This week composer Sean Hickey, Naxos’ National Sales and Business Development Manager, weighs in on the growing trend in alternative performance venues, a subject which has been covered at length in The New York Times and many other publications including the June issue of Gramophone. On May 18 at 8 PM in Alice Tully Hall, pianist Xiayin Wangwill perform the world premiere of Sean Hickey’s Cursive, a work commissioned for the pianist. Her program also will feature a world premiere of Richard Danielpour’s The Enchanted Garden, Preludes Book II.
I just finished reading Laurence Vittes’ article in the June Gramophone on alternative classical venues. Since it’s a topic that I have a particular interest in, I felt compelled to post something on the topic. First, it’s nice to see a mainstream classical music publication take on the trend. Though they’re a bit late to the party, I’m glad to see it get covered. What is most interesting is that, for those of us that live in New York and sample the diversifying concert scene here, this is not news. The alt-classical scene has been taking off in New York, London and Berlin for quite some time. I felt the need to chime in on the topic, not because I take issue with anything said in the article, but to underscore what I think is a hugely important development in classical music presentation over the past few years. Greg Sandow has written eloquently on the topic several times.
Last week I attended a release party for composer/conductor/arranger Peter Breiner and the release of his latest Naxos disc, a wonderful recording of orchestral suites arranged from the operas of Leos Janacek. The event, like others we at Naxos have done, took place at Le Poisson Rouge, specifically in the bar portion. I can’t overstate the pleasure in listening to great music in a public drinking space, and on an excellent sound system that manages to not sound obtrusive but succeeds in cutting through any conversation. LPR’s Justin Kantor has invested heavily in this crucial aspect which naturally means that they’re a great place for events centered around listening. Through LPR’s extensive social network we turned out a respectable crowd, many of them Czechs interested in the music of this fascinating composer. LPR, along with many other venues, have found real success in promoting their events not by advertising in the traditional print publications, but relying on their extensive fan and friend lists on Facebook, MySpace, LastFM and others to spread the word on concerts and gatherings. I’ve attended several shows there and I’ve never seen anything that wasn’t sold out or nearly. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a concert there where I’ve been able to sit down. Amazing how alcohol and interesting music seem to bring people together.
Like many of my friends, I came to classical music through the back door. I grew up playing the electric guitar in imitation of the guitar gods like Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen. In my mid-teens I discovered the progressive rock of King Crimson and the punk spirit of the Clash. At some point around then I heard the Rite of Spring for the first time and, though it might sound cliche, it changed my life forever. The Shostakovich Fifth, especially in context of what I learned of the composer’s life, had a similar effect. Even more life-changing was a trip to see the Chicago Symphony for the first time when I was sixteen. The sight of a primarily empty orchestra stage as a setting for Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments will always stay with me. The unique sound world of that particular piece still has the echoes of Symphony Hall in my ears. At that moment, at least in my mind, I set down the guitar and decided to become a composer. All of this is to say that, if such places as LPR existed in my hometown way back when, I might have taken in my first non-rock concert not on a stiff-back chair, but on a barstool. Okay, that doesn’t sound like the right place for a teenager.
In terms of New York, Vittes could have listed many more places such as The Stone, Barbes, Galapagos, the Nabi Gallery and others, all of them regularly showcasing chamber music, opera and most importantly, new music. I’m amazed at the reception of new works by these audiences, especially in comparison to the crowd at Avery Fisher who can often only manage polite applause for a new piece after unwrapping their throat lozenge. It’s of course important to note that many composers, in great DIY fashion, got their start performing or having their works performed in alternative spaces (some of them private or semi-private and many certainly non-commercial) from the 60’s through the 80s.
All of this is to say that I applaud any venue of any kind that programs classical music or invites new music to be a part – however small – of the overall programming and presentation of music of any kind. My hope is that these kind of multi-genre, multi-generational venues proliferate elsewhere.
In May, Naxos of America begins distribution of 2L, a Norwegian label known for releasing the world’s first audio-only Blu-Ray recording, Divertimenti, which subsequently received three Grammy® nominations. Founded in 2001 by Morten Lindberg, 2L’s mission is to achieve state-of-the-art sound and packaging within all future formats of classical music. “What we are seeing is a completely new conception of the music experience,” said Lindberg. “Recorded music is no longer a matter of a fixed two-dimensional setting, but rather a three-dimensional enveloping situation. Stereo can be described as a flat-canvas, while surround sound is a sculpture that you can literally move around and relate to spatially.”
Of 2L’s many high quality and unique releases, one in particular jumped out at my colleague Collin Rae. He shared it with some of us and I was immediately taken by not only the recording and the music, but with the concept behind it and how it directly correlates to Morten’s statement above. The SACD hybrid/Blu-ray recording that I am speaking of is SONaR, a collaboration of Norwegian composer Magnar Åm and harpist Ellen Sejersted Bødtker. The sound on this recording is immaculate, the compositions and performances are beyond words (for lack of a better description).
We decided that in order to really undertand all aspects of this recording, we needed to go to the source, SO we interviewed Magnar and Ellen! You will find my chat with Magnar below. His thoughts on music and sound are intriguing, scratch that, they are downright fascinating. Let’s just say that he composes pieces that no concert hall in the world can yet accomodate. Why don’t I allow him to explain…
You’ve said “Music matters, as it brings to matter what is of no matter”. How did you become so fascinated by sound and how to make it a physical experience?
My fascination for sound is a gift of birth and heritage. My mother was always singing, even up to the moment when she started to press me out. The inspiration to work with music as something appealing to more than feelings and moods also dates back to childhood. I discovered the sense of orientation and that this sense could be cheated willingly by my own perception. Sitting by the window gazing at the snowflakes falling densely outside, I would after a while have a strong perception that the snowflakes were the reference point hovering motionless in the air and that I instead was in the middle of an upward movement, as if I were lifted weightlessly. This was a blissfull experience which I would seek consciously over and over again during our lovely winters. It was not the beauty or the quiet of the falling snow that attracted me, but the mere physical experience of weightlessness being planted in my body when I let myself be receptable and non-judging of what my eyes were seeing.
Because of that discovery I have been working with music as something that can transfer a physical and mental experience regardless of what likes and dislikes the listener would have. To me, music is not about whether I like it or not, but only about what it does to me when I open up. What I discovered in that early childhood – though not yet consciously – was that our senses can be turned upside down dependent on our thinking about what is reality.
Music has taught me a lot through the years; it has been my friend, helping me to dive into the unknown depths of being and come up with a form to it. In this way it has shown me that my deepest reality is not what I see. Through its physical appearance as sound-waves it has portrayed something non-physical. And it has given me some new traces to follow to make it even more physical and thus more directly effective in transfering the non-physical truth to my senses. It can be used like the visual snowflakes to leave my senses with a dual choice of how to perceive reality.
Can you explain your concept of “three-dimensional sound” and how it applies to SONaR and the techniques used to record it?
Three-dimensional sound is achieved when the sound sources are placed globally around you, that is: on your sides, in front, behind, over and under you. Many of my later acoustic pieces are written for such placement, but there is so far no suitable concert halls or commercial sound format for it. Therefore, an adjustment to the two-dimensional performance is necessary, that is: with the sound sources placed around you on a horizontal level, in front, behind and on your sides. This includes the present surround formats and the possible use of some concert halls. In this connection a stereo format and a traditional performance with the musicians placed in front of the audience will be the one-dimensional version, where everything comes from different points on a single line between left and right in front of you.
On SONaR only dette blanke no (this our virgin now) is written originally for a three-dimensional performance. It is then adjusted to a two-dimensional surround format recording by Morten Lindberg. He let the spatial lines of the score be transfered to a spreading out horizontally in the room so that everything had different distance to the different directional microphones and did the recording in a church of rather long reverberation so that the feeling of a large three-dimensoinal space could be perceived.
The first track on SONaR is vere meininga (be the purpose) for which you also wrote the poetry. Explain the creative process behind this piece and its meaningful text. Had you written the poetry before you decided to set it to music? Or did the music inspire the poetry?
The poetry was born gradually together with the music, as it often is. At some points of the composition process the musical idea appearing would be a spoken word or phrase. When that arises as a musical need I know there is a poem coming, although it is yet as unknown to me as the total music, and I know it will reveal itself and its meaning parallel with the music if I just keep on letting the piece unfold.
vere meininga was originally written for Chinese harp and string sextet. Were there any drastic changes that had to be made when developing this version for Ellen and her European harp?
The most conspicuous change is that of the cadenza. Since Ellen operates both the acoustic and the electric harp the possibilities of the electric harp and the contrast to the acoustic harp had to be made very clear here.
I am incredibly moved by det var mjukt written for soprano and harp. The translation of the text is heart-wrenching, yet uplifting. What prompted the composition of this piece? What mind-set must you be in to accurately musically portray text like this?
The original text is the English one, written by Clark E. Moustakas in his book HEURISTIC RESEARCH, Design, Methodology and Application. I teach a small subject called Intuitive Composition/Improvisation and Music Philosophy at Volda University College. And there we have his book on the syllabus list. When Ellen commissioned a short piece for herself and her son to be placed in between the two harp concertos of the CD I knew I would use Moustaka’s beautiful text, as I was just then citing from his book to my students. So I wrote the song to the English text and then made a translation fitting the music. When time came for the recording, her young son was already facing his break of voice and we decided to let the same soprano as in the last piece sing it.
To musically portray a text like this – or any text – you have to be able to recognize in yourself all the feelings hidden in the words, actually see yourself in the role of the author, and let music arise from there.
When Ellen commissioned dette blanke no, concerto for harp and angels, how did you settle on the concept of timelessness and weightlessness? At one point in the creative process did it become clear that two harps would be required to achieve this goal?
I have experienced that when I try to listen consciously to two or more different pulses simultanuously – and really try to keep track of all pulses, at some point my brain gives up. And as it gives up, there is a loss of sense of time, and to me that is a blissful experience, it’s like coming home. So in dette blanke no (this our virgin now), as the choir enters, to portray this side of “home-coming” there is in the harp part a set of repetitive lines with individually different pulses. For the ear consciously or unconsciously to be able to follow the different lines it was necessary to use different coloring of the harp tone in the different slow pulses and even bring in an additional harp, the electric one.
To remind or give the listener a trace of weightlessness – the other side of “home-coming” – I took the memory of me and the snowflakes and gave it a spatial musical setting, letting sound move three-dimensionally the same way.
When I was a child, Blackglama® Mink used to run ads on TV and in all the fashion magazines featuring movie stars, models, and famous men and women from all walks of life all bedecked in luxurious mink coats, paired with the simple caption: “What Becomes a Legend Most? … Blackglama® Mink.” The ads were direct and photographed in black and white. Whatever you may think about wearing fur, the campaign was brilliant.
Last night, as I was watching the documentary film
these ads from my youth randomly popped into my head. I could see Jackie Paris wrapped in a Blackglama® Mink coat with that famous caption above his head—but, of course, that ad never happened.
The film made me think on many levels. I couldn’t help but think how operatic Jackie Paris’ story was; Jackie Paris: The Opera was the second thing that popped into my head. Of course, it would have to be a jazz opera. But the broken family with a history of drug addiction, the wives and womanizing, the refusal to cooperate with the mob, performing with the greatest jazz legends … and, of course, the last hook: wife no. 1 running off with the child he denied fathering (but had.) What a story. That’s the stuff of opera.
So, why did Jackie Paris fall into obscurity while so many other singers of the era sauntered about in Blackglama® Mink ads? (Peggy Lee and Lena Horne did, and while there were very few men who made it, Ray Charles did). The film posits several plausible theories, including his arrogance, temper, timing … and even the fact that he wouldn’t cooperate with the mob. I now have a few theories of my own.
Being a “musician’s musician” or a “singer’s singer” isn’t always the kiss of death, but it can push you to the background–just look at the career of Marni Nixon, the singing voice of so many great movie musicals, like My Fair Lady. The truth is that Paris’ singing had a certain level of sophistication and polish, which sometimes took his performances out of the realm of merely popular, and some of material he recorded didn’t scream “HIT.” Jackie Paris straddled the worlds of serious black jazz artists (with whom he performed and hung out) and the more “Hollywood” performers like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee (who got him an audition at Capital Records), and, of course Nat King Cole. But he was never able to translate that sophistication into the movie stardom those artists achieved. Paris was in an odd position: how do you bridge the gap between Charles Mingus and Charlie Parker and Frank Sinatra or Peggy Lee? At that point in history, it probably wasn’t possible to do it successfully. And I’m not convinced after seeing the film that he exactly knew what he wanted either, which may explain why his career faltered by the mid-1970s.
In a way, this extraordinary artist suffered a similar fate to many composers, who–though beloved by their colleagues–didn’t become legends until after their deaths. Of course, the problem for a singer is, unless there are a lot of recordings and film footage left behind, it can be pretty hard to become a legend posthumously.
Now I can’t really talk about jazz music, as it is not my area of expertise. But I do know great singers. Jackie Paris hung with the best, sang with the best, and was able to “inhabit a song,” as I’ve come to refer to it. (When you hear it, you just know it.) And even in his seventies, when he made a comeback just before his death, he sang the song “Tis Autumn” like he was at the beginning of a promising career, rather than doomed to posthumous recognition. A man with a tremendous ego, he must have loved having a film made about him. And, in the end, who knows? He still may achieve the “legend” status that so eluded him during his life.
This week Naxos of America’s Collin Rae weights in on Italian movie soundtrack music of the 1960s and 1970s:
So much has already been written about Italian movie soundtrack music of the 1960’s and 70’s that I certainly won’t shed any new light on this subject, instead I will simply highlight some of the wonderful treasure from this era through a series of posts that will highlight different film genres. Where to start? Well perhaps the most well known music of this period is the stuff written for the Spaghetti Westerns. Most everyone knows the BIG 4 (all composed by Ennio Morricone) The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and Once Upon a Time in the West. These four films are to this day considered to be some of the BEST westerns ever produced however there were dozens upon dozens of other Italian westerns not so well know but with equally as wonderful scores. Here are a few of those:
Morricone has so many AMAZING soundtracks in which to draw from, a few of my other favorite western titles are:
Il Grande Silnezio (The Great Silence): a brutal and dark film with an unexpectedly Somber and BEAUTIFUL soundtrack. The main theme to this film is perhaps one of my favorite Morricone musical moments.
I Crudeli (known as The Hellbenders in the US): When I first watched this film and heard the soundtrack I was pretty so so about it…until the final scene when an aging and defeated Joseph Cotton realizes that everything has gone terribly wrong and he simply gives up and slides large dirt mound. That THEME made me rethink and rehear the entire soundtrack.
Le Resa Die Conti (The Big Gundown): Not only does Morricone draw upon the theme from Beethoven’s Fur Elise (but with a Spanish guitar twist!), but he also includes one of the most driving and harsh guitar pieces in western cinema history.
One of Morricone’s few and true equals (and also a good friend) was composer Bruno Nicolai, he and composer Marcello Giombini scored a series of films know in the US as the Sabata trilogy. In this case I can say that the scores are far superior to the films themselves (this is not uncommon for this period). Nicolai also conducted many of Morricone’s scores.
Perhaps the GROOVIEST of all of the composers of this period was Piero Piccioni. What he brought to the genre was a real zest for funk and pure acid. His scores still sound as modern and fierce as the day they were recorded.
Definitely one of my favorite soundtracks of all time is Riz Ortalani’s score to the film “Day of Anger”. It’s a perfect combo of Morricone like orchestration with BOMBASTIC John Barry-like strings and that same amazing and harsh western surf guitar. A TRUE Masterwork.
So what is it exactly that makes this music so special? Well perhaps it’s the truly unique / postmodern approach to the compositions, the combinations of Spanish / Mexican Trumpet, gritty surf-like guitar, the lonesome whistle, the angelic choruses and ethereal voices, the almost pop melodies. All of these elements combine to make a kind of music never before heard and impossible to repeat.
Collin Rae, Naxos of America’s Marketing and Special Projects Manager, recently started a series of email discussions with composers, which have been posted on PMS #286 Appreciation Society, the Naxos of America blog. This discussion with composer David Lang yielded some interesting answers— including one heck of a 15-track music compilation!
In February of this year I began an email exchange with composer (and Bang on a Can) member David Lang. A few months previous (November of ‘08) Naxos released a fantastic and intriguing CD of David’s compositions titled Pierced. Then in January of ‘09 Medici Arts / EUROARTS released Bang on a Can’s Music for Airports DVD (a brilliant aural and visual experience based upon the Eno composition of course) which aslo came through Naxos of America. It was in fact this email exchange with David and our discussion about his music that inspired me to do this series of artist interviews.
What I find so fascinating about David’s music is its direct sonic link to what we now call “Indie Rock”. His homage to the Velvet Underground is a fine illustration of this link. It is however pieces like Pierced and Cheating, Lying, Stealing with their organic and almost awkward loops, the spaces and hesitations that flow within that circular-like sound which really grab and propell the listener. There are moments where I feel like I’m listening to some form of post-modernly abstract electronica. Enough of this! Here’s David.
CR: What are 5 recordings (different genres if possible) that shaped / shapes your personal musical landscape? DAVID:-The Joseph Papp production of the Ralph Mannheim translation of Brecht / Weill Three Penny Opera
-The (1973?) Steve Reich recording of Violin Phase and It’s Gonna Rain
-Leonard Bernstein’s first recordings of Shostakovich’s 1st and 9th Symphonies
-The first Velvet Underground record, with the Andy Warhol yellow banana cover
-Bob Dylan – World Gone Wrong
CR: Now speaking specifically about “Classical Music” what pieces / composers have totally blown your mind and helped shape who you are sonically today? DAVID:
Glass – Einstein on the Beach
Reich – Drumming
Stockhausen – Stimmung
Berlioz – Harold in Italy
Machaut – Messe de Notre Dame
Andreissen – De Staat
Bach – Goldberg Variations
CR: Can you give us 5 visuals that helped shape that person that is you….these could be moments, a cereal box, a toy, a piece of art, a movie, a television show…whatever… DAVID: I am not at all a visual person.
CR: We talk a lot about cultures and sub-cultures and how it pertains to music and art, what “culture” do you see you and your music being part of? What “Sub-culture / Subcultures” do you or have you indentified with and why / how? DAVID: My sub-culture is a kind of no-mans-land between experimental classical and experimental pop musics. One of the interesting things going on right now is that classical music’s gravitational field is pretty weak, and creative young musicians who in past centuries would have been steered towards classical music now go straight to indie pop. there is now a growing part of the pop world that wants its music to be questioning, unusual, uncompromising, not always easy or pleasant to listen to. Those are all the traits we used to want from new classical music as well….
CR: Can you put into words your creative process? DAVID: I like to think about why I like the things I like. What this means compositionally is that a lot of my music comes from examining myself, about why certain kinds of music make me feel good or bad. the piece that won the Pulitzer – ‘the little match girl passion’ – began with me thinking about how strange it is that Jewish classical music lovers spend so much time loving music from the past that worships Jesus. Christianity is central to much of the canon of western music – I know more about Christianity than many Christians I know, simply because I love Bach and Monteverdi and Perotin. After years of thinking about how weird this was I decided to write a piece about it. Likewise, my piece ‘pierced’ came out of years of thinking about the history of the concerto – how we take it for granted that a musical form is about a certain kind of argument between an individual and a group, a heroic depiction of the struggle of one noble person changing all society. What if we wanted to make a piece that was based on a different model of human interaction? What if a concerto was about two groups of people ignoring each other, but whose mutual ignorance added up to something that neither group could achieve by itself? I wrote ‘pierced’ after years of thinking such thoughts.
CR: When do you feel you do your best work? DAVID: When my children get off to school in the morning I am so happy to be in alone my studio that I find it very easy to work!
CR: What are you working on this very moment? DAVID: I am rewriting Beethoven’s only opera FIDELIO – not the music, which of course is amazing and utterly untouchable, but the libretto, which has real problems, and which Beethoven himself knew needed some help. I am making my own version of the story, taking out most of the mushy love stuff and focusing on the politics.
CR: Can you create for me a 15 track compilation of music / sound (list the pieces you would put on this compilation) DAVID: in no particular order:
-Kurt Weill – ballad in which macheath begs all men for forgiveness
-Pere ubu – the modern dance
-Michael Gordon – yo, shakespeare
-Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen – din tavshed
-Evan Ziporyn – tsmindao ghmerto
-Radiohead – everything in its right place
-julia wolfe – early that summer
-John Cage – six melodies
-Brian Eno – music for airports, 1:1
-Marc Blitzstein – the nickel under your foot
-X – the world’s a mess it’s in your kiss
-Frank Zappa – willie the pimp part 2, from fillmore east
-Xenakis – psappha
-Glenn Branca – lesson #1
-Meredith Monk – facing north
One of my favorite bloggers, the publicist Amanda Ameer, recently made these comments on her Artsjournal blog Life’s a Pitch:
I have found that the Grammies are a point of reference for the “outside world” about classical artists, that is, a way to let people who haven’t heard of a certain artist know he or she is “that good”. Sometimes, I’ll meet someone and the conversation will go like this:
What do you do? Classical music PR.
Oh, that’s cool. Name someone you work for. Is it? And…Hilary Hahn?
Mmmm…don’t know her. She’s a violinist. Mmm…. She played for the Pope’s 80th birthday. Weird, OK…. She played on ‘The Village’ soundtrack. I loved ‘Sixth Sense’. She won a Grammy. Oh! Cool, great, yeah.
Amanda continues:
… the Grammies are a cultural touchstone – is this the right use of that phrase? – or, perhaps more accurately, a popular culture mile marker of success. What is that worth, though, monetarily speaking, slash, what does winning a Grammy mean for an artist’s overall profile?
Both The Kings Singers and Hilary have won Grammies before, so I already get to slap “Grammy Award-winning…” next to their names in their bios and pop-culture-mile-marker-of-success name-drop “Grammy” to folks outside the industry.** BUT – would Grammy wins this year result in, oh, what’s the word – “album sales”? Does a shiny Grammy sticker on an album make the difference (it might), or is there more we can do to channel the win of a mainstream award into recording and concert revenue?
You’ll notice that Amanda used her blog cleverly, not failing to mention that two of her private clients—Hillary Hahn and The King Singers—received nominations. Brava.
It is easy to complain about the relevance of an award that doesn’t have the prestige, in the “classical world,” of the Grawemeyer or Pulitzer; but the GRAMMY® Award, though still largely associated with pop music, is one of the most widely-recognized awards in the U.S. music business (and, I would even say, the world). And if we are attempting to reach new audiences with some of our artists and releases, having that award attached to their names is pretty important. Additionally, the award is a sales driver, which means a great deal to the music business even in bad times.
Naxos and our family of distributed labels saw many of our wonderful artists nominated this year, including the Pacifica Quartet, whose recording of Elliott Carter’s String Quartets Nos. 1 and 5 was nothing short of astonishing. It also was fitting that this nomination came just before Mr. Carter’s 100th birthday this Thursday, December 11. The Quartet was nominated in the category of Best Chamber Music Performance and also will be honored at this year’s Musical America Awards with the 2009 Ensemble of the Year Award. And for everyone who has been asking about Volume 2 of the Carter Quartets, here goes: FEBRUARY 2009. BTW: Legendary producer Judith Sherman also picked up a nomination for Producer of the Year for her work on the Carter String Quartets on Naxos and four additional albums.
John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man received a nomination for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. For this recording, Corigliano, a Pulitzer-, Oscar-, Grammy®-, and Grawemeyer award-winning composer (yes, there are all those award listings and they ALL are important), collaborated with conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic. In addition, the recording’s superb soloist, Israeli soprano Hila Plitmann, received a nomination for Best Classical Vocal Performance. She has made recordings of works by David Del Tredici, including Vintage Alice and some of his songs. For Mr. Tambourine Man, because of the re-orchestration—the work was originally written for Sylvia McNair and scored for voice and piano—the vocal part was reconceived for “amplified soprano.” Plitmann is amazing.
Chorus master Henryk Wojnarowski and conductor Antoni Wit received a Choral Performance nomination for the Naxos recording of Karol Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater with the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. A Best Engineered Album (Classical) nomination went to engineer John Newton for his work on the Naxos recording Respighi: Church Windows, Brazilian Impressions, Rossiniana, featuring conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Our distributed labels also did amazingly well this year.
Artists from British-based label Chandos received five nominations in multiple categories. Spotless Rose: Hymns to the Virgin Mary, featuring the PhoenixChorale, conductor Charles Bruffy, and produced by Blanton Alspaugh, was nominated for Best Classical Album (Awards to Artists and Producer). Additionally, Mr. Bruffy and the Phoenix Chorale received a nod in the Best Small Ensemble Performance category. Spotless Rose includes choral works by Stephen Paulus, Benjamin Britten, Cecilia McDowall, Herbert Howells, Javier Busto, Healey Willan, and Jean Belmont Ford. On a personal level, I need to add that this recording is a special favorite among many of us at Naxos.
Another Chandos choral recording, Rheinberger: Sacred Choral Works, with conductor Charles Bruffy leading the Kansas City Chorale and Phoenix Bach Choir, earned nominations for Best Surround Sound Album and Best Choral Performance. Finally, a Best Orchestral Performance nomination went to conductor Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra for their Chandos recording D’Indy Orchestral Works, Volume 1.
A EuroArts production earned two nominations in the categories of Best Classical Album (Award to Artists and Producers) and Best Opera Recording (Award to Conductor, Producer, and Principal Soloists) for the DVD recording of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of The City of Mahagonny. The performance featured conductor James Conlon, soloists Anthony Dean Griffey, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald, and the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and Chorus, produced by Fred Vogler. (This is the first year DVD recordings of operas are eligible for Grammy Awards. Only the audio portion of the DVD is considered in the nominating process.”)
Nominations for Best Opera Recording also went to conductors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs for their CPO recording of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Psychéwith the Boston Early Music Festival. Mr. O’Dette and Mr. Stubbs also were nominated last year for their CPO recording of Lully’s Thésée with the same ensemble.
Renowned Italian conductor and Baroque specialist Rinaldo Alessandrini was nominated for his Naïve classique recording of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo.
Finally, violinist Elmar Oliveira earned a nomination for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra for his Artek recording of Violin Concertos by Ernst Bloch and Benjamin Lees, with John McLaughlin Williams conducting the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine.
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subsequently received three Grammy® nominations. Founded in 2001 by Morten Lindberg, 2L’s mission is to achieve state-of-the-art sound and packaging within all future formats of classical music. “What we are seeing is a completely new conception of the music experience,” said Lindberg. “Recorded music is no longer a matter of a fixed two-dimensional setting, but rather a three-dimensional enveloping situation. Stereo can be described as a flat-canvas, while surround sound is a sculpture that you can literally move around and relate to spatially.”
My fascination for sound is a gift of birth and heritage. My mother was always singing, even up to the moment when she started to press me out. The inspiration to work with music as something appealing to more than feelings and moods also dates back to childhood. I discovered the sense of orientation and that this sense could be cheated willingly by my own perception. Sitting by the window gazing at the snowflakes falling densely outside, I would after a while have a strong perception that the snowflakes were the reference point hovering motionless in the air and that I instead was in the middle of an upward movement, as if I were lifted weightlessly. This was a blissfull experience which I would seek consciously over and over again during our lovely winters. It was not the beauty or the quiet of the falling snow that attracted me, but the mere physical experience of weightlessness being planted in my body when I let myself be receptable and non-judging of what my eyes were seeing.
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