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Prisma Vol. 2
James Lentini composer
Rain Worthington composer
Jan Järvlepp composer
Peter Castine composer
Beth Mehocic composer
Navona Records proudly presents PRISMA VOL. 2, an epic journey into the world of the large ensemble with five of today’s top contemporary composers. This collection demonstrates the diversity of the orchestral and concerto composition, both in instrumentation and emotion.
PRISMA 2 opens with two debuts: James Lentini’s stunning first release with PARMA Recordings, and the Zagreb Festival Orchestra’s first project on the Navona label. Lentini’s Concerto for Guitar and Strings, performed with the string orchestra by virtuoso guitar soloist Iliana Matos, begins with a fresh and buoyant motive that serves as a foundation for the entire movement. Orchestra and guitar converse back and forth as the piece moves through a melancholic, reflective second movement, and then rises back to full energy with the brisk final movement. This is followed by Rain Worthington’s Full Circle, written for cello soloist and small orchestra. It is a striking piece with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra that follows the emergence and recession of emotions through a lifetime, as soloists emerge and recede from the orchestra.
Jan Järvlepp’s Camerata Music, is a bright, tonal piece in a style that the composer calls “post-academic.” Inspired by the vallenato styles of folk music that Järvlepp heard while visiting Colombia, Camerata Music uses percussion to capture the joyous, rhythmic energy of that musical tradition. Peter Castine’s Aperture takes the album in a more somber direction with unsettled dissonance and fragmented feeling, filled with the horror following the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. The composer sets the solo flute and concertino string quartet at odds with one another, clashing even as the orchestra sometimes intervenes to help. PRISMA 2 is brought to a close with composer Beth Mehocic’s Left of Winter, written as a prelude to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. It has the same primal rhythms as Stravinsky’s ballet, but with the addition of cymbals, trumpets, and winds that paint the image of young men going off to war.
PRISMA 2 is a striking addition to the contemporary orchestral scene. This impressive, accessible, and thought-provoking collection offers something unique to every listener.
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Artist Information
James Lentini
Award-winning composer and classical guitarist James Lentini is a recipient of the Andrés Segovia International Composition Prize, the Atwater-Kent Composition Award (first prize), the McHugh Composition Prize, a grant from "Meet the Composer," a Hanson Institute of American Music composer-performer grant, and multiple awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).
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.”
Jan Järvlepp
Composer Jan Järvlepp creates a genuine European/American musical fusion by combining the excitement of rock and jazz rhythms with the large-scale classical structures found in orchestral and chamber music. The seriousness of his well-thought-out forms and the immediacy of contemporary rhythmic and melodic ideas make a potent brew that is appealing to both open-minded classical listeners and pop music listeners who are searching for something new.
Peter Castine
Peter Castine was born in New York City on a Sunday in the year of the snake. Studies of composition, piano, and computer science in Stony Brook and Berlin were followed by work as a performer, concert and conference organizer, and developer of software-based musical instruments.
Beth Mehocic
Dr. Beth Mehocic was the Composer-in-Residence, Music Director, and Full-Professor for the Dance Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and wrote over 100 works for orchestra, concert band, chamber music, dance ensembles, theater, and film. Her works have been performed throughout the United States, Japan, China, Korea, and Europe, and she had works performed in several Las Vegas Hotels including The Mirage, Caesar’s Palace, and the Las Vegas Hilton. Several of her works have been recorded for PARMA Recordings.
