Calidore String Quartet RESILIENCE

The genesis for our album Resilience was conceived during the tumultuous period leading up to and following the US presidential election of Fall 2016. Many millions across the world marched for a cause to address the divided nature of our society. These demonstrations led our quartet to wonder about our purpose as musicians during this time of social upheaval. We settled on the idea that we wanted to offer a message of strength and hope for our audiences across the globe. Furthermore, we wanted to demonstrate through our music that the power to be resilient is inside each of us. With this in mind we began to explore the quartet canon to extract stories of composers who endeavored to create great art despite tremendous internal or external conflict. The result is a collection of four personal narratives as told through the medium of the string quartet by Prokofiev, Janáček, Golijov, and Mendelssohn. These pieces depict an escape from the Nazi eastern offensive in WWII, a life caught in the crosshairs of violence in the Middle East, the struggle of a man trapped in a loveless marriage and a heartbroken brother reeling after his sister’s premature death. In some of the most difficult times of their lives these composers turned to music to vent anger and fear but also to express tenderness, hope, and optimism.

Amsterdam Sinfonietta / Candida Thompson THE ARGENTINIAN ALBUM

I can’t imagine a more diverse palette of sounds, styles and colours than the three composers on this recording. They are unmistakably Argentinian yet tantalisingly different. Between them they represent the vibrant fusion of cultures that exist in Argentina today. In order to give full justice to their music, we researched their personal tastes, sources and sound worlds, looking for the influences that shaped them. Although one immediately feels that Ginastera’s unique masterpiece Concerto per corde is written in a language close to the European masterworks of the twentieth century such as Bartók’s Divertimento, or Berg’s Lyric Suite, it’s a very particular and original work. Ginastera changes between such imaginative quasi improvised solo sections and very precisely structured passages. While playing his Concerto one has a tremendous feeling of freedom within structure. (Candida Thompson)

Nadine Sierra THERE'S A PLACE FOR US

Nadine Sierra, 2018 winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s prestigious Beverly Sills Artist Award, has made her first album for Deutsche Grammophon and Decca Gold, having signed an exclusive contract with the labels last year. Recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Robert Spano, There’s a Place for Us is scheduled for international release on 24 August 2018, in time to mark the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth the following day. The album presents the soprano’s stunning vocal abilities in an eclectic choice of American classical music – as well as works by Bernstein, the repertoire ranges from Stephen Foster and Douglas Moore to Stravinsky and Villa-Lobos, and on again to Ricky Ian Gordon, Osvaldo Golijov and Christopher Theofanidis, with texts in Spanish and Portuguese as well as English. After singing the role of Norina (Don Pasquale) at the Paris Opéra in June and July, Nadine Sierra will perform music from the album at this summer’s major US festivals, including an appearance at Tanglewood’s star-studded Bernstein Centennial Celebration.

America’s founding colonists were sustained by the belief that they were building “a city on the hill”, a place that would serve as a model to all mankind. Countless migrants have journeyed there since to share the American dream. Nadine Sierra’s story stands for the stories of millions whose families have made a fresh start in the United States. The critically acclaimed lyric soprano and Fort Lauderdale native, who celebrated her 30th birthday in May, understands the essential contribution made by migrants to the nation’s growth. Her mother is Portuguese, while her father’s family hails from Puerto Rico and Italy. There’s a Place for Us, Sierra’s Deutsche Grammophon and Decca Gold debut album, pays tribute to the diverse backgrounds and creative energy of America’s classical composers. It also presents a timely reminder of unity and equality, of integration and optimism, at a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric is increasing, and fault-lines are widening between divided communities in the US and beyond.

St. Lawrence String Quartet / Todd Palmer OSVALDO GOLIJOV Yiddishbbuk

This is an amazing recording. It will leave you drained of emotion and speechless with admiration... Lullaby and Doina incorporates Jewish and Gypsy themes, part slow and sad, part wild and motoric, with a radiant violin solo soaring above the woodwinds. Yiddishbbuk...is inspired by a line from an apocryphal psalm: "No one sings as purely as those who are in the deepest hell..." It's first movement commemorates three children who perished in the Nazi concentration camp Terezin. Golijov evokes their anguish in music that is by turns wild, raucous, slashing, mysterious, eerie, and always heart-rending. Tremolos flutter up above aching dissonances, alternating with organlike, sustained chords; slides and crashes sound like strangled death cries. Dreams and Prayers...are depicted in music that is calm, mysterious, meditative and devout, but intermittently breaks into traditional dance tunes, and builds up to several tremendous climaxes. The clarinet speaks, sings, sobs, screams, and prays in true klezmer style. The playing is fabulous, the total effect mesmerizing, but the real miracle is that this young Canadian quartet and American clarinetist can identify so completely with a culture surely worlds away from their own. (Edith Eisler)

Matt Haimovitz ORBIT

Orbit maps my musical journey since the turn of the millenium, a path travelled with my partner in life and music, composer Luna Pearl Woolf. Initially released on Oxingale Records as five thematic albums – Anthem (2003), Goulash! (2005), After Reading Shakespeare (2007), Figment (2009), and Matteo (2011) – Orbit encompasses nearly all of the solo contemporary works on these albums, along with two newly recorded tracks: Philip Glass’ “Orbit” and a new arrangement by Luna of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.” All but these two tracks were produced by Luna, and all have now been remastered for SACD HD surround sound. More than twenty composers are represented in the set, fifteen of them still living. Ten works receive their world premiere recording here. 

With the solo cello as our pilot, we steer headlong into the great musical debates of the past half-century: maximalist vs. minimalist; folk-rooted vs. abstract, absolute vs. narrative, tonal vs. atonal. In many ways, we live in a golden age of music, with a perspective rich in history and reference. We can look back at the 20th century’s Tower of Babel. We can embrace its boldness, diversity, complexity, and its return to the natural order of harmony. Leonard Bernstein’s words from his Norton Lectures, The Unanswered Question, ruminating on Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theory of universality, the collective wiring that connects us across borders and between far-reaching lands, resonates more than ever. He writes, “I’m no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.” (Matt Haimovitz)

Yo-Yo Ma / The Knights / Eric Jacobsen GOLIJOV Azul

Azul, the Spanish word for ‘blue’, is the title of the contemplative cello concerto by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov that forms the centrepiece of this celestially themed album. It is also a word that is rich in cultural resonance, deriving from the Arabic and Persian words for lapis lazuli, the lustrous semi-precious stone. The related French and English words, ‘azur’ and ‘azure’ are synonymous with the clear blue of sunny skies. 

Golijov’s concerto received its premiere in 2006, with Yo-Yo Ma, the most celebrated cellist of our time, as soloist. On that occasion he performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which commissioned the work. On this album, Ma teams up with The Knights, the Brooklyn-based group that describes itself as “an orchestral collective, flexible in size and repertory, dedicated to transforming the concert experience.” Ma’s relationship with The Knights’ co-Artistic Director, violinist Colin Jacobsen, dates back to 2000 and the start of the ground-breaking multicultural Silk Road Project. The Knights’ other co-Artistic Director is Colin’s conductor/cellist brother, Eric Jacobsen, and the ensemble – which released its first Warner Classics album, the ground beneath our feet, in Spring 2015 – has been praised by Ma for its “vibrant, energetic, collaborative culture” offering “a chamber music experience in orchestral form.” (Warner Classics)

Alisa Weilerstein SOLO

The long-awaited solo album from Decca’s star cellist sees Weilerstein revealing and revelling in her technique. The American cellist has attracted widespread attention worldwide for her combination of natural virtuosic command and technical precision with impassioned musicianship. The intensity of her playing has regularly been lauded, as has the spontaneity and sensitivity of her interpretations. Committed to expanding the cello repertoire, Alisa is a fervent champion of new music and this release is her first solo album.

Calling for left hand pizzicato as well an alternative tuning of the cello’s lower strings, Kodaly’s Sonata was far ahead of the time in which it was written and explored every facet of the cello, revealing what could be done with this instrument.

Many of Kodaly’s works are based upon Hungarian folksongs & dances, and this theme inspires the rest of the album, with works from the in-vogue Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov, across the world to the Chinese composer Bright Sheng.

Sheng’s work is based on seven tunes from China (Seasons, Guessing Song, The Little Cabbage, The Drunken Fisherman, Diu Diu Dong, Pastoral Ballade, Tibetan Dance). Golijov’s Omaramor is a musically playful fantasia inspired by Carols Gardel (the Argentine tango specialist); and Gaspar Cassado’s Suite, consisting of three dance movements, quotes the Kodaly work.

Maya Beiser WORLD TO COME

Over the course of her career, cellist Maya Beiser has continued to transcend the traditional boundaries of her instrument, reaching far beyond mere interpretation of the classical repertoire, indeed beyond classical music altogether, to become a creative performer drawing on a variety of genres and influences: Eastern, Western, and South American folk music, jazz, even rock & roll.
"World To Come" finds cellist Maya Beiser at the height of her risk-taking and boundary-crossing ambition. She defies not only cultural differences but also conventional oppositions of artist and medium, music and visual art, live performance and recorded material.
David Lang's "World To Come" is written for solo cello, the title piece incorporates pre-recorded cello tracks, theatrical lighting and video projection. A cellist and her voice are separated from the outset and struggle through out to reunite. As Lang describes it, "World To Come" is an introspective and highly personal prayer, a meditation on hope and hopelessness, and an elegy about the life and death of the soul."
Osvaldo Golijov's "Mariel" contains haunting melodies based on the native music of Northern Brazil this new version is for solo cello, drones and vocals.
World To Come also features Arvo Part's "Fratres," which was written for the eight-cello ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic. Beiser plays the piece herself through multi-tracking.

Kronos Quartet NIGHT PRAYERS

To a Cold War generation reared to believe that only official arts could flourish in the harsh cultural climate of the Soviet Union, the discovery of a vast and fantastically varied world of music came as not just one surprise, but many. Even during the dark Brezhnev years, the part-Tatar, part Russian Sofia Gubaidulina was improvising with a group of unapproved folk musicians and developing a musical language for her even more strenuously unauthorized Russian Orthodox faith. In Georgia, Giya Kancheli was producing music of quiet theatricality, and explosive reverence. In Azerbaijan, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh was charging down two simultaneously un-Soviet paths: Viennese modernism in the spirit of Arnold Schoenberg, and mugham, the classical folk music of her homeland. In the 1990s, after the Soviet empire collapsed, the Kronos Quartet was quick to capitalize on the newly popular rubric of Eastern European mysticism, which included, somewhat awkwardly, composers who had little more in common than a spirit of non-materialistic transcendence. Night Prayers is not so much a collection of religious music as a mood album, a document of a time when composers found refuge from their historical era in an elaborately constructed sense of timelessness. (Justin Davidson)

Dawn Upshaw / The Andalucian Dogs GOLIJOV Ayre - BERIO Folk Songs

Osvaldo Golijov has long felt a kinship with Berio's music, and he's created a song cycle, Ayre, to demonstrate Dawn Upshaw's vocal range, just as Berio did with Cathy Berberian's in his Folk Songs. Golijov says he “saw a rainbow" when he first realized the range of colour in Upshaw's voice. Upshaw says: “Ayre takes me vocally to places where I have never been before: in aesthetic terms, it's opened new doors." The cycle is scored for an ensemble similar to Berio's, but also including the accordion and ronroco (an Argentinian variant of the charango, a small South American fretted lute) and also the laptop, which Golijov regards as a 21st-century folk instrument. The klezmer-tinged clarinet solos were inspired by David Krakauer, the world's most celebrated klezmer innovator; two of the songs were written by Gustavo Santaolalla; Wa Habibi comes from the Arab superstar Fairouz; Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain is the inspiration for the final song. Golijov's texts are in Arabic, Hebrew, Sardinian, Spanish and Ladino (the lost language of Spanish Jews); his melodies are a meld of three cultures - Christian, Islamic and Jewish - which coexisted peaceably in the Iberian peninsula until the late 15th century.
Luciano Berio's Folk Songs for voice and seven instruments, composed 40 years ago for his wife Cathy Berberian, blazed the trail for composers wanting to blur the distinction between “folk" and “art" music. Not all of these eleven pieces are folk songs in the strict sense of the word: two are by the American composer John Jacob Niles and two are by Berio himself. But the others come from Armenia, France, Sicily and Sardinia, with one being an Azerbaijani love song recorded on an old 78 by a singer with a town band and aurally transcribed by Berio and Berberian themselves. Berio's scoring evokes a world beyond the concert hall: he uses the viola and cello to suggest the outdoor clarinet and folk fiddle, and he beefs up the flute and harp with tambourines and side drums.
For Osvaldo Golijov the music of Luciano Berio occupies a special place: “I always connected with it - he spoke to me with a directness, as Piazzolla had done when I was a child." (Michael Church
7/2005)

Kronos Quartet NUEVO

On Nuevo, a collection of music from Mexico spanning nearly 100 years, Kronos Quartet presents a kaleidoscopic view of a music as diverse as the culture of the country itself. On each track, the group’s sound is transformed, through the collaborative efforts of co-producers Gustavo Santaolalla, the noted Argentinean musician and Rock en Español producer, longtime Kronos producer Judith Sherman, and Kronos Artistic Director David Harrington, as well as through arrangements by composers Osvaldo Golijov, Stephen Prutsman, and Ricardo Gallardo, whose efforts serve to reflect the individual spirit and character of each song.

Harrington notes that walking through Mexico City inspired the record. “I became fascinated with this sense of the layering of things there—of time, of music, of culture, of art … And how you’d walk down the street and never know what you’re going to hear next.”

The sonic landscape of Nuevo suggests the vastness of Mexican culture, a diverse array of experiences and ideas—intellectual, spiritual, and cultural. From the boom-boxes on the street corners to the incessant blaring of television sets, from the traditions of Son huasteco and corrido singing to the influence of Cuba on the culture and music, the sounds of Mexico are the sounds of a place where elements of popular culture and traditional music share a lively coexistence.

The tracks from Nuevo are culled from seemingly disparate sources ranging from "Mini Skirt," by the late Juan Garcia Esquivel, whose early experimentation with stereo caused him to be dubbed the "King of Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music"; to Chavosuite, which features music from three wildly popular Mexican television programs, the original Chespirito and two spin-offs, El Chapulín Colorado and El Chavo del Ocho; to an explosive Prutsman arrangement of Silvestre Revueltas’s "Sensemaya"; to Golijov’s "K´in Sventa Ch´ul Me´tik Kwadulupe" (Festival for the Holy Mother Guadalupe), a composition based on David Lewiston’s 1970’s recording from the Mexican state of Chiapas.

Nuevo also highlights a variety of unusual instruments, like the musical leaf as played by Carlos Garcia on Alberto Domínguez’s "Perfidia" and the organillo performance featured on Belisario García de Jesús and José Elizondo’s "Cuatro Milpas."

The album also features rock en Español supergroup Café Tacuba’s "12/12," a five-part sonic portrait of contemporary Mexico, named for the celebration of the Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe observed throughout Mexico on December 12. The piece is an aural tapestry weaving together not only the sounds of electric and acoustic instruments, but also traditional Mexican music and street sounds. It fittingly reflects the spirit of Nuevo, in its merging of widely different sounds and textures to create a unified whole.

Closing the album is a remix of Severiano Briseño’s "Sinaloense" by the DJ Plankton Man, formerly of Tijuana’s Nortec Collective.

OSVALDO GOLIJOV La pasión según San Marcos

La Pasión Según San Marcos by Osvaldo Golijov transports us to an imagined world where different styles of music, languages, singers and dancers intermingle to create a vibrant musical drama infused with many elements of Latin America's diverse cultures. This unique Pasión is set in the form of a Brazilian or Caribbean Lenten celebration taking place in the streets. News of the drama that is unfolding is passed on by voices and drums, the traditional instruments of those who were carried off from Africa to be slaves in the Americas. Golijov's Pasión evokes Brazilian samba, Cuban salsa, Spanish flamenco and Argentine tango through its creative use of percussion, brass, guitar and accordion. It is a highly innovative composition in an artistically stylized form, but it clearly draws its inspiration from the hybrid character of today's Latin American cultures. 

In addition to the surprising mix of musical styles, different singers and dancers, both male and female, portray the roles of the main characters--Jesus, Judas, Mark and Peter. The role-switching by different soloists might be confusing at first, but it is also an intriguing device that makes the piece unique not only for its music but for its new interpretation of the biblical story itself. Golijov's conception and his music are quite original, but the cultural context of his creative team of performers--it is the Schola Cantorum chorus from Venezuela and the other Latin American musicians, drummers, and dancers--that gives his Pasión its transforming force. The use of drums and dance infuses this Pasión with Afro-American expressions and the spirit of Latin America's syncretic form of Christianity. The role of the performers, either in music, song or dance, is an affirmation that African beliefs are still surviving there. 

Because of its large black population Brazil is very close to its African roots, despite the racial mixing that has taken place. Afro-Brazilians, like their counterparts elsewhere in the Americas, were very quick to adapt their native religious practices and beliefs to Christianity during the colonial era, combining the Lucumi-Yoruba religious rites, for example, with Catholic ritual. In Brazil those religious practices have different names, Condomblé in Bahía, Macumba or Umbanda in Río de Janeiro, and Xangó in Recife, but they are all variants of the Condomblé. Historically Condomblé was not only a spiritual practice, but also a form of resistance to the dominant white society. Despite strong opposition by civil and religious authorities, the creative acts of self-conscious African slaves and their descendants made possible the emergence and growth of these Afro-Brazilian religions. In time those practices went beyond social class and ethnicity and became popular among the general population. 

In Condomblé, as in the Catholic Church, you have a spiritual guide or priest, named babalåo-orishá or pai de santo or mae de santo (father or mother of the saint) who acts as the intermediary between the orishas, or gods, and their followers. In their syncretic form, the orishas are often a combination of African gods and Catholic saints. However, the orishas are very different from the concept of Catholic saints because they have more earthly human characteristics. They are considered to be superior to humans, but not necessarily morally superior. In the African tradition human beings and gods lived in the same world. The physical world is as important for the orishas as it is for the humans. Good and evil are not conceived in absolute terms but rather are related to each other since they express different aspects of the essential life force. Even the divine forces have destructive and constructive possibilities in this conception. The interplay among these forces is dramatized in religious rituals by dancers playing the role of different orishas. 

In Condomblé the supreme god and creator of the world is Olofi-Olorún, who can be identified with the Crucified Christ. However, the life force of the creator is thought to be in all creatures and things. When Olorún-Olofi was tired of ruling the earth, he turned his kingdom over to Obatalá, the king of purity and whiteness. Obatalá in Brazil is a major Yoruba deity and the father of the gods, who is sometimes identified with one of the Catholic virgins. Traditionally either a woman or a man can dance this double-sexed orisha, who is maternal and kind, but also can be an old man, a knight, a cripple or a wise man. 

In Golijov's Pasión different soloists, including both men and women, portray Jesus as if the performers were representing his different sides, much as they would do with the orishas. We also see the same performers portraying Mark, Peter and Judas, and, at one point, there is a dialogue between Jesus and Peter played by the same soloist, the Cuban singer and dancer Reynaldo Gonzalez. Another striking example of this role switching is the attempt by the singers or dancers to portray the human side of both Jesus and Judas. In this drama Judas is represented as a human in conflict and Jesus as a man with different human characteristics, perhaps demonstrating the lack of clear-cut boundaries between the sacred and the profane in the African tradition. 

"The Aria of Judas," a flamenco song sung by the Brazilian jazz singer Luciana Souza, expresses the wish of Judas to "renegar" or reject the world as it is, and to return in the future to a more truthful one. The same soloist sings "Agonia," an aria by Jesus just before his betrayal by Judas. Later, during Souza's tender rendition of Jesus' "Confession," Reynaldo Gonzalez appears in a white robe elevated above the chorus, dancing as if possessed by the holy spirit. Toward the end of the drama, Souza portrays Jesus again in his suffering, uttering his cry "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 

At the beginning of Golijov's Pasión, Deraldo Ferreira, a capoeira dancer from Brazil, plays the berimbau, a Brazilian stringed instrument, while portraying the fishermen caught in a net. After the arrest of Jesus, Ferreira performs a break dance called the "Dance of the White Sheet." Who is the dancer here? From the scriptures, we only know that he is a follower of Jesus who did not run away when the other disciples fled. Capoeira was originally a martial art form used by the slaves to defend themselves from their masters, but here it is a dance, and we need to keep in mind that the goal of dancers in the African tradition is to be possessed by the "gods" or spirits. 

The electrifying effect of introducing drums, dancing and popular songs into the biblical story is what gives Golijov's Pasión its transforming power. While most of us perceive rhythm by hearing, Afro-Americans often perceive it by movement, and rhythm is the forceful element in this musical drama that opens up new ways of understanding the crucifixion. No wonder audiences who have experienced Golijov's Pasión have jumped up from their seats at the end of the performance to applaud. It is hard to sit still when you are moved by these new rhythms and possessed by the spirit of the gospel reborn.