Today, we have some fine contemporary classical music coming out of Russia. Fancy Music usually deliver consistently good albums, and this one is no exception. The Opensoundorchestra interpret the works of newer composers such as Nastasya Khrushcheva, Elmir Nizamov, Anatoly Palaev, Vladimir Kobekin, Vladimir Martynov and zhokhowski
This album is an absolutely sublime combination of folk music and classical, with Gaelynn Lea’s violin sounding like a full orchestra. From the release website: “‘All the Roads that Lead Us Home’ is a focused, vibrant piece of music by a person who is able to take a solitary instrument and make it sound like a full string arrangement, who can fill a full-length LP with mostly just those sounds and communicate fluently her heart and soul with only a few tools.” – Tony Bennett, Duluth News Tribune”
The Misty Shore Duo are Chen-Hui Jen & Jacob Sudol, with Jen performing on piano and Sudol performing with computer electronics. The duo perform the works of Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier, Michael Pisaro and one of Sudol’s own compositions. For electroacoustic music, each track has an amazing warmth to it.
My friend, the Russian composer Liudmila Knyazeva, has composed an album of Eastern Orthodox choral music. It’s a wonderful venture with the vaunted hymns the Church is known for. This is an especially nice thing to hear as we as Orthodox prepare for the Marian Fast, as well as for my Saint’s Name Day (Ilija, or Elijah).
A sublime, baroque look at the requiem on Fancy Music. From the label’s Bandcamp site: “Requiem (from Latin requies – “rest”) is a high genre of concert sacred music, a kind of mourning oratorio. Even the above phrase is little understood by the general public, not to mention the names and meaning of the Latin psalms of the canonical Requiem. As for people who are knowledgeable, for example by virtue of belonging to the Catholic Church of the Latin rite, even for them, I am sure, these texts are devoid of the burning apocalyptic meaning with which they were filled…
Sergey Kuryokhin was as fine a composer as he was an improvisor. The Divertissement Orchestra, led by violinist Ilya Ioff, reinterprets one of Kuryokhin’s finest compositions from his album The Sparrow Oratorium. Well-played, indeed. Alisa Ten: vocals [1, 2, 4] Vera Chekanova: vocals [2, 3, 4] Lidia Kovalenko: violin [1], viola [2, 3] Mikhail Blekher: honky-tonk [1], celeste [2], piano [3, 4], harpsichord [4] Vladimir Volkov: double bass [4] Ivan Chernobaev: percussion Ilya Ioff: violin [1, 3, 4], drums programming [3]
The LENsemble Vilnius, conducted by Vykintas Baltakas, won my attention because of their astounding interpretation of their interpretation of Osvaldas Balakauskas‘ composition Rain for Cracow (1991) for violin and piano. A worthy release.
Ian Vine, a composer out of the United Kingdom, provides us with a conceptual piece of classical music. From his Bandcamp site: “Recently I have written a series of pieces that are concerned in one way or another with the presentation of unique, and yet similar, events or objects. In this work I examine closely a chord played by four guitars and bass guitar. There is no repetition in the piece, except gesturally.. five strings is presented in its original 36-minute version and also as five shorter pieces, five strings I-V. In January 2021 I asked our mother, my brother…
Though the recording quality is not audiophile quality, this collection of theater music by Ukrainian singer and artist Svitlana Nianio documents the soundtrack to a theater project she was involved in at the time called Transilvania Smile. From her label Muscut Records’ Bandcamp site: “Svitlana Okhrimenko (artist name: Svitlana Nianio) is a Ukrainian artist, musician, and signer. She is one of the most prominent representatives of the independent music scene of Kyiv in the late 1980s — early 90s. She has repeatedly recorded and performed in collaboration with other musicians and bands, such as Oleksandr Yurchenko, Sugar White Death (Cukor…
Girma Yifrashewa is a graduate of the Yared School of Music in Addis Ababa, and continued his studies at the Sofia State Conservatory of Music in Bulgaria. This new work of his combines Ethiopian instrumentation with classical music, and it blends together quite well.