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WIND DEVIL & CO. is a selection of sound scores commissioned by choreographers and dance companies that were performed nationally and internationally at venues such as Berlin’s Akademie der Künste and three Next Wave Festivals at Brooklyn Academy of Music. WIND DEVIL & CO. was created, composed, and performed by Sergio Cervetti, and is his third Navona release. The music, termed “DancElectronics” by the composer, is evocative and austere yet simultaneously whimsical and playful. “This Music reflects [Cervetti’s] intimate and extensive collaboration with the world of dance as a composer favored by many experimental dancers.” (The New York Times).

The title track, “Wind Devil,” premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1983. In a contemporary review The Village Voice’s Deborah Jowitt stated that “by the time Thompson and Grunewald begin a loving, playful duet, [Cervetti’s] music acquires sonorities that make me think of Aaron Copland’s open ‘American’ sound. And I suddenly see the robust duet as celebrating both the intimate spaces between lovers and the vastness of the terrain around them, like a latter day version of the duet in Graham’s Appalachian Spring.”

The seven works vary from layered improvisation to traditionally composed pieces that include beat-driven and narrative dance to panoramas of sound, an aural snapshot of the cutting edge dance boom in New York City with its mosaic of techniques and styles from modern dance pioneers to their post modern descendants. The electronic scores also counterbalance Cervetti’s impressive instrumental and vocal output such as heard on the Navona Records albums NAZCA (2012) and KEYBOARD3 (2013).

Wall Street. Salvador Dali. Gustav Mahler. Some of the sources of inspiration for composer Sergio Cervetti on his fourth solo Navona release, UNBRIDLED. Spanning over forty years of his career, the works represent Cervetti's continued aesthetic of combining traditional and postmodern techniques and instrumentation.

The title track is a response to the crisis of the American financial institutions of the last few years. For Mémoires du Paradis, Cervetti's vision comes from five Salvador Dali paintings that portray fragmentary scenes from Milton's Paradise Lost. First premiered in 1973, ...from the earth... treats a five-note passage from Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with minimalist techniques, extrapolating the notes into new melodies and drawing out harmonic structures for several minutes. A review from the now defunct High Fidelity magazine hailed ...from the earth... as "a straightforward and touching composition, and obviously the work of a gifted creator."

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. Moments where melody and counterpoint reflect a phrase from the literature of Milton, the shifting syncopations of dance, emotions from bittersweet opera or the fluidity of the Magellan clouds and the shimmering Antarctic are given structure and concept in six works by Cervetti for piano, harpsichord, and organ.

Cervetti’s works have been lauded as “truly novel and genuinely intriguing” (Washington Post), “a listener’s joy” (New York Times), and “extremely lush and expansive” (NewMusicBox), and critics have hailed him as a forerunner of innovation in the contemporary classical scene.

Composer Sergio Cervetti has cemented himself into the contemporary classical scene, earning notoriety for his ability to present orchestral, opera, chamber, vocal, and electronic under a single classical umbrella that is distinctly individualistic. With works lauded as “truly novel and genuinely intriguing” (Washington Post), “noteworthy in the sea of fluff that passes for electronic music” (Option Magazine), and “a listener’s joy” (New York Times), Cervetti has proven himself a worthy contender in the world of contemporary classical.

With NAZCA AND OTHER WORKS, his second release on Navona Records, Cervetti draws from his South American heritage to present four orchestral works on scale with the wondrous Nazca Lines in Peru. The Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra under conductors Vit Micka and Petr Vronský interpret the works with aplomb, and sopranos Alena Hellerova and Eva Kolkova provide moving vocals to texts by Juan Zorrilla de San Martin and Nezahualcoyotl.

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Excerpts from the Bible, text from the Middle Ages, and traditional instrumentation (organ, orchestral, and choral) form the basis of six composers' inspired works on FOUNDATIONS to create stirring, new contemporary classical music. By connecting to the roots of historical texts and musical conventions - in some cases the foundations of our collective cultures - these pieces present a modern spin on traditional materials, sounds, and forms. FOUNDATIONS illustrates how new gestures and expressions can be inspired by, and created from, the common sources that engage us all.

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