, almost mythical warmth. Both the orchestra and the human voice seem paradoxically otherworldly in comparison. The elusive light of consciousness unfolds, wavers, then disappears; when the music stops, one is left with the feeling that nothing is as it was.

Blending vocal and orchestral elements across several movements, cantatas are notoriously difficult to compose. Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg has accepted the challenge with ANY OF THOSE DECEMBERS, setting poems by Jeanne Minahan to music. The result is intimate, aesthetic, and wistful — a tender embrace of lyrics and sound.  Scored for four solo singers with varying accompaniments, ANY OF THOSE DECEMBERS impresses on multiple fronts. But it isn't due to the excellent source material alone: the master performers in Lyric Fest bring both the lyrics and the composition to life. A wonderful collaboration, in which the whole is even greater than the sum of its parts, Wenzelberg’s work is “a cantata to make memories sing.”

Few forms in classical music are as underrated as the song cycle. It is easy to be betrayed by the seemingly-modest set-up – piano and solo voice – requiring well-calculated finesse from a composer to seize its minimalist power and bring it into full bloom. UNHOLY SONNETS, a collection of songs by German-born American Samuel Adler, succeeds greatly in this effort. Although all works presented are in English and the tonal language is decidedly modern, there is much that harks back to the German art song tradition of the 19th century. Despite the title, these are largely quiet, pensive pieces, confidently resting in a tranquil serenity.

Treat yourself to the fantastical, whimsical, and sometimes mischievous nature of Paul Kopetz’s MYTHICAL CREATURES, featuring a song cycle on the poetry of Svyetlana Hadgraft and a variety of inspired portraits. Each of the 10 movements is a musical impression of a mythical creature that has existed in the folklore of various cultures around the world since the beginning of time. With an emotionally broad music that highlights Kopetz’s remarkable compositional range, there’s something for everyone in this release, especially for those with a penchant for the characteresque vocal works of the 20th century.

DILLINGER: AN AMERICAN ORATORIO from composer Matthew Heap in collaboration with librettist Darren Canady dramatizes the life of notorious Great Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger. Seen alternately as both an enemy of the state and a folk hero, Dillinger’s story is a fitting backdrop to Heap’s nuanced exploration of class warfare and the American Dream. The oratorio focuses on Dillinger’s final days and is presented in a quasi-oratorio setting, much like the opera-oratorio form that Stravinsky used in Oedipus Rex. Despite its historical source material, the music is more relevant than ever, bringing to life the struggles of Americans feeling caught between social strictures and larger economic forces.

QUADRANTS VOL. 4 comes as the fourth installment of Navona's acclaimed series of string quartet recordings by contemporary composers. This time, a variety of ensembles perform a selection of pieces by Daniel Gil, Jacob E. Goodman, John Summers, Sami Seif, and Judith Lang Zaimont. Like its predecessors, QUADRANTS VOL. 4 presents musical creations that are highly structured, thoroughly conceptualized and profoundly cerebral, drawing upon subject matters as diverse as Kabbalistic philosophy, English urban poetry, and Arabic cultural identity, among others. Often the result of years-long toil, these compositions are by no means easy to perform – but each ensemble masterfully succeeds with virtuosic panache.

There are generally two ways one can face a crisis. One can give up, or one can persevere and use it to one's advantage. Choir director Dominick DiOrio definitely chose the latter during the pandemic, turning his reflections and sentiments about it into a profoundly engaging, almost philosophical choral album titled WHAT IS OURS. DiOrio conjures a formidable cross-section of music by a range of contemporary composers that not only reflects the diversity and multiplicity of modern-day America, but also its underbelly of struggle, challenge, and an eventual triumph of humanity.

THE LEADER from Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand is at once timeless and also deeply relevant for the age we live in. A commentary on the rise of fascist tyranny, its titular piece tells the story of a buffoonish charlatan who is adored despite his ridiculous behavior, echoing concerns of the modern day in this chamber opera based on Eugene Ionesco's 1953 satire Le Maître. Another vocal work, Songs from the Post Truth Era similarly comments on the political realities (or unrealities) of our time. The album features several other chamber works by Al-Zand including his Six Bagatelles, with music inspired by the art of Robert Motherwell (1915–1991).

Award winning composer Peter Knell offers a deep dive into a number of his inspirations and formative experiences through a variety of orchestrations in SOUNDSCAPES from Navona Records. Expressed through solo violin, violin and vocal duo, and string quartet, Knell’s work encompasses the poetry of Pablo Neruda, the art of Rolf Stein, landscapes of his youth, and more. Dive in and become immersed in the natural imagery and sensations both Knell and these performers bring forth.

Newly released from Navona is CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SOUL, a collection of new chamber works from acclaimed composer-pianist Bun-Ching Lam. The music sets in different languages the poetry of Shelley, Heine, Rimbaud, and Lasker-Shüller, as well as the poems of 9th Century Chinese mystic Han Shan and contemporary writer Etel Adnan. In a compositional voice The New York Times has called “alluringly exotic,” Lam incorporates baritone voice, piano, viola, flute, French horn, and harp to elucidate timeless works concerning life’s fundamental questions.

MUSIC TO HEAR, Joseph Summer’s follow up to WHO IS SYLVIA from Navona Records off his Shakespeare Concerts set, is the result of the composer’s lifelong obsession with poetry. The album pairs the works of contemporary poets as well as Shakespeare with Summer’s music in order to express deeper significance than either words or music are capable of on their own.

Joseph Summer’s WHO IS SYLVIA, new from Navona Records, is a collection of Shakespeare’s works set to music that will make you question everything you thought you learned in high school English. Summer believes that the famous playwright’s true identity is not William Shakespeare but rather Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Many of the songs found on WHO IS SYLVIA come from Summer’s aptly-named The Oxford Songs, a collection of scenes, sonnets, songs, and Summer’s original opera version of Hamlet. These are paired with music from the likes of Schubert and Schumann to create a dynamic and colorful musical experience worthy of the Bard himself.

Multi-award-winning composer Anthony Brandt makes his Navona Records debut with MATERNITY / ULYSSES, HOME. The album includes two very distinct compositions with equally distinct inspirations.

HARMONY OF DISSONANCE brings together, juxtaposes, and intertwines the disparate singing styles of the regions of Dalmatia, which remain stylistically and performatively distant even today. While these musical worlds present seemingly irreconcilable musical and cultural differences, they are all connected by polyphonic singing, which forms the core of this collaboration between the Harmonija Dissonance Ensemble and the Jazz Orchestra of the Academy of Music in Zagreb.

Kamyar Mohajer’s PICTURES OF THE HIDDEN honors the composer’s “four Grand Masters:" Johann Sebastian Bach, Persian poet Hafez, and his parents. In this album, Mohajer shares his artistic upbringing by combining his roots in Persian modality with his love of Western classical music.

Composer Dan Redfeld presents A HOPEFUL PLACE: A SONG CYCLE FOR SOPRANO & CHAMBER ORCHESTRA, his debut release on Navona records showcasing his nine-movement song cycle of the same name. A Hopeful Place follows a woman’s journey through life from birth to death—a life-cycle-song-cycle, as librettist John Gabriel Koladziej describes the piece.

Navona Records is proud to present the debut commercial release from the critically acclaimed Coro Allegro, Boston's chorus for members and friends of the LGBT community. This album, AWAKENINGS, features two extraordinary works by composers from the Pioneer Valley region of Western Massachusetts: Shofar by Robert Stern, an intensely dramatic and deeply moving oratorio inspired by the four arresting calls of the shofar; and Why I Wake Early by Ronald Perera, with text drawn from the poetry of Mary Oliver.

With works described as "an inspired creation" (Music & Vision), "original and quite brilliant" (Fanfare), and "immensely poetic" (Tempo), Jonathan Little has planted himself as a luminary contemporary composer. On POLYHYMNIA, his first release on Navona Records, Little is able to transform traditional influences into rich, intense, and finely structured music that lives up to his reputation.

NIGHT OF LIGHT is the latest CD from Cypriot composer Sophia Serghi featuring five of her works for orchestra and voice: Night of Light, a musical reaction to Easter in Manhattan and a document of the composer's spiritual growth; Serghi's earliest work for orchestra and voice, Cantus Integritatis, comprised of four introspective and meditative movements based on the composer's own Latin poetry; Full Moon Haiku, a collaboration with poet Nancy Schoenberger setting the mensal characteristics of the full moon to music; Ikon, inspired by an unusual Ikon in Paris; and Night of Light: Reprise.

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.