Legendary bass trombonist Randall Hawes (35 years with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; four years as guest with The Cleveland Symphony Orchestra; and eight years as a member of the Saito Kinen Orhcestra) and his longtime collaborator, pianist Kathryn Goodson present a new album featuring 15 works that span the history of their musical relationship. The title work, David Biedenbender’s Liquid …

Skylark Vocal Ensemble’s A Christmas Carol represents the culmination of nearly a decade of innovative storytelling concerts that began in 2016. The original concept for this musical interpretation of A Christmas Carol was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic and first recorded in 2021. Working from Dickens’s original 30,000-word manuscript, Artistic Director Matthew Guard carefully abridged the text to preserve its …

The Miró Quartet’s first holiday album is an assemblage of classical music’s top living composers, each of them contributing an original arrangement of a beloved holiday song. Drawing from diverse traditions and memories of holidays past, the recording also brings together new arrangements of “In Dulci Jubilo” by Clarice Assad; “The First Noël” by Kevin Puts, “Jingle Bells” by Michi …

Nicola Benedetti’s new album brings together music that represents the different musical strands of the Scottish violinist’s career, from virtuosic showpieces to French romance, contemporary favorites, and Scottish folk, freshly arranged for a mixed chamber group (violin, guitar, accordion, cello, and small pipes). “This inventive new line-up of instruments delivers a communal, conversational ‘evening cafe appropriate’ sound,” says Benedetti. “A …

The latest album from the prolific American composer Michael Torke’s features violinist Siwoo Kim and the East Coast Chamber Orchestra performing Torke’s violin concerto Last. Torke describes the work as “twelve slow, moody compositions for solo violin and strings, that are almost like 2nd movements of violin concertos.” Each movement – with names such as “Last Night”, “Last Month”, “Last …

GRAMMY Award-winning Pacifica Quartet presents a landmark recording featuring the Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s complete string quartets and rarely heard chamber works. The album traces the composer’s remarkable evolution from a prodigy of post-imperial Vienna to a pioneering film composer in Hollywood. “It’s amazing to see how well the music is written,” says Pacifica Quartet cellist Brandon Vamos. “It has emotion …

Baritone Kenneth Overton won a GRAMMY Award for his performance in the title role of Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by JoAnn Falletta; and can be heard as soloist on Chamber Works of Adolphus Hailstork with The Harlem Chamber Players. In addition to his international career in opera and concert, Overton …

The ARC Ensemble’s “Music in Exile” series continues with an exploration of chamber works by Ernest Kanitz. Born into a wealthy Viennese family in 1894, he was encouraged in music by his mother and started composing at a young age. Though his parents persuaded him to study for a degree in Law, he also studied piano, music theory, and composition …

Cellist Louise Dubin is a renowned performer and champion of the music of cellist-composer Auguste Franchomme (1808-1884). Following her acclaimed album The Franchomme, which included world premiere recordings of works by Franchomme and Chopin that she discovered in archives in France, Dubin presents her new album featuring cello duos by Franchomme, Fauré, and contemporary composer Philippe Hersant with Julia Bruskin …

Cellist Gleb Pyšniak and pianist Rokas Zubovas present works by Lithuanian composer, choirmaster, painter, author, and cultural figure Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (arranged for cello and piano by Lithuanian cellist Juozas Čelkauskas). Čiurlionis composed in a style that blended late Romanticism with early modernism, incorporating Lithuanian folk music into his works and foreshadowing atonal techniques like serialism. His music is often …

A celebration of nature and renewal, cellist Gautier Capuçon’s new album brings together works that reflect the beauty and resilience of our world. With his signature warmth and intensity, Capuçon invites listeners on a journey that is both intimate and universal: music that resonates deeply with today’s need for harmony and hope. The album features 17 works from 16 contemporary …

Gail Gillispie is one of the pioneers of Chicago’s burgeoning Early Music scene. She founded the Renaissance vocal ensemble The Scholars of Cambrai and has been a member of the Venere Lute Quartet, one of the nations few professional lute ensembles. She has also performed with the Hueglas Ensemble, American Medieval Players, and the Newberry Consort. In her first solo …

The American Revolution is a new six-part, 12-hour documentary series that explores the country’s founding struggle and its eight-year War for Independence. In production for more than nine years, the November release of the documentary on PBS is scheduled to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the start of the war, which began in the spring of 1775, more than …

Acclaimed Swedish clarinetist and conductor, Martin Fröst presents his new album dedicated to the music of J.S. Bach. Although Bach never encountered the clarinet, this has proved no barrier for Martin Fröst, who has returned to Bach’s music time and time again throughout his illustrious career. Fröst had already devised and performed programs entitled Beyond All Clarinet History (B.A.C.H.), which …

Based in Auckland, the Jade String Quartet has maintained a strong presence in New Zealand’s chamber music scene, committed to commissioning, performing, and recording music by New Zealand composers, alongside masterworks from the string quartet repertoire. Their new album features three string quartets by Anthony Ritchie, for whom the string quartet is a preferred form to express his personal thoughts. …

Black Moon Trio’s sophomore album is an immersive journey into the heart of the natural world, where the trio is joined by author/scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer, a decorated professor and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Together, they explore the relationships between humans and the environment in a program that weaves together music and spoken word. The album features …

Ensemble Galilei is a small ensemble specializing in a wide range of music for their particular instrumentation, and includes Isaac Alderson (uilleann pipes, Irish flute, whistles, tenor saxophone), Jesse Langen (guitar), Kathryn Montoya (recorders, whistle, shawm), Jackie Moran (banjo, bodhrán, egg shaker), and founder Carolyn Surrick (viola da gamba). They celebrate their 35th anniversary with a double-album recorded over the …

Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “brilliant” and “superb,” SAKURA Cello Quintet (Stella Cho, Michael Kaufman, Yoshika Masuda, Zachary Mowitz, and Peter Myers) explores great music of the past through dazzling arrangements on familiar works, and continually expands the five-cello repertoire through commissioning new works. The group’s name, SAKURA, is a tribute to their mentor, cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, whose …

Cellist Susanna Mendlow presents her debut solo album that offers a unique musical tour of select styles, guiding the listener through a blend of original arrangements, works infused with traditional folk idioms, and contemporary premieres. It features music by Sulkhan Tsintsadze, Noam Faingold, Julia Adolphe, Astor Piazzolla, and Felix Mendelssohn — much of it never-before recorded for cello and piano. …

Countertenor Reginald Mobley’s Grammy-nominated (and Opus Klassik award-winning) album Because explored the roots of American music blending jazz, soul, blues, and classical genres. Collaborating with Chicago-based lutenist/guitarist Brandon Acker and double-bass and gamba player Doug Balliet, Mobley’s new album features English lute song by Purcell, Dowland, and Eccles, alongside song arrangements by Virginia-born guitar virtuoso, abolitionist, and composer Justin Holland …

Accordionist Théo Ould became, at the age of 24, the first accordionist to be shortlisted as a “Newly Discovered Talent” at the Victoires de la Musique Classique awards. Le Monde raved: “Served by a masterly technique (an unbelievably supple left hand and an inexhaustible wealth of phrasing), Théo Ould’s interpretations show a personality expressing itself naturally in terms of the …

New York City-based period instrument ensemble Sonnambula’s debut album on Avie Records traverses music by several Renaissance composers who were forced to conceal their identities for social, religious, or ethnic reasons. Yet their music transcended the disorder surrounding them, flourishing in the intersection of beliefs and styles. The program features works by William Byrd and Richard Dering, two Catholics composing …

Ember – a trio comprising harpist Emily Levin, violinist Julia Choi, and cellist Christine Lamprea – releases its debut album celebrating both historical and contemporary women composers while addressing the cultural significance of the contributions of women in classical music. The program showcases three compelling works: French harpist and composer Henriette Renié’s groundbreaking Trio in B-flat Major (1901), the first …

Rising American violinist Karisa Chiu — Cedille Records’ 2021 Emerging Artist Competition Finalist — and renowned Chinese pianist Zhu Wang unite for Chiu’s debut album, HOME. Influenced by her Chicago upbringing, pandemic discoveries, and Korean and Chinese family roots, the recording reflects the various interpretations of “home” in the 25-year-old violinist’s life. “This album is not only a story of …

In their newest release, mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre and Jupiter, the ensemble led by lutenist Thomas Dunford, present a collection of vocal and instrumental music by John Dowland and Henry Purcell. Repertoire includes Dowland’s Lachrimae and vocal works from his First and Second Book of Ayres, as well as selections from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and The Fairy Queen. Baritone Huw …