The Grammy Awards always give us something to talk about, and this year was no exception! In the classical categories we saw some exciting wins and a first.
The highlight of it all for me was the winner of the Best Chamber Music Performance category which saw the Grammy go to Attaca Quartet’s album of music by Caroline Shaw called Evergreen. Caroline Shaw has become one of the most prominent composers of her generation (and one of the most performed living composers on our Monday night program, Front Row Washington), garnering her a Pulitzer Prize in 2013 and several Grammy awards.
In this recording, the Attaca Quartet (another familiar name on Front Row Washington) is in peak form as one of the most prominent quartets today. I enjoyed every work on the album, especially the ones that include Shaw herself singing. The largest work and namesake for the album is the four-movement piece, Evergreen. Shaw wrote this about it:
I hope that listening to this record is like walking through the forest floor from an ant’s perspective, looking up at the surrounding moss, water, and wood in all its patient, nourishing, strange complexity.
The Best Orchestral Performance Grammy gave us a first as a youth orchestra won the category for the first time. It was the New York Youth Symphony with conductor Michael Repper (and produced by Judith Sherman, Producer of the Year, Classical, 2023) and featured music by Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery, and Valerie Coleman. This album features the second commercial recording that I have been able to find of Price’s, Ethiopia’s Shadow in America. I also really enjoyed the first commercial recording of Jessie Montgomery’s, Soul Force, which ends the album.
The Best Classical Instrumental Solo winner was Time for Three and their album Letters For The Future, which features the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Xian Zhang. The two works on this album, Contact by Kevin Puts (which also won Best Contemporary Classical Composition this year) and Concerto 4-3 by Jennifer Higdon, place the trio as a solo ensemble in front of the orchestra. Both composers are Pulitzer Prize winners, and each work seems to defy musical categorization.
The Best Opera Recording Grammy went to The Metropolitan Opera’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones by Terence Blanchard and led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. It was with this opera that Blanchard became the first black composer to have an opera performed by The Met in 2019... With an influence of Italian opera, Jazz, R&B, and Gospel, Blanchard pulls you into the powerful story with a unique and authentic sound that has been missing from our opera stages.
Renee Flemming and Yannick Nézet-Séguin won the Grammy for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album with Voice Of Nature - The Anthropocene, which mostly explores the relationship between Romantic composers and nature. They do this with composers like Gabriel Faure, Edvard Grieg, and Franz Liszt, but it also includes new songs by Nico Muhly, Kevin Puts, and Caroline Shaw. The result is a collection of songs from composers from different centuries and their unique relationships with the natural world around them.
Looking at the Best Choral Performance category, The Crossing won with their album Born which features music by Edie Hill and Michael Gilberston. In the words of Navona Records, “Contemporary music needn’t sacrifice order and aesthetic appeal, even when it deals with complex issues.” We hear that play out over the album, and particularly in the largest work called Spectral Spirits which deals with the subject of extinction. The composer, Edie Hill, wrote:
A part of me grieves every day for the state of our planet earth and her creatures. Composing Spectral Spirits was a gift that gave me a chance to funnel this grief. It also allowed me to celebrate the creatures we’ve lost and work to preserve and nurture the ones that still appear in the treetops.
I hope you listen and enjoy these recordings as much I have as we look forward to even more over the coming year.
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