“Working with forces unknown to me has always been an exciting challenge,” says Elliott Sharp, “especially when those forces are in the form of younger musicians, highly skilled and enthusiastic.” For his work with the musicians of the Veni Academy, he chose three previously composed works that would be easily adaptable to a large ensemble whose instrumentation was not the result of prior design plus one newly composed for the occasion. The chosen pieces were based on well-defined processes that made use of instant decision-making on the part of both the players and the conductor, and finally, some graphic notation. Composed in 2003 for string quartet, The Dispersion of Seeds uses a simple algorithm of arpeggiation of nine chords throughout its arc to create shifting verticalities. The piece would be different with every performance yet would retain its distinct identity.

Just 26 years old, Nicola Benedetti has been making chart-topping recordings for 10 years. This album celebrates the best of those recordings, and her other successes – from winning the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in 2004, to her 2012 best-selling album ‘The Silver Violin’, the highest charting classical instrumental album in the UK of the last two decades. A collection of great violin music – from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending to the Tchaikovsky and Bruch violin concertos and Arvo Part’s Spiegel Im Spiegel. Featuring brand new recordings – Brahms’ invigorating Hungarian Dance no. 5, Monti’s ever-popular Czardas, and Chopin’s emotional Nocturne in C# minor. The album includes Nicola performing with leading orchestras and conductors, as well as some of her favorite chamber players. This album showcases the incredible range of Nicola’s playing and demonstrates her wide appeal. In January 2013 Nicola was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to music and charity.

This volume focuses on love, one of Philip Glass’s most glorious themes. The timeless melancholy of his BAFTA award-winning music for The Hours forms an organic suite driven by the film’s three powerful characters, here complete with unpublished tracks. The breathtakingly energetic Modern Love Waltz expands the limits of minimalism by combining Glass’s style with Viennese dance tradition, while his transcription of Notes on a Scandal is a recording première. Steve Reich described the iconic Music in Fifths as being “like a freight train”. Recognized as a leading interpreter of Liszt’s music, Nicolas Horvath has in recent years become one of the most sought after pianists of his generation. Holder of a number of awards, including First Prize of the Scriabin and the Luigi Nono International Competitions, he frequently organizes events and concerts of unusual length, sometimes over twelve hours, such as Philip Glass’s complete piano music or Erik Satie’s Vexations, and composers from a number of countries have written for him. Nicolas Horvath is a Steinway artist.

Of the three Bang on a Can founder composers, David Lang’s music has always been the glassiest, the sparest, and for some listeners the most precious. In recent years, his aesthetic has become leaner still, paring down already simple material to gaunt extremes in something approaching neo-plainchant. The national anthems (note the lower case; nothing vainglorious here ) takes fragments of text from the anthems of all 193 United Nations member states and unfolds at speaking speed, with plenty of room for breaths between phrases and plenty of clarity to the words. It has the feel of sad and eerie intoning. The Los Angeles choir clinches the right sound for Lang – unflinching, spellbound – while the Calder Quartet gives sleek accompaniment. Also on the disc is a new choral version of Lang’s little match girl passion, the piece originally for four voices that won him the Pulitzer prize in 2008 and which, in the mouths of many, becomes a sort of collective prayer in the congregational tradition of Bach’s chorales.

Hipnotic Earth is an electro-acoustic ambient soundscape project birthed from a deep need for quiet, slow motion music; from a carnal urge toward silence. California, USA based artist Cosmos Rennert’s project began dramatically when in 2015 the scheduled release of his debut album ‘Essence’ was missed when his home in the hot springs of Harbin, Northern California burned down in a sudden wildfire which swept the community. His home, studio, possessions, work place and the tiny town in which he lived succumbed to the flames. He is now deeply grateful to be able to continue recording and we’re pleased to present, a record which sees a departure from Cosmos’ usual style of sleepy drones.

Azica Records will release American Rapture featuring harpist Yolanda Kondonassis and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Music Director Ward Stare. This album includes the world premiere recording of Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Higdon’s Harp Concerto, written for and dedicated to Yolanda Kondonassis; Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1 in One Movement, Op. 9; and the world premiere recording ofPatrick Harlin’s Rapture. The album is designed to highlight three generations of American composition and, as defined by Harlin in the context of his work, to depict rapture not as a religious event, but as an experience of extreme human emotion.

In 2018 Fazil Say composed for Ferhan and Ferzan Önder the Sonata for two pianos, Op. 80, which was premiered in January 2019 at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. This was the missing piece of the mosaic to realize this concept album. Ferhan and Ferzan Önder have been closely associated with Fazil Say for decades. Already in 2013 they have premiered Winter Morning in Istanbul. The Double Concerto, Op. 48 was also written for them. During the creation in May 2013 the Gezi protests have shocked Turkey. The events also influenced Fazil Say. The Önder twins: He asked us what we would think if he renamed the concerto for two pianos and orchestra Gezi, which was very exciting news for us! With this work we hope to contribute something to a peaceful, human, free and democratic world. The CD focuses on this Concerto for two pianos and orchestra. Winter Morning in Istanbul is the opening piece and the Sonata op. 80 closes this extraordinary homage to Istanbul.

The emotional content, lyricism and direct appeal of Gavin Bryars’s music are unique, reflecting a contemporary composer’s absorption and transformation of several centuries of musical craftsmanship in order to reflect his, and our, own epoch. Originally written for harpsichord, After Handel’s Vesper is a strong illustration of Bryars’s post-minimal interests in early music repertoire. Ramble on Cortona, derived from 13th-century music, makes expressive use of the piano’s resonant qualities, while in the highly-coloured, almost impressionistic The Solway Canal, landscapes pass by as if in a dream.

Songs of Inspiration, Hope and Strength A collection of songs in which to find meaning and inspiration. Includes the single Jealous of the Angels, Josh Groban’s To Where you Are, hymns Make Me A Channel of your Peace and Morning Has Broken (with Bryn Terfel). Also includes a moving cover of Stormzy’s Blinded By Your Grace which features Katherine’s Daughter Aaliyah and The Greatest Showman’s Never Enough.

Michael Nyman (born 1944) is one of the most famous and successful film music composers of our time. His music, although inextricably connected with the visual action of a film, has the quality to stand on its own, to evoke and express the visual emotions in sounds only. Nyman’s most famous film score is of the film “The Piano” , becoming an instant hit. Its openness and its deceptively simple musical lines appealed to a mass audience. The music featured on this recording is either originally written for piano or arranged by the composer himself. Minimal Music champion Jeroen van Veen has been fascinated by Nyman’s music his whole life, and the recording of it was a logical step. He is the ideal interpreter of this seductive, mind opening music.

The intensely practical choral music of the young Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds is steadily gaining appreciation across the world. The works on this new album owe their genesis to commissions from the United States, England and northern Europe and encompass ethereal expressions of uniquely arctic phenomena (listen for wine glasses turned—and tuned—to wondrously simple but devastating effect within the choral texture), American ballads and several works in the ‘Anglican tradition’, the fruits of the composer’s recent residency at Trinity College Cambridge. Trinity College Choir Cambridge here returns the compliment, as it were, with superlative performances of these varied and engaging works, all recorded under the watchful eye of the composer and conductor Stephen Layton.

4th solo release by Nils Bo Davidsen. The previous (solodoublebass) release, attracted massive attention and was nominated to a DMA award 2014. Nils Bo Davidsen shares some words on his new release, Hverdagsforvandling: "In 2015, I took up the cello. From the start, it has been an amazing journey for me. I have been exploring, having fun, and recording from day one. Hverdagsforvandling is a collection of pieces ranging from solo fantasies on collages to painstakingly composed soundscapes. All of the pieces are based on improvisations or ideas. The structured compositional process came later. For example, the piece Mørkhøj consists of four improvised cello voices played with the same feeling and randomly layered on top of one another… And then edited.

These two discs reveal Wolff as a composer fully exploring, in different ways, the continuum between music which is highly fragmented, embracing extended silences [composed or indeterminate], to that which is more progressive and seemingly driven, albeit taking in disarming and unconventional routes. As a body of repertoire, these works are remarkable for their freshness of musical thought and energy (John Cage considered Wolff to be the most 'musical' of the experimental composers).

Tzadik is proud to present the first CD of classical chamber music by Downtown powerhouse Trevor Dunn. Bassist, composer, bandleader and arranger, Dunn has been a mainstay of dozens of high-profile ensembles for over thirty years. Nocturnes is a moody and brooding program of compositions featuring his first string quartet performed by The Secret Quartet, Six Nocturnes for piano, an early piece from 1989 for bass and string quartet, and a dynamic trio for piano, violin and bass featuring the remarkable Carla Kihlstedt and Vicky Chow. A stunning program of modern chamber music at its best by one of the most consistent and musical figures in the Downtown scene.

While most classical composers attempt to spread around their artistry among various mediums, Stephen Scott has put all of his eggs into the proverbial one basket, specializing in bowed piano music as founder/leader of the Bowed Piano Ensemble, est. 1977. This is not as limited a resource as it sounds; in 1930, Henry Cowell stated he had discovered 165 ways to play the inside of a piano, though if he made a list of all those methods no one has been able to find it. Moreover, Stephen Scott doesn't seem to mind being regarded as "the Bowed Piano Guy." New Albion's The Deep Spaces is his sixth bowed piano CD and demonstrates some measure of stepping out of the box on Scott's part; The Deep Spaces is a song cycle, set to poems by Shelley, Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Pliny, and Pablo Medina and sung by soprano Victoria Hansen.