Modes

Navona Records proudly presents MODES, the 30th edition of the celebrated Society of Composers, Inc. CD Series and the sixth SCI release on the label. The album features a diverse array of compositions, with influences from around the world and experiences that are new and thrillingly avant-garde.

The album’s contributions span the globe, featuring exciting contemporary musical elements. Yip Ho Kwen Austin’s A Mournful Cry incorporates the ancient Chinese zither instrument Guzheng, along with poetry from China’s South Song Dynasty. Iranian composer Karen Keyhani integrates the Persian santour into his piece As Far As Possible, written in response to the loss of three mountaineers (including a close friend) while descending the Himalayan Broad Peak in 2013. Nolan Stolz’s Princess Ka‘iulani calls on the soloist to sing, speak, and whisper fragments of Hawaiian words and phrases into their flute. Arthur Gottschalk’s song cycle for soprano and string quartet, Five Songs of Love, features poems from sources as diverse as Harlem poet Langston Hughes to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Robert A. Baker, in Valance III, continues his cycle of chamber pieces that explore interactions between energy, timbre, and musical continuity. Benjamin Whiting experiments with the intersections of acoustic and electronic composition in Melodía sin melodía (stereo mix). Chin Ting Chan draws from Olivier Messiaen’s “Modes of Limited Transposition” for his explorations of timbre and harmony across time in Acoustic Field. These composers all bring their own unique blend of understanding, ingenuity, and craft to their contributions to this diverse new edition.