Catalog

Navona Records is pleased to present UNSEEN PATHS, a variegated collection of works by late composer Lawrence K. Moss. Well known for his diverse musical oeuvre spanning vocal, instrumental, and electronic works, UNSEEN PATHS shows us a deeper look into his mastery in the chamber music genre, from flute and piano duos to music for string quartet, operas, and more. As a valediction to a remarkable career, this collection is a timeless tribute to Moss' enduring legacy, inviting listeners to savor the depth and brilliance of his artistic voice.

Navona Records is pleased to present ELEVATE, the second installment of All Classical Radio’s award-winning Recording Inclusivity Initiative. A response to the industry’s inequities in classical music recordings, the RII highlights music from underrepresented communities to build a more diverse and inclusive soundscape around the world. Bringing to life the sonatas of Yuko Uébayashi and Nobu Kōda and a string quartet by Damien Geter, ELEVATE pairs deserving compositional talent with several of today’s leading classical performers — a synergetic testament to the power of uplifting each other in the arts.

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.

Jennifer Bouton’s VIVALDI PICCOLO CONCERTOS is the first complete recording of the concerti by an American piccoloist. Bouton possesses a mastery over these works, having performed the most famous and beloved C Major concerto (RV 443) numerous times, notably with the Milwaukee Symphony and Nicholas McGegan in 2023. In recording the complete set of works for sopranino/flautino on the modern piccolo, Bouton aims to expand the standard canon of solo piccolo repertoire, and encourage modern performers to investigate the possibilities of ornamentation that live in each of these sparkling compositions. Expressive, light hearted, technically elaborate, and strikingly beautiful, this collection of works is a stunning showcase of Vivaldi’s colorful concerti, concluding with an exhilarating performance of Paganini’s Caprice No. 11 in C Major to round out the program.

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.

The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally, returns to Navona Records with MOTION STUDIES, performing works by commissioned artist Justine Chen’s Shallow Breath and Stealth and commissioned artist Nicholas Cline’s watershed. Reflecting on a culture where data mining and government traceability have become normalized to the point of population complacency, Chen encapsulates the dissecting points of poet Jena Osman’s musings on the 21st-century reframing of paranoia, privacy, and the pervasive desire to run away from the data that follows us. Evidence of these reflections is present in the tittering, whispering, and often frantic conveyances of the ensemble in an unnerving collection of sequences that paint an antagonistic image of the modern machine. watershed designates motion as boundary rather than as escape: the movement of water as a crux point of political power and community resource. Joined by Matthew Levy on tenor sax, the ensemble ebbs with lap and flow as the American history of water is sung and dictated, leading the question of the damage nationalistic attitudes towards shared water resources have caused to our environment. A 2024 Best Choral Performance GRAMMY® nominee and multi-GRAMMY® winning ensemble, The Crossing continually proves itself to be at the forefront of new choral literature and performance. MOTION STUDIES is a release not to be missed.

Virtuoso Linda Wiley performs four flute sonatas from 19th and 20th century composers on FOUR SONATAS FOR FLUTE AND PIANO. The album fulfills her aspiration to record pieces that are both challenging and also personally meaningful to her. These include Sonata For Flute And Piano by Francis Poulenc, Sonate Pour Flûte Et Piano by Jindřich Feld, Sonata In A Major by César Franck, and Recuerdos De Mexico, Sonata for Flute and Piano by Arthur Gottschalk. Many of the works share a connection to legendary French flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal; Wiley’s flute mentor Jan Cole studied under Rampal for five years, and Wiley is proud to carry on her musical lineage in this Navona Records release.

SONIX AND OTHER TONIX is a collection of innovative chamber works from composer Jan Järvlepp. The title refers to his piece Sonix for Ónix, composed for the Ónix Ensamble of Mexico. It combines elements from his most popular chamber and orchestral works, Pierrot Solaire and Garbage Concerto, respectively. The album also features Trio No. 3, a three-movement work for violin, cello, and piano which protests the rise of the surveillance state. SONIX AND OTHER TONIX also includes Shinkansen, which takes listeners for a ride on a Japanese bullet train, and In Memoriam, written for the composer’s late brother. Spanning a diverse range of topics and influences, SONIX AND OTHER TONIX exemplifies the iconoclastic creativity for which Järvlepp is known.

What is music but a convergence of story, people, and place? It’s a question that Heidi Radtke’s debut album CONVERGENCE for soprano, alto, and tenor sax asks earnestly, an elegant meshing of the heartbeats behind the sounds of eight living composers, strung together by the laughter and conversation woven into each exploration, and the saxophone’s ability to tell its tale. The full breadth of Radtke’s capability is on display as she navigates the variety of narratives, messages, and sonic uniquities in the landscape of CONVERGENCE, sometimes bolstered forward with a bubbly charm — in the “chicken clucks” of Barry Cockcroft’s Ku Ku — and sometimes with a powerful, reminding grace, — Rahsaan Barber’s Breonna Taylor (How Many More?) – but always with a special musicality. CONVERGENCE explores the intersection of instruments, musical tradition, and the saxophone's ability to explore these soundscapes, especially in the format of saxophone with fixed media. From a reimagination of Debussy to field recordings of natural spaces and sounds taken completely from a cell phone, the fixed media selections boast a wide range of musical styles, but all are connected through storytelling. Ending with the title track, Convergence, Radtke invites the listener to take part in the conversation — the best stories are the ones told together.

Following her first Navona Records release, IKARUS AMONG THE STARS, New York-based composer Debra Kaye has curated an ever-varying mix of chamber and solo pieces with TIME IS THE SEA WE SWIM IN. Kaye’s inspirations are seemingly endless, from the improvisatory piano solo At Liberty (1988) where Kaye returns to her roots as a performer, to the jazzy Colossus 1067 (2021) written to accompany Gus Foster’s time-distorting panoramic photograph taken on a roller coaster with a rotary camera; from current events to the poetry of Zen monks, European Romanticism to a philosophical, even metaphysical meditation on time and the creative process. Kaye’s eclectic collection showcases and reconciles heterogeneous influences by way of a sonic language that is wholly, uncompromisingly her own. Her confident embrace of diverse sounds and styles invite and challenge listeners to join her on this voyage of discovery and dip a toe into this sea that we all swim in.

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.

SONIX+, a collection of new works from cellist and composer Jan Järvlepp, is some of his most creative and defiant. The title piece, composed for the Ónix Ensemble of Mexico, draws upon elements from Järvlepp’s renowned works with a hidden theme from the 1960s sprinkled within. Trio No. 3 incorporates a very different concept from 1960s culture: protest music. The piece cries out against the constant surveillance that takes place in modern life, from cameras on every street corner to keyword tracking on search engines. Järvlepp’s music is unrelenting, one-of-a-kind, and inspired — a well balanced blend of time-tested virtuosity spoken through modern themes.

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.

Reed Chamberlin’s AVE MARIS STELLA is a rare 21st-century recasting of beloved motets and secular works from the 14th and 16th centuries. Works by du Fay, Gabrieli, de Machaut, and more are reimagined through a double lens — the time-held tradition of setting renaissance work for wind bands, and, especially to the genre, the addition of post-production audio effects. AVE MARIS STELLA’s impressive variety of auditory experiences are recorded at such a high level of performance that it is nothing but a complete delight, from track to track and as a whole body of work.

Sarah Wallin Huff returns to Navona Records with SHARDS, a wide variety of compositions that explore life, love, death, and the philosophy and mysticism that make up the in-betweens. True to the unique identity of Wallin Huff’s admirable body of work, the compositions building SHARDS structure themselves around brilliantly original frameworks while also delivering a philosophical, thoughtful structure to the album. Wallin Huff sufficiently and spectacularly elaborates upon her identity as a self-described “stream-of-consciousness composer” in this contemplative and explorative journey, a comprehensive album sure to make waves with its mystical nature.

Fall immersed into a collection of innovative stories and sounds on David Colson’s CONVERSING WITH SPIRITS. Colson’s distinctive push-and-pull textures are both an inviting and invigorating in the aptly named Un raz-de-marée de terreur et de joie (A tidal wave of terror and of joy) for bari sax and marimba, a welcome that drifts into a call back to classical trumpet repertoire: the long lamentations and surges of havoc discovered within Duo for Trumpet and Piano. This being closely followed by Ghost Music, a virtuosic marimba solo featuring Matthew Coley, a composition most reminiscent of uncanny whisperings in shadowy atmospheres—no doubt with a touch of whimsy, and a whimsy that is no stranger to the nature of cats, or more specifically, Cat Tales, a touching tongue-in-cheek collection of saxophone and piano vignettes invoking the personality of eight cats familiar to Colson. The River within Us concludes the collection, an at-once bubbly and fluttering two-movement work featuring the Western Michigan University Percussion Ensemble. Treat yourself to CONVERSING WITH SPIRITS, and enjoy the endless surprises it has to offer.

Celebrated Montréal flutist Joanna Marsden explores the work of eighteenth century French composer Michel Pignolet de Montéclair on MONTÉCLAIR CONCERTS FOR BAROQUE FLUTE from Navona Records. The performances feature The Opus Project, a chamber music initiative founded by Marsden and Christophe Gauthier dedicated to revisiting early musical prints and manuscript sources in order to celebrate the unsung treasures of baroque chamber music. The “concerts” of Montéclair reconcile Italian virtuosity and complexity with French expressive language, exploring a variety of national styles to which he was exposed during his time working in Milan. Orchestrated with flute, viola da gamba, harpsichord, and theorbo, The Opus Project gives new life to these centuries-old compositions for modern audiences.

The aptly-titled HEAVY PEDAL VOL. 2 from Navona Records is the second installment of an organ-centric series of albums. Featuring the music of composers Christopher Hoh, Deon Price, Richard E Brown, and John Rommereim, the collection lives up to its name; these organ works are some of the most powerful that classical music has to offer. From Hoh’s Concertino Corona, inspired by the hardships and seeds of hope from COVID-19, to Brown’s Six Chorale Preludes on Favorite Hymn Tunes, which were composed using Brown’s encyclopedic understanding of historical hymns, HEAVY PEDAL VOL. 2 brings the organ down from the choir loft to allow all listeners a greater appreciation of this incredibly dynamic instrument.

DANCING IN THE PALM OF GOD'S HAND from J.A. Kawarsky and Navona Records isn't at all a typical worship album; rather, it's a cross section through Kawarsky's oeuvre that encompasses minimalist solo pieces, intimate chamber music, and grand orchestral works. The themes on this album are vast and sweeping, at once lavish and carefully measured, reflecting the great and the minute, like an interplay between human and God. It's an almost philosophical experience, and one needn't be religious to enjoy its uplifting qualities.