Unique approaches continue as February 2026 comes to a close. Cristian Măcelaru leads the Orchestre National de France through works by a composer prominent during the French Resistance against Nazi rule, while Bar Avni celebrates her first recording with the Orchestre national Bordeaux Aquitaine. Jörg Widmann celebrates 10 years of developing the Irish Chamber Orchestra into a globally recognized ensemble, and Ashley Jackson shows how icons of popular music might sound on the harp. Last but certainly not least, Grammy-winning Los Angeles-based chorus Tonality brings to life the world premiere recording of Running From, Running To – an eight-part suite reflecting on the life and death of Ahmaud Arbery.
New Releases Feb 24: Elsa Barraine, Alexander Lloyd Blake, and more
Alexander Lloyd Blake, founder of the LA-based choir Tonality (Photo: Artist website)
French composer Elsa Barraine (1910–99) was a pupil of Paul Dukas and fellow student of Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. She won the Prix de Rome at age 19, before going on to hold several public posts in French music. She spent more than 20 years as a professor and was also prominent in the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation years of World War Two. Led by music director Cristian Măcelaru, the French National Orchestra presents four works by Barraine: Symphony No. 1 (1931), which she completed in Italy; Symphony No. 2 (1938), ominously subtitled “Voïna,” the French transliteration of the Russian word for war; Les Tziganes (1959), a work inspired by Romani culture; and Song-Koï (Le fleuve rouge) (1945), an eight-movement evocation of the Red River that flows through Vietnam, composed in the year that the nation declared its independence from France.
Winner of the 2024 La Maestra competition in Paris and recipient of five additional prizes, conductor Bar Avni was born in Israel and first studied percussion before turning to conducting. She counts Yoav Talmi, Barbara Hannigan, and Ayelet Geva as mentors and has assisted conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Klaus Mäkelä and Myung-Whun Chung. Known for her desire to seek out programs that are off the beaten track, Avni’s first recording with the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine combines the music of Charlotte Sohy, Darius Milhaud, C.P.E. Bach, and Igor Stravinsky. The program opens with Sohy’s symphony “Grande Guerre,” which was composed in 1914 but only premiered in 2019. Milhaud composed his first of six Petites Symphonies in 1917 while he was secretary to Paul Claudel, who at the time was acting as French ambassador to Brazil. C.P.E. Bach’s sparkling symphony from 1775 precedes the final work by Stravinsky, his first major work composed after he moved to America around 1940.
Under Jörg Widmann’s 10-year leadership as Principal Conductor and Artistic Director, the Irish Chamber Orchestra has established itself as a globally recognized, high-energy ensemble known for innovative programming, premiering new works, and extensive international touring. Widmann, a clarinetist, composer, and conductor, often directs the orchestra while performing as a soloist on the clarinet. This album celebrates their transformative ten-year creative partnership and captures the orchestra in three highly appealing works: Mozart’s buoyant C minor Serenade for Winds, Felix Mendelssohn’s witty and Haydnesque String Symphony No. 8, and Robert Schumann’s exuberant Overture, Scherzo and Finale.
Critically acclaimed harpist Ashley Jackson presents an EP of artistic arrangements of music by four icons of popular music: Whitney Houston, Nina Simone, Dolores O’Riordan (the late lead singer of The Cranberries), and Pakistani singer-composer Arooj Aftab. Cover Girl celebrates the fearless women who have shaped the popular music landscape. With brand new arrangements, Ashley Jackson pays homage to those artists who defied the limitations of genre, inspiring her own sense of what’s possible with the language of music. “Cover Girl allowed me to dig into the depths and complexities of the human voice and explore how to engage with the various types of genres that I’ve always loved. What I love about this project is that it gave me an opportunity to be my freest, most authentic self,” says Jackson.
The Grammy-winning Los Angeles-based chorus Tonality presents the world-premiere recording of Running From, Running To, an eight-part suite reflecting on the life and death of Ahmaud Arbery, the young Black man whose killing on February 23, 2020 while jogging sparked a national outcry. Composed by Founding Artistic Director Alexander Lloyd Blake, Running From, Running To is scored for chorus, soloists, and orchestra. Tonality is joined on the album by Los Angeles’s Grammy-nominated Wild Up ensemble, two-time Grammy-winning soprano, Angel Blue; multi-genre bass-baritone Jamal M. Moore; and Ogi, the Los Angeles-based Nigerian-American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who also co-wrote Running From, Running To with Blake. Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, contributes spoken texts to one movement of the work and provided information that helped shape others. Running From, Running To has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as a “powerful meditation on remembrance and justice.” Also included on the album are new arrangements by Blake of “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” and “Deep River,” and an a cappella arrangement of the protest song “No More!” from Running From, Running To.
