Catalog

Composed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Lewis Spratlan with librettist and electroacoustic composers Jenny Kallick and John Downey, ARCHITECT is an exploration of the relationship between the aural and visual, how they interact, intertwine, and define each other. Based on the life and work of renowned twentieth-century architect Louis I. Kahn, the opera portrays the powerful emotions that inspire his creative journey as he seeks to discover the principles that will guide his life's work, namely, the relationships between sound and space, connections between the past and present, and the incorporation of a material's innate characteristics into a larger whole.

THE PARMA SESSIONS: Vít Mužík presents a series of recordings by longtime PARMA collaborator and violinist Vít Mužík. Showcasing the artists skill, adaptability, and dedication, this digital compilation features Vít Mužík performing works by a diverse set of composers with myriad influences and styles.

Belgian-native Jan Van der Roost leads a prolific career as a composer, writing works that span a variety of genres and styles, from oratorios and symphonies to lieder cycles and wind band chamber pieces. Van der Roost's unique style has ushered international renown, with his works recorded and performed worldwide, in addition to his guest professorships across four continents.

Navona Records is proud to present NOVA, the 27th edition of the acclaimed Society of Composers, Inc. CD Series and the third SCI release on Navona. This entry in the series features chamber works by eight SCI composers.

FINE MUSIC, VOL. 4 is the fourth compilation of the Navona Records Fine Music digital series. This installment features the works of David Nisbet Stewart, Brian Noyes, Jonathan Little, Daniel Perttu, Curt Cacioppo, Santiago Billoni, Alejejandro Rutty, Joanne Carey, Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Summer, Roger Bourland, Kjell Magne Andersen, and Jan Van der Roost.

TORRID NATURE SCENES, an album of chamber works from Australian composer Nicholas Vines, presents a series of musical landscapes that instill both anxiety and ebullience in the listener. Through his innovative use of woodwinds, voice, and chamber ensemble, Vines - a composer lauded for his "crackling style" (NewMusicBox) and called "compellingly original" (Boston Phoenix) and "both humorous and unsettling" (WGBH) - asks us to consider representations of nature fueled not by a passing glance of a wondrous vista, but by a series of creative engines wracked with self-burning energy, profound fury, and breath-filled life.

Erik Lotichius, a composer unafraid of melody and accessibility, combines the sounds of traditional classics with those that took the 20th-century audiences by storm - in the composer's own words, his work presents "Bach, the Blues and the Beatles" in a spectacular, enthralling combination of genre and style.

From mythic origin stories, to the Elizabethan stage, to the modern cinema, the human experience is bound in storytelling that has the power to captivate minds and inspire creativity. Like a good story, the composers featured on SPELLBOUND transport the listener across landscapes only limited by the imagination. These new works for orchestra behave as narrative arches, allowing tension and emotion to build and release to a euphoric conclusion or a haunting realization.

French composer Yves Ramette's (1921-2012) music is marked by its ability to broadcast "messages of the heart," offering unflinching and distinguished representations of emotion and experience using traditional forms. A student of Honegger and contemporary of Boulez, among others, Ramette's works draw from the rhythmic and harmonic elements of mid-20th-century France.

Peter Vukmirovic Stevens is a composer whose music is informed and guided by deep connections with visual media, literature, travel, and works by composers past and present. AUGUST RUINS, an album of Stevens' works for solo cello, gives these influences life through the cello's unequivocal range and timbre, allowing for a raw, isolated expression of emotion, history, and visual beauty unencumbered by accompaniment.

Music represents a dialogue between composer and listener, channeled through performance and observation. Much like in spoken conversation, the works in PERCEPTIONS present us with the revealing perspectives of their composers as told through small ensembles. The listener is presented with music that entrances, enkindles, jars, lingers, connects, and engrosses–perceptions both highly incisive and deeply personal.

DANCES OF ETERNITY presents a group of orchestral works by composers who explore music's potential to capture the more overlooked aspects of human experience. Ranging from representations of optimism and energy to the surging power of nostalgia, to lighthearted frolics and the eternality of life, DANCES OF ETERNITY asks the listener to ponder life, death, and everything in between.

New York-based Anthony Piccolo leads a vibrant and varied career as composer, choral director, pianist and conductor. Drawing on decades of performing and composing experience, he crafts clear and colorful scores in a variety of genres.

CROSS CONNECTION features the works of Henry Wolking and James Scott Balentine, two composers whose works perfectly complement each other through musical studies of crossed paths and human togetherness. Both composers works consider the meaning of life, love, and music, and the relationship between each: Gone Playin', a spirited musical riff on epitaphs and their connection of life and death; The Old Gypsy, a Hungarian-influenced piece for string quartet that reflects on the perpetuity of musical themes and influences; and Dun Eideann Blogh, a recollection of times past with friends and family.

Here at Navona, we believe that despite varied influences, styles, and techniques, contemporary works by a variety of carefully selected composers can unite to represent the classical landscape as a whole. On MOTO PERPETUO, a collection of moving works for cello by March, Bartholomew, Beeler, Sherrill, Gottschalk, and Ascioti, the music is bound by the instruments simultaneous steadfastness and adaptability and the composers' shared ability to seize and control the instruments expressive timbre and range.

KEYBOARD3 Navona's second all-Sergio Cervetti album takes the listener to a world of kinetic and emotionally charged sound forged from three keyboard instruments. Sometimes it is the pianoforte, the king of instruments or the double keyboard of the harpsichord.

SHAKESPEARE'S MEMORY is the first offering Navona's The Shakespeare Concerts Series. A salmagundi of selections from composer Joseph Summer's The Oxford Songs, this album includes previously unreleased recordings spanning the life of the series. This first volume includes Summer's original chamber and vocal compositions set to Shakespeare's dramas and sonnets and the poetry of Milton and Yeats, performed by a slew of musicians: the Kalmia String Quartet, baritone Chad Sloan, soprano Andrea Chenoweth, mezzo-soprano Kellie Van Horn, tenor Justin Vickers, pianists Miroslav Sekera and Ian Watson, and harpist Lydie Härtelovä.

Santa Barbara-based composer Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927) is a fixture in the Californian classical music community, having received commissions and performances from orchestras and ensembles throughout the state and worked throughout her career to advance the musical community.

About 100 years ago, classical music made a jagged turn away from the harmonic structures that had comprised its underpinnings for several centuries. This departure was early-on dubbed atonalism, and opposed the functional harmony that prevailed during the great musical flourishing of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Composer Sparky Davis, who takes a "modern, not modernistic" approach to writing his music, continues this forward movement, expanding the vocabulary of music to include non-traditional elements and adding to the functional uses of long-established note combinations.

Composer Jeffrey Stadelman's unusual, arresting, exacting musical voice has evolved over 25 years, amounting to a complex musical practice that suggests no obvious counterpart. MESSENGER, an all-Stadelman release on Navona, includes a variety of his orchestral, instrumental, and electroacoustic works.