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Elements Rising
Yves Ramette composer
Steven Block composer
Rain Worthington composer
Paula Diehl composer
Allen Brings composer
Navona Records’ latest offering of chamber music ELEMENTS RISING highlights contemporary composers who re-imagine the building blocks of music, such as melody, harmony, rhythm, dynamics, and timbre, in innovative ways, applying them to a number of duo and ensemble settings.
French composer Yves Ramette’s Introduction et Allegro, written in 1945 for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and piano ensemble, uses space, harmonic tension, and texture to create a sense of brooding and propulsion. Fire Tiger by Steven Block, written for violin and piano, is a dramatic work that combines structural unity and a consistent non-tonal language to convey emotional intensity. In her impressionistic work Night Stream, Rain Worthington reflects on the flowing textures of life and time, while her Rhythm Modes uses various rhythmic patterns to articulate and animate the motives and melodies of the piece. Gambit by Paula Diehl uses a compositional system created by the composer called Separation, which uses sets of interlocking perfect 4ths in a process of phases that gradually isolates the intervals from each other. Allen Brings’ Duo for Violin and Cello emphasizes melody, an area in which the composer finds influence from Gregorian chant to Lieder repertoire, building to an energetic and lively end.
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Artist Information
Yves Ramette
Composer Yves Ramette (b. 1921) was born in Bavay, France, where his father was the director of a school. From a very young age Ramette was instinctively attracted towards music. When he was seven years old he started learning musical notation as well as to play the violin and the piano. At age fourteen, while pursuing his secondary studies at the Beauvais Lycée, he also began taking advanced lessons in harmony.
Steven Block
Steven D. Block was born in New York City on November 5, 1952. He is currently Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley after having served as Chair of the Department of Music at the University of New Mexico for 17 years.
Rain Worthington
Believing that creativity is an elemental and essential part of human nature, Rain Worthington has followed her own instinctive path. Self-taught and cross-disciplinary, her creative impulses include concert music and sculptural spaces for attentive reflection. American Record Guide notes a focus of “deep interiority” from “a composer of considerable imagination, emotional expressiveness, and poetic sensibility.”
Paula Diehl
Paula Jespersen Diehl came to New Jersey from China as an infant with her Danish parents and older brother. From her time of awareness, she heard music in the home. She and each of her three brothers studied a musical instrument; her mother listened to opera and played Danish songs on the piano for the children to sing, and her father and an uncle sang Danish songs.
Allen Brings
A native of New York City, Allen Brings received a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Queens College and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University, where he was a Mosenthal Fellow and a student of Otto Luening, and a doctorate in theory and composition from Boston University, where he was a teaching fellow and a student of Gardner Read.
Karolina Rojahn
Karolina Rojahn is a Los Angeles based pianist who has dedicated the last decade of her career to premiering and recording contemporary music repertoire. She has premiered over a hundred new works and collaborated with various classical music labels, most notably Naxos, having released over 43 recordings of chamber and solo piano music, including 5 piano concertos written specifically for her.
Vít Muzík
Czech violinist and producer Vít Muzík (b. 1972) is one of the most multifaceted musicians working on the contemporary classical music scene. His abilities both as a performer on the concert stage and in the recording booth have led to appearances on more than 60 recordings in the Navona and Ravello catalogs, making him one of PARMA Recordings' most frequent collaborators.
