Phoenix Rising featuring violinist Angel Wang with the Phoenix Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Vena presents a cornucopia of Chinese and Western classical music that transcends borders. The album includes Alice Ping Yee Ho's commissioned work Phoenix Rising, the beloved Butterfly Lovers' Concerto by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang, alongside traditional Chinese songs like "Jasmine Flower" and "Galloping Horses," offering a captivating blend of contemporary and traditional music. Phoenix Rising opens with the Butterfly Lovers' Concerto by He and Gang, a violin concerto that blends Chinese and Western compositional techniques, depicting two young lovers transformed into butterflies after their deaths. Followed by traditional Chinese songs: Songs of Four Seasons from China's Qinghai province; Dance of the Yao People, inspired by southern China's drum dance; Mayila, a Kazakh song about a young girl's beautiful voice; Galloping Horses depicting the sounds of horses whinnying and racing across the Mongolian grasslands; and the famous Jasmine Flower from the Qing dynasty, which tells of a virtuous woman captivated by the flower's fragrance and pure beauty. The album closes with it's title piece, Phoenix Rising by Alice Ping Yee Ho, a single-movement tone poem for solo violin and orchestra, encapsulating the timeless idea of the Phoenix rising from it's ashes, symbolizing hope and rebirth.

Catherine Cosbey and Dorian Komanoff Bandy present Mozart: String Duos, an album capturing the vitality, creativity, and intimacy of eighteenth-century music-making. This recording features vivid, period-instrument performances of some of Mozart's most inventive chamber compositions, as well as premieres of newly discovered historical arrangements of the Violin Sonata K. 305 and the opera La clemenza di Tito. The album begins with Mozart's two spectacular duos for violin and viola: pieces that are by turns lyrical, playful, and virtuosic. Following historical convention, Cosbey and Bandy insert extensive embellishments and cadenzas, capturing a degree of improvisatory freedom rarely heard in recordings of Mozart's string music. The album continues with the duo versions of Tito and K. 305. Arrangements such as these would have introduced many eighteenth-century consumers to Mozart's music; today, they conjure scenes of domestic music-making among family and friends. Get your CD copy of Mozart: String Duos or listen to it on your favourite streaming platform.

This recording features highlights from the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra's tour of China, which included a performance at Beijing's Forbidden City concert hall. The recording was produced at the Central China Radio Studio and features collaborations with some of New Brunswick's top classical musicians including international concert pianist, Roger Lord, the Saint John String Quartet and the traditional fiddler Samantha Robichaud. Founded in 1965, the orchestra has approximately 80 members between ages 10 and 24 from across the province. The NBYO tours New Brunswick each year, and occasionally performs in other countries. The ensemble is funded by a Board of Directors as well as private, municipal, and provincial grants. The group is led here by conductor James Mark.

Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra Sinfonia, together with percussionist Aiyun Huang, soprano Deantha Edmunds, and violinist and conductor Mark Fewer present a new album titled Alikeness. An album inspired by the human capacity to learn, adapt and collaborate. This album encourages listeners to find their own "alikenesses" within the music while fostering a deeper connection with one another. Violinist and conductor, Mark Fewer has been interpreting music in virtually every genre and setting for over three decades, premiering over 200 works, including more than 50 written for him. His unique discography features multiple JUNO and Grammy-winning recordings and an Opus Prize for a Serge Arcuri tribute. He has served as Concertmaster of the Vancouver Symphony, Artist-in-Residence at Stanford, William Dawson Scholar at McGill, and is currently Head of Strings at the University of Toronto. After 16 years as the founding artistic director of the SweetWater Music Festival, he is now in his sixth season and the Artistic Director of Stratford Summer Music.? Deantha Edmunds, Canada's first Inuk professional classical singer, was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in December 2023 for her work empowering Indigenous people and sharing their stories. Her performances, writing, and compositions have earned national and international acclaim. Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Aiyun Huang holds a DMA from UC San Diego and is the Head of Percussion at the University of Toronto, directing it's Percussion Ensemble. She gained international recognition by winning First Prize and Audience Prize at the 2002 Geneva International Music Competition. The NSO Sinfonia, based in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, was founded by Peter Gardner. It features core string players from the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. The album opens with the world premiere of Deantha Edmunds' Angmalukisaa ("round" in Inuktut), a personal composition about human connections. Next is episodes by Serge Arcuri, written for the Montreal Baroque Orchestra in 1998, blending the baroque "concerto grosso" form with modern elements. Followed by Matt Brubeck's The Simple Life, newly arranged for strings. The third movement "C" from B-A-C-H by Robert Carli, after J.S. Bach's surname, was composed in 2013 for the Sweetwater Music Festival. The album concludes with Alikeness, Yoshiaki Onishi's arrangement of an eight-movement suite by Jaroslaw Kapuscinski. The suite was originally composed in 2015 for the St. Lawrence String Quartet and Aiyun Huang.

Dialogues by cellist Noemie Raymond and pianist Zhenni Li-Cohen present two monumental works composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff and Rebecca Clarke. The album centers around a pair of sonatas that the performers hold dear. It seeks to bridge two universes in conversations between two instruments, two musicians, and two composers. The performers write, "it is a dialogue between you and us." This album explores the duality of two titanic masterpieces, from the pen of a woman and a man, both virtuoso instrumentalists with strikingly distinct musical voices. Dialogues begins with Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19, composed during his most prolific period alongside his famous Piano Concerto No. 2. Considered by some to be his most successful chamber work, Rachmaninoff dedicated the sonata to Anatoly Brandukov, his best man at his wedding and a celebrated Russian cellist who also premiered several of Tchaikovsky's works. Brandukov inspired Rachmaninoff to imbue the cello line with expressiveness and intensity. The album continues with Clarke's Viola Sonata (Version for Cello & Piano), composed in 1919. An internationally renowned violist, Clarke is often considered a proponent of "English Impressionism." Despite placing second in a prestigious composition competition, Clarke's works were not celebrated or performed as much as those of her male peers due to societal gender biases. It was not until the 1970s that Clarke emerged from obscurity, and this Sonata has since taken it's rightful place in the standard repertoire for viola. Noemie Raymond's diverse career has taken her from London's prestigious Royal Albert Hall to the Festival Internacional de Musica de Camara in Lima, the United States, Japan and beyond. She has collaborated with renowned virtuosos such as Midori, Pinchas Zukerman, Jan Lisiecki and Yekwon Sunwoo. 2024-2025 season marks Noemie's Carnegie Hall debut, and concerti appearances with the Skagit Symphony, the Orchestre symphonique de Sherbrooke and the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. A prizewinner in national and international competitions, Noemie has forged her reputation by earning awards at the Edwin H. and Leigh W. Schadt String International Competition and the Prix d'Europe, among others. She is a graduate of the University of Montreal and the New England Conservatory, and holds a Doctorate in Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music. Noemie plays the "Ex-Curtis" cello (1700) by Matteo Goffriller, generously provided to her by Canimex Inc. Of Drummondville, Quebec. Hailed as "... an artist of tremendous conviction, who fascinates even as she provokes... " by Gramophone Magazine and "a thrillingly good pianist" by The New Yorker, Zhenni has given solo recitals at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, New York's Lincoln Center, Philadelphia's Kimmel Performing Arts Center and the Berliner Philharmonie in Germany. Zhenni is looking forward to her next recording project with Marin Alsop in collaboration with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and has appeared as a soloist with orchestras such as the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the Knoxville, Cedar Falls, Fairbanks, Bucks County, Dominican Republic, Johns Hopkins and Lower Merion Symphony Orchestras amongst others. She is currently the Associate Professor of Piano at University of Alberta and the co-artistic Director of Opus 71 Concerts, a multimedia concert series near New York's Lincoln Center. Zhenni Li-Cohen is a Steinway Artist. Get your CD copy of 'Dialogues' or listen to it on your favorite platform. 'Dialogues' is available on all major music services.

The award-winning Saint John String Quartet has performed together for nearly 30 years, playing over 125 concerts a year throughout Canada, the United States, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, and China. Montage is the ensemble's fifth album, and follows the 2012 JUNO-nominated recording of Jacques Hétu's String Quartet No. 2. Montage highlights the group's passion for new, innovative Canadian music, with the includsion of seven previously unrecorded works. Montage showcases works by composers with roots in the maritime provinces, and was recorded in Rothesay, New Brunswick in 2014 in a beautiful church near the Saint John River. The album features works by Anthony Genge, Eldon Rathburn, Michael Miller, Richard Kidd, Martin Kutnowski and Talivaldis Kenins.

The Saint John String Quartet continues to make their mark on the Canadian music scene with the release of their new album, Canadian Hits: Unplugged. This album represents a step outside of a string quartet's norm with 16 pop hits from Canadian icons, including Leonard Cohen, the Arkells, Joni Mitchell and The Tragically Hip. This is the sixth recording release by the Quartet, and follows in the inventive direction of the group's previous offerings. For more than 30 years, the Quartet has stood among Canada's leading chamber music ensembles. The stylistic and energetic troupe is highly sought after for special collaborations within different musical genres - a reflection of their versatility and flexibility.

Well before the Nationalist schools of the nineteenth century, Celtic music in general, and Scots tunes in particular, enjoyed a period of great popularity throughout Great Britain. Composers trained in the Italian art music of the time borrowed traditional Celtic melodies and used them to create musical hybrids which owed as much to the ornamental stylings of Corelli as to the fiddle and lute traditions of Scotland. Strangely, the actual Celtic composers, arrangers and publishers of the period, many of whom synthesized the traditional idioms of their native culture with real flair and affection, are often overlooked in explorations of what was dubbed the “Scots drawing room style” by the eighteenth-century music publisher James Johnson. The aim of this release is to draw the attention back to these overlooked composers, which include James Oswald, General John Reid, Thomas Baltzar, and others. Montreal Ensemble La Cigale specializes in music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras on period instruments.

Ex Tempore is the debut album from the Nova Scotia-based Charke-Cormier duo. Derek Charke and Eugene Cormier have curated a charming program that includes an original composition by Charke (Ex Tempore), and arrangements of Handel and Peter Maxwell Davies by Cormier paired with works by Debussy, Handel and Brazilian-Canadian composer Celso Machado. Derek Charke (flutes) and Eugene Cormier (guitar) formed the Charke-Cormier Duo several years ago culminating in a debut recital at the KC Irving Centre in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. This sonorous union of flute and guitar continues to charm audiences across the Maritimes. Their repertoire includes many of the most important works for this pairing of instruments, and creates a sonic journey for audiences from the street corners of Argentina to the halls of Europe, as well as introducing fresh new works created today. Both performers are highly accomplished musicians who are on the teaching faculty at Acadia University's School of Music.

There Was a Time by Nova Scotia-born composer Cy Giacomin uses the memorable text from Ecclesiastes 3 that somehow sums up the "interesting times" during which this music was written. Times of economic insecurity, spiritual longing, terrorism, and natural disasters have intertwined with incredible advances in technology and medicine, peace in most of the world, an awakening in environmental awareness, and imagined connectedness through social media. Through all the interesting times - past, present, future - music sustains us. The Halifax Camerata Singers are in their thirtieth season. Founded by Artistic Director Jeff Joudrey, the group is Atlantic Canada’s premier chamber choir. The Nova Scotia ensemble has distinguished itself by performing exciting choral repertoire from all periods and styles, with a special focus on Canadian music. Winners of the Healy Willan Grand Prize in 2010, the choir often collaborates with chamber ensembles, Symphony Nova Scotia, and other musicians.

After many years of performing as a concert pianist, working as the artistic director for the Barachois Summer Music Series and collaborating on a variety of critically acclaimed musical projects across Canada, Julien Leblanc has released his first solo album, a piano recording entitled Mélancolies. The album is a compilation of French compositions that became a staple of Leblanc’s repertoire after he discovered them early on in his career. The composers included in this recorded collection — Franck, Poulenc and Dutilleux — all hail from France and their combined output stretches from the mid-nineteenth century to Dutilleux’s last work which was published in 2009 when he was ninety-three. Francis Poulenc was a less avant-garde contemporary of Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau and so, his work is accessible but inventive and fresh. Poulenc’s “Fifteen Improvisations” are known for their charming and buoyant character as well as for the technical artistry of the composer’s pedalling. Henri Dutilleux’s work was more heavily influenced by his environmental context when he was composing music just after World War Two. The included piece by Dutilleux, “Sonata for piano”, denotes the turbulence, anguish and anxiety that pervaded during that period through his use of contrast — he juxtaposes rhythmic and jagged sections with sensual, dreamlike and ethereal parts. Composing fifty years before Dutilleux and Poulenc, César Franck‘s “Prélude, choral et fugue” is religious and takes a cyclic form. In its closing coda, Franck masterfully superimposes the previous sections of his composition. The character of the work is philosophical and contemplative yet at the same time passionate and fervid. Julien Leblanc connects these differing French compositions through his acute sensibilities and expressive piano playing. He fuses the works together with a consistent expression of melancholy which he identifies in each work.

For close to two decades the Saint John String Quartet has captivated the hearts of listeners with their concerts, radio and television appearances and popular recordings. Their list of successes includes an ECMA for “Best Classical Recording” and in 1995 they presented the first chamber music concert on the World Wide Web Internet. The Quartet’s active concertizing schedule finds them touring Canada, the USA, and abroad to Japan, China, and Hong Kong. The group can often be heard on CBC Radio and on two other albums entitled Hidden Treasures and Saint John String Quartet. Acclaimed by critics for her floating, high pianissimos, soprano Sally Dibblee enjoys success in opera houses and concert halls throughout North America. A New Brunswick resident, Sally continues to perform in Maritime summer music festivals and is frequently heard on the CBC.

To mark the 100th anniversary of Canada’s entry into the First World War in 1914, the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra embarked on a journey of remembrance through music and reflection. Keeping Faith is the theme for this commemoration tour, with special 2014-2015 performances in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, throughout New Brunswick and in our nation’s capital, for the official opening of the Canadian War Museum’s new permanent exhibition, The Home Front, 1917. Our “Keeping Faith” visual wordmark, presented in English, French, German and Czech, was commissioned by the NBYO to honour and respect the countries and cultures visited on the commemoration tour. As the centerpiece of the Commemoration Tour, the NBYO commissioned an orchestral work, “A Dream of Dawn,” by Canadian composer Kevin Lau. One of Canada's forefront emerging composers, Kevin Lau, whose music has been commissioned by numerous orchestras across Canada, including an original full-length score for the National Ballet of Canada, currently serves as Affiliate Composer of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Lau describes the commission as a grateful commemoration of a generation who served and sacrificed. "My intention", said Lau, "is to compliment the reflections of those pondering war in all its paradoxical facets, to recognize the horrors of human conflict while affirming our profound search for harmony in ourselves and abroad”. What better path than by harnessing the genius, hope and promise of our youth, to build the world of which their century-old counterparts could only dream – a dream of dawn.

International concert pianist Roger Lord has been described by The China Daily as "the Piano Prince of Canada." This recording features twenty-one "treasures," short pieces that Lord has uncovered throughout his many travels in China. Hailing from Moncton, New Brunswick, Roger Lord won the First Prize in piano in the Canadian National Festival of Music as well as in the Canadian Music Competition. His various concertos have taken him to some of the world’s greatest cities, and he has performed as a soloist with symphony orchestras in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. He first travelled to China in 1999 and gave his first concert in the city of Qingtao in Shandong Province. He has since been to China nearly thirty times and has performed in most regions and important cities. He holds a Doctorate in Music and is now Professor of Piano at the Universite de Moncton in Canada.

The Saint John String Quartet's active concertizing schedule of over 125 concerts a year has taken them throughout Canada, the United States, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and China. With two ECMA "Best Classical Album of the year" awards, the group can be often heard on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio waves, the internet and on 5 award-winning compact Discs. Winners of the 2012 Originals Award for 'Classical Music', the Quartet was also honored to receive the Lieutenant Governor’s NBYO award. The Quartet has played for the Prime Minister of Canada, Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II and at prestigious festivals such as the Tochigi Music Festival in Japan, the Arcady festival in the USA and the Forbidden City Festival in Beijing China. For this release, the ensemble has chosen works by Alexander Glazunov and Dmitri Shostakovich. The Saint John String Quartet is David Adams, Paul Campbell, Christopher Buckley, and Sonja Adams.