This recording is a collection of 10 moving works for cello by March, Bartholomew, Beeler, Sherrill, Gottschalk, and Ascioti. Cellist Ovidiu Marinescu demonstrates the instruments ability to connect the slow and brooding with the meditative and joyous, and beyond.

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 music. In his 2nd release on Navona, the composer draws from his South American heritage to present 4 orchestral works on par with the wondrous Nazca Lines in Peru.

Santa Barbara-based composer 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. Pacific Ridge features 3 of her orchestral works.

A compilation featuring 6 American composers of orchestral works all united by an expansive and sublime musical vision. With programmatic influences ranging from Jungian philosophy, musings on ancient Korean art, and descriptions of contrasting mountain vistas, each piece asks US to not only reflect on our collective past but on our communal future as well.

Classical guitarist anc omposer Giovanni Piacentini's talents as a dual-threat musician are on full display on Chiaroscuro, his debut album. He wrote all these works themed around his instrument of choice, and his playing appears on two pieces - Miniatures, for guitar and chamber ensemble, and a solo guitar performance on the title track. Yet, even on the tracks where he does not perform, the composer's voice remains ever-present, namely in each work's reverberant use of space. Piacentini describes himself as highly attuend to the "overall sound and impact" of classical guitar. The album's three works affirm this assertion, and indicate this sensitivity also applies to pieces which pair guitar with an ensemble (Miniatures) as well as compositions written for a different set of instruments entirely (Chasing Shadows). Throughout Chiaroscuros, the guitarist's musical mindset as a solo performer remains a central influence on the album's compositional personality. The title track's five movements feature a distinguished improvisatory style, which develops with enthralling spatial characteristics that blend the guitar's various timbres with added reverberation. Under Piacentini's virtuosic hands, Chiaroscuro beautifully mixes harmonics, tremolo, and other techniques that yield a detailed musical landscape rich with naturalistic imagery. Miniatures expands the guitar-centric color palette of Chiaroscuro, with an accompanying ensemble accentuating the six-string's timbres with flavors of bass clarinet, vibraphone, percussion, viola, and violin. At points, the strings and bass clarinet seemingly emerge from the sound of the guitar, illustrating the connection between Piacentini's perspectives as a composer and performer. Chiaroscuro and Miniatures share similar structures; each work has multiple movements based on specific images - seasons and times of day in Chiaroscuro, and paintings in Miniatures - and tend to present musical snapshots more than transforming narratives. In addition to its absence of guitar, Chasing Shadows - for violin, bass clarinet, vibraphone, and harp - is a distinct work on the album. Here, the violin is the primary soloist, and leads the listener on an exciting and beautiful musical journey. Accordingly, Piacentini designs an exquisite violin part that traverses a range of moods and energies, from determined athleticism to yearning lyricism.

Slices is a handpicked selection of new chamber works by contemporary composers designed to showcase the diversity of modern music-making. The compositions featured here prove that not only is classical music alive, it continues to grow and cross-pollinate as well. Get out your best fork and knife, grab your napkin, pull up a chair, and feast!

Argentinian composer, conductor, and scholar Alicia Terzian's new Navona release Off the Edge is an incredible journey into the heart of the string orchestra. The four works on the album introduce listeners to Terzian's captivating compositional perspective and enchanting treatment of this ensemble's sonic potential. Her writing focuses heavily on the drama, nuance, and contrasts accessible through instrumental color, and Off the Edge showcases numerous audacious textures involving a simple string orchestra, as well as pairings of large string ensemble with percussion and voice. To this end, Terzian's work Tres Piezas para Orquestra de Cuerdas is the album's simplest presentation of strings, as it is the only piece on the album to feature string orchestra by itself. Even so, this highly sectional piece demonstrates the ensemble's considerable textural flexibility. As one might expect, the composer uses teh group as a conventional and singular melodic force with the accompaniment of solo violin and cello. More importantly, Tres Piezas is a varied work, and yields many other situations that exploit string instruments' capacity to produce both compellingly powerful and delicate sounds. The other works on Off the Edge more commonly play to the extremes of the string orchestra's sonic palette. This tendency is encapsulated in the first minutes of Carmen Criaturalis, a concerto for horn, string orchestra, and percussion. Here, Terzian fuses the sounds of a rolling cymbal with trembling, sliding strings, which give way to the solo horn's moaning entrance. As the work proceeds, the orchestra accompanies its soloists with strings playing called "col legno battuto", a distinctive technique in which a player taps their instrument's strings with the wood of their bow. Canto a Mi Misma features an enthralling form, as well as rich, vivified string textures. Scored for string orchestra and percussion, the composition thrillingly withholds the percussionists' entrance until the work's finale minutes, delivering a stunning revelation to the listener at the precise moment one thinks the piece is winding down to its conclusion. The album's titular work combines strings, percussion, choir and bass soloist in a dramatic and expansive musical design.

Featuring Cunningham's interpretation of the final version of Schubert's Gastein Masterwork and also includes 3 new contemporary works for ballet. On-disc Enhanced Content includes study scores extended liner notes and more.

Composer Stadelman’s unusual, arresting, exacting musical voice has evolved over 25 years, amounting to a complex musical practice that suggests no obvious counterpart. MESSENGER includes a mixed bag of his orchestral, instrumental, and electroacoustic works.

Composer and pianist Jeffrey Jacobs returns to Navona Records with Reawakening, a collection of varied works for orchestra and chamber ensembles. Jacob's lush, mystical style pervades the album, often blending his piano's sound with orchestral arrangements to create rich musical imagery, as in The Loch Before Sunrise and A Mirror Upon the Waters. The title work is a composition for piano and orchestra, which was debuted on Ansonica Records' second Cuba-based album Intersections. It's one of the first pieces by an American composer to be recorded by the Cuban National Symphony in 50 years. Jacob found inspiration from Thomas Hardy's poem of the same name, writing that Hardy's "unforgettable images of the natural world as it struggles toward spring and rebirth were irresistible." The Loch Before Sunrise and A Mirror Upon the Waters follow, both colorful works for piano and orchestra that explore imagery from different Alpine lakes. Music for Haiti for piccolo and strings contrasts these themes, evoking the sorrow, loss, hopefulness, and rebirth of Haiti following the devastation of its recent earthquake. Remembrance of Thigns Past, another piece inspired by literature, takes its title from a Shakespearean sonnet. It features a soloist showcase for oboe, as well as a meditative chaconne. Jacob's Sonata for Cello and Piano has two remarkable contrasting movements, opposing the gentle opening "Lullaby" with a faster, more anxious movement with sweeping melodic lines. The album closes with a work for solo piano Rewakening, recalling the opening piece and bringing the album full circle.

With subtle influences from Cage, Ligeti, and the NY avante garde of the 50s, Lach Lau’s music blends programming and algorithmic generation with traditional instruments creating diverse and unique works. The 6 pieces on this album of chamber works are presented as musical islands where each is its own labyrinth.

Both the New Hampshire Master Chorale and the Manchester Choral Society elevate the works of composer-in-residence Jonathan Santore on There Are Many Other Legends, an expansive collection of works from Santore's choral catalog. Each piece highlights the composer's impressive command of choral writing and the ensemble's traditions. Through their texts and other premises, several works on There are Many Other Legends are referential pieces, some alluding to other works of vocal music while others recall the mythology of distant cultures. Requiem: Learning to Fall, a work which is both internally and externally referential, yielding a compelling, multi-layered musical text. The composition demonstrates Santore's command of vocal texture and ability to add character to the choir's text through i nstrumental accompaniments. At the heart of Requiem is the cyclical recurrence of multiple musical and textual ideas, including the ancient "dies irae" Gregorian Chant and various musical cues of Santore's creation. The mos timportant of these is his setting of the word "alleluia", which opens the work and returns multiple times as a positive counterbalance to the darker, more dissonant instrumental representations of the "dies irae" chant. Requiem and Forgetting are the albums only two pieces containing orchestral arrangements, featuring the New Hampshire-based Manchester Choral Society and Orchestra. However, several of the pieces on There Are Many Other Legends are written for both choir and additional instrumentation, including strings, piano, and soprano saxophone. While choral music is the focus of this album, Santore's instrumental writing and orchestration for heterogeneous ensembles should not be overlooked.

This collection of musical elegies and celebrations by Cacioppo skillfully evokes a Native American time, space and people. The history and the literature these meditations trace are often tragic and intensely dramatic.

This album features diverse orchestral works of 2 composers united by their affinity for energetic, stylistic, and rhythmic composition. Stellar performances from the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra clearly illustrate each composer's similar styles and subtle differences.

Natural beauty, emotion, and enlightenment. These are but a few of the common threads of Seeking & Finding, an album of choral works by 2 composers whose pointed explorations of humanity resonate in perfect pitch. Working with texts from ancient Sanskrit literature and the poetry of Gibran and Joyce, Bakker (b. 1945) and Richards (1927-2010) share an ability to steer the chorus through the sea of human emotion and experience, with unmatched profundity and depth.