A New Yorker Notable Recording of 2022!

Twice Grammy-nominated tenor Nicholas Phan is “one of the world’s most remarkable singers” (Boston Globe). Nico Muhly is one of today’s most sought-after composers. Nick and Nico’s collaboration began with a commission when Nick curated a series for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society in 2020. The resulting song cycle, Stranger, finds common ground in the musicians’ reflections on identity and immigration, themes that resonate as much today as they have through the centuries. This world-premiere recording of Stranger compliments Nico’s Lorne Ys My Liking, a setting of the 19th Chester Mystery Play, and Impossible Things, a triptych of poems by the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy. Nick has recorded with a roll call of collaborators: the adventurous string quartet Brooklyn Rider, shimmering countertenor Reginald Mobley, bold pianist Lisa Kaplan, and transformative Brooklyn-based collective The Knights led by brothers Colin and Eric Jacobsen.

REVIEWS

The heart immediately opens at the sound of Phan’s voice … Stranger is a must. I, for one, will be listening to it over and over.

--San Francisco Classical Voice

...an album that guarantees a gripping listening experience and, first and foremost, once again shows Nicholas Phan to be an outstanding singer with clear diction and impeccable vocal delivery who excels in the song repertoire. ★★★★★

--Pizzicato

Composer Nico Muhly has been on concert bills all over the U.S. and beyond in the early 2020s, and one reason is that he has a knack for creating music for the right performer at the right time. Tenor Nicholas Phan is a rising star who here contributes an essay about his difficulties, when performing at the Singer of the World competition in Wales, in coming up with a song that reflected his "American" identity, inasmuch as he is Chinese Indonesian on one side, and Greek American on the other. He would have found the perfect solution in Muhly's seven-section Stranger, for voice and string quartet. Muhly, himself the product of a highly multi-ethnic background, sets writing about the experience of immigration from various sources, including an interview with a Sicilian woman who arrived at Ellis Island in 1911 and a letter from a Chinese American about discrimination. All are in different registers, and Muhly's sensitive handling of text adds variety even as his musical language remains consistent. Phan's commitment to these pieces is palpable, but he shifts gears effectively in the other works on the program, Lorne Ys My Likinge, a setting of the Chester Mystery Play inspired by Britten's Abraham and Isaac, and Impossible Things, which sets translated texts by poet C.P. Cavafy. Phan's duet work with countertenor Reginald Mobley in Lorne Ys My Likinge is absolutely delicious, and the accompaniment by the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and the New York chamber orchestra The Knights, is intimate and close. This marks a major step forward for Phan, and anyone who hasn't been following Muhly's music, which combines rigor with tremendous audience appeal (sample the ravishing "My Love" from Stranger), might do well to start here.

--AllMusic (James Manheim)

Nico Muhly and The Tallis Scholars present No Resting Place, a collection of world premiere recordings of works that Muhly wrote for The Tallis Scholars over the last 10 years, by invitation of their director Peter Phillips. Phillips says that Muhly "immediately understood our particular sound. A succession of masterpieces followed, each as powerful as the last." The title work, No Resting Place, is a setting of Jeremiah's Lamentations, interspersed with contemporary interviews with people from the Windrush generation. Recordare, Domine also sets texts from Lamentations, while Marrow is a setting of Psalm 63. Rough Notes, using cold textures, austere counterpoint, and unstable harmonies, draws from Captain Scott's diary on his doomed mission to the Antarctic. Prosperitie was written to celebrate Peter Phillips' 70th birthday, and A Glorious Creature praises the glory of the soul. This album marks the start of a new collaboration between The Tallis Scholars and Linn.

Featuring 13 premiere recordings, With Eys Lift Up is a new collection of works written by American composer Nico Muhly for - and the majority commissioned by - the Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford. Comprising settings of the mass and canticles alongside anthems for Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascensiontide, Trinity Sunday and Remembrance, the collection sets a number of little-known texts, casting new light on familiar seasons of the church year.