Cellist Isidora Nojkovic and violinist Aliyata Foon-Dancoes comprise the new cross-continental duo to pay attention to. They premiered works by Olivia Shortt and Cris Derksen who join me to discuss these exciting new works.

Known as “Classical Bae” and revered for her collaborations with artists including Beyoncé and Yo-Yo Ma, Ezinma utilizes her classical training to create music that marries music of opposite worlds. Her latest single, “Vivaldi Springs Forth” is out now.

25th Heinz Awards Honor Leading Pianist and Composer Gabriela Lena Frank for Breaking Cultural, Gender and Disability Barriers in Classical Music. Through her academy, Dr. Frank is mentoring aspiring composers from diverse backgrounds and inspiring them to prioritize giving back to their communities while leading eco-conscious lives.

I’m thrilled to see some of the top orchestras in the U.S. finally announce their socially-distanced plans for the 20-21 season! “It’s been a tumultuous year” is one of the greatest understatements ever, so anyone in the arts and live entertainment industries who has come up with a plan to successfully pivot is to be applauded. This month, I recently perused various news releases coming out of storied institutions and saw a shocking disparity between some who were able to really move forward with a fall season, but some who could not for a plethora of reasons. As I want to see what’s working and evaluate how these ideas can be implemented for current clients, I’ve selected three of the major U.S. A-list orchestras who seemingly have figured out a way forward this fall despite in-person restrictions. Here’s how The Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and LA Phil are pivoting.

Prolific composer Missy Mazzoli’s opera Proving Up, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, was released as an album this August 2020. Pianist Natalia Kazaryan interviews Missy Mazzoli to discuss Proving Up, the future of opera, Luna Composition Lab, upcoming projects and more.

American trumpet soloist Andy Kozar’s recent New Focus Recordings release A Few Kites has been called ‘entrancing’ by Alex Ross (The New Yorker, The Rest Is Noise) and that ‘trumpeters around the world owe Kozar…a debt of gratitude…the variety here is simply astonishing. realms of expressiveness not heard since Luciano Berio turned his attention to the instrument in 1984 for Sequenza X' by anearful. Here Andy Kozar interviews composers Eve Beglarian and Paula Matthusen about their featured works on the record as well as their music’s relationship to physical space as an inspiration, or creative starting point.

Death of Classical, curated by Andrew Ousley in partnership with The Green-Wood Cemetery, will feature two in-person events and six streamed video concerts filmed in the Catacombs from October 22-24.

Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out Of Time for Silkroad Ensemble is a masterpiece as intellectually stimulating as it is emotionally gripping. It cracks open how we experience time and how this experience is disrupted by grief and eventually dismantled by death. Based on David Grossman’s novel/fable on parental grief of the same name, which puts words to the wordless, Golijov’s Falling Out of Time puts sounds to the wordless with a deep sensitivity to language. This work inspired a lot of admittedly difficult questions from me, as the best works do, and here are Osvaldo Golijov’s illuminating answers . Falling Out Of Time will be released on October 9.

Adrianne Munden-Dixon’s debut EP patterns and cycles, featuring her own compositions and improvisations, uses electronics to heighten the shape-shifting qualities of the violin. She joins Classical Post to discuss the space in between composition and improvisation, the role of location in this album, the influence of fiddle playing on her work and more. Patterns and cycles will be released on October 2.

My new album Désordre (New Focus Recordings: FCR 269) features music by the Hungarian composer György Ligeti and includes the first two books of his piano études along with his horn trio. The recording comes over twenty years after I first became familiar with his piano music.

Is there a right way to listen to an album? How literally should a listener take the track layout of an album? Does learning the intended listening experience of the composer bring you closer to a work? What is innate to a work, what is perspective and how does listening order impact an interpretation? These are some of the questions rummaging through my mind after speaking with Du Yun about her album A Cockroach’s Tarantella, performed marvelously by JACK Quartet with Du Yun.

Pianist Natalia Kazaryan interviews Composer/Pianist Gabriela Lena Frank to discuss her latest album Her Own Wings, compositional language, and career at-large . Both artists studied under Logan Skelton at University of Michigan, where each received a DMA (in different eras).

Contemporary music duo New Morse Code, comprised of Hannah Collins (cello) and Michael Compitello (percussion) joins Classical Post for a special video premiere of composer Thomas Kotcheff’s “then and then and then this”. They discuss the collaborative process, filming, matching timbre and what’s coming up next.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja has long been one of my favorite musicians. It somehow seems off the mark, not quite enough, to call her a violinist (not only because she has frequently performed the role of singer/speaker in Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire) though her capabilities on the instrument—technical, sonic, coloristic—are virtually matchless. Yes, she most often appears on stage with violin in hand, but her musical spirit reaches far beyond the scope of the instrument itself: she digs new tunnels into familiar repertoire and makes a striking, often bold case for each piece she brings into her sphere. The resulting performances, both live and on record, brim with electricity, risk, and an aliveness the scope of which words can only communicate a small part.

For the last 90+ years PYP has held a biennial Piano Concerto Competition with the prize of performing with the Portland Youth Philharmonic. Once again, Portland Piano International / SOLO will be presenting the biennial Piano Concerto Competition that selects the soloists for upcoming Portland Youth Philharmonic performances.

In the last year, several prominent artists released albums highlighting their life-long journeys through an endlessly vast musical literature. Deutsche Grammophon released its long-awaited first solo album of acclaimed pianist Sergei Babayan, coinciding with the release of a duo album with his superstar student Daniil Trifonov. Two younger artists also made news this year. Pianist Jonathan Biss released his final volume of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, and pianist Adam Golka is soon to release his first volume of the same monumental cycle. In the orchestral world, the San Francisco Symphony provided MTT’s Keeping Score to virtual audiences free of charge during the closing of concert halls worldwide. The Tetzlaff Quartet’s new Beethoven album was also released on the Ondine label to great critical acclaim.

21st-century audiences reap enormous benefits of current technology when it comes to recordings, and never more so as during the COVID-19 pandemic, when public concerts have been shelved for safety concerns. Modern audiences also enjoy nearly limitless access to recordings from decades and even a century ago through YouTube, Spotify, and various archival projects, such as those of Allan Evans for Arbiter Records and Ward Marston for Marston Records. Over a hundred years of technological advances have created a world of difference in recording quality, yet today’s musicians are still encouraged to explore the mesmerizing performances of Cortot, Kreisler, and Casals, and even earlier performers such as Rachmaninoff, Leschetizky, and Toscanini. Beneficiaries of modern recording technology may very well ask, why ought one to listen to historical recordings with seemingly shoddy audio quality, narrow or distorted sound, and less accurate playing?

Times of crisis call for radical action. Clearly we can all agree we’re in a state of emergency as a global society, but specifically in the arts and live entertainment. As we’re already months into the problem, there are not many concrete answers. As the situation prolongs, we wait patiently for a recovery to “the good old days” of attending live concerts and events in-person. This is anxiously anticipated, obviously, but it does seem short-sighted from what I’ve seen and heard working within this space.

Conductor Marlon Daniel is the leading scholar on the music of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He joins Classical Post to discuss premiering “Anonymous Lover”, documenting Saint-Georges works, The Festival International de Musique Saint-Georges and more.

On April 26, 2020 the Emruz Festival: Virtual Series presented “Iranian Female Composers Association Meet Up: Conversation & Music Performance” via Zoom. Around 30 members of the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA) joined Bridgid Bergin (panel moderator) for an hour-long conversation. The conversation led to a longer form piece, showcasing how composers have been navigating quarantine life, interrogating gender identity and societal issues in Iran (as well as the broader new music scene), and highlights how IFCA has cultivated a community all within the digital realm, becoming an organization that truly amplifies and celebrates Iranian female-identifying composer voices.

Pulitzer Prize finalist composer Chris Cerrone and triple-Grammy-winning flutist Tim Munro discuss collaborating on Cerrone’s latest work, “Liminal Highway”.