Novus NY – Luna Pearl Woolf

PENTATONE: The 63rd Grammy Awards nominations are revealed!

November 25, 2020

We are proud to announce that our releases of Aspects of America: The Pulitzer Edition and LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood are nominated for the 63rd Grammy Awards which will be held in January 2021.

Aspects of America: The Pulitzer Edition with the Oregon Symphony and Carlos Kalmar is nominated for the Best Orchestral Performance.

“These Pulitzer-winning pieces are excursions in an essentially conservative style by established figures.” – The Sunday Times

Oregon Symphony and Carlos Kalmar continue their acclaimed Aspects of America series with this second instalment, featuring three symphonic works that were all awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Walter Piston’s Symphony No. 7 (Pulitzer Prize 1961) is a pastoral and jubilant glorification of nature, while Morton Gould’s Stringmusic (Pulitzer Prize 1995) was composed for star cellist Rostropovich, and showcases all possible sounds and colors of the string orchestra. In his Symphony No. 4 “Requiem” (Pulitzer Prize 1944), Howard Hanson explores the mysteries of life and death in an American musical idiom that simultaneously reveals the composer’s Nordic roots.

LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood with Matt Haimovitz, Devon Guthrie, Nancy Anderson, Elise Quagliata, Avi Stein, Julian Wachner, NOVUS NY, Choir of Trinity Wall Street is nominated for the Best Classical Compendium.

“A wonderful crosssection of Woolf’s vocal writing that bodes well for the new opera.” – The WholeNote

The composer-portrait album, released in January, encompasses 25 years of dramatic vocal and choral works and hauntingly re-imagined Leonard Cohen masterpieces by the innovative American-Canadian composer. LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood (PENTATONE Oxingale Series) features performances from The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and NOVUS NY conducted by Julian Wachner, cellist Matt Haimovitz, soprano Devon Guthrie, mezzo-soprano Elise Quagliata, and Broadway actress Nancy Anderson.

We are also honoured to announce that Blanton Alspaugh is nominated as Producer of The Year for the production of Aspects of America: The Pulitzer Edition and LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood. Jesse Lewis is nominated for the production of Missy Mazzoli & Royce Vavrek: Proving Up (Opera Omaha, International Contemporary Ensemble and Christopher Rountree).

My Scena: Grammy nomination for LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood

Nov. 24, 2020.

LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood, a Pentatone Oxingale Series recording, has been nominated for a 2021 Grammy Award in the category of Best Classical Compendium. The composer-portrait album, released in February, encompasses 25 years of dramatic vocal and choral works and hauntingly re-imagined Leonard Cohen masterpieces by the innovative American-Canadian composer. Luna Pearl Woolf: Fire and Flood features performances from the Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Novus NY conducted by Julian Wachner, cellist Matt Haimovitz, soprano Devon Guthrie, mezzo-soprano Elise Quagliata and Broadway actress Nancy Anderson.

Noted among a new generation of politically conscious and artistically progressive composers, Luna Pearl Woolf’s music is praised by The New York Times for its “psychological nuances and emotional depth.” Opera Going Toronto called her recent Dora Award-winning opera, Jacqueline, “brilliant, wrenching… profoundly moving.” (Read more about Luna Pearl Woolf here.)

Of the album, The New York Times contributing writer Corinna Da Fonseca-Wollheim writes, “Luna Pearl Woolf trains a zoom lens on the collective experience, plunging us right into the midst of destruction and anarchy only to pull back, in one swoop, to a clear-eyed plane of compassion.”

The album includes the dramatic To the Fire, with text from the Book of Ezekiel; Missa in Fines Orbis Terrae, composed for the choir and organ of St. James Cathedral, Toronto; and the inventive One to One to One, inspired by the towering redwood sculptures at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Also featured is Après moi, le deluge, concerto for cello and a cappella choir written in the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One of Woolf’s most frequently-performed works – including in New Orleans and at Carnegie Hall in New York – it was described as “by turns blazingly ardent and softly haunting” by The New York Times. (Watch the video for Apres moi, le déluge here.)

Finally, Woolf reconfigures Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows and Who By Fire in haunting new arrangements. Combining the three women’s voices and Haimovitz’s cello, Woolf captures Cohen’s deep-voiced essence in a kaleidoscopic expansion of the original songs’ colors and timbres. (Watch the video for Cohen’s Everybody Knows here.)

This new Grammy nomination coincides with the 20th anniversary of the ground-breaking, Grammy Award-winning Oxingale Records. Launched in 2000 by cellist Matt Haimovitz and composer Luna Pearl Woolf, the label embraces both mind and heart, melding genres and navigating between the worlds of classical, new music, jazz, crossover and opera. Releasing their first recording of the Bach Cello Suites in 2000, they took the music of Bach into then-unimaginable venues for classical music, like punk palace CBGB, sparking what would become the alt-classical genre. Cutting-edge collaborators over two decades have included DJ Olive, David Sanford, John McLaughlin, Vijay Iyer, pianist Christopher O’Riley, the Miró Quartet, and conductor Dennis Russell Davies, among many others. January 2015 marked the debut of the Pentatone Oxingale Series, a new partnership with the Amsterdam-based label, which is renowned for its artistic quality and audiophile technology.

Read it at My Scena

TheWholeNote Editor’s Corner – February 2020 | Luna Pearl Woolf: Fire and Flood

Written by David Olds January 27, 2020

“A wonderful cross-section of Woolf’s vocal writing that bodes well for the new opera.”

This month Tapestry presents the world premiere of American composer Luna Pearl Woolf’s latest opera, Jacqueline. Coinciding with this is the Pentatone release of Woolf’s Fire and Flood on the Oxingale label (PTC5186803 naxosdirect.com). This striking vocal disc features mostly recent works for a cappella choir (the Choir of Trinity Wall Street under the direction of Julian Wachner) with soloists in several instances and, in the most memorable selection, Après moi, le déluge, obbligato cello (Matt Haimovitz). After a virtuosic cello cadenza, this work develops into a bluesy and occasionally meditative telling of the story of Noah and the Flood which culminates in the gospel-tinged Lord, I’m goin’ down in Louisiana before gently subsiding. After a rousing arrangement of Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows for vocal trio and cello, comes a modern-sounding but fairly tonal Missa in Fines Orbis Terrae with the choir accompanied by Messiaen-like organ (Avi Stein). The vocal trio (sopranos Devon Guthrie and Nancy Anderson with mezzo Elise Quagliata) return for One to One to One, in this instance accompanied by the low strings (three cellos and three basses) of NOVUS NY. Having begun with the close harmonies, murmurs, shouts and extended vocal techniques of the a cappella To the Fire with full choir, the disc ends with the vocal trio once again joined by Haimovitz for a raucous setting of Cohen’s Who by Fire to close out an exceptional disc. A wonderful cross-section of Woolf’s vocal writing that bodes well for the new opera.

Read it on thewholenote.com

Superconductor: Concert Review: Let Me Drown. Novus NY plays Become Ocean.

Friday, May 19, 2017

by Paul J. Pelkonen

…The concert opened with After the Wave by Ms, Woolf. It started with a lone, faraway trumpet, answered from a seemingly great distance by oboe and English horn, that most desolate sounding of wind instruments…Swelling surges of strings and brass crashed and broke on the senses, at turns meditative and anguished, moaning of irredeemable loss…

The composer John Luther Adams who won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Become Ocean.

St. Paul’s Chapel, located in the long shadow of the World Trade Center is one of the oldest and most historic churches in New York. On Thursday afternoon, the last matinee concert of the annual music series sponsored by Trinity Church featured another historic occasion: the second New York pperformance of Become Ocean, the 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning composition by John Luther Adams. This concert, featuring contemporary orchestra Novus NY under the baton of Trinity Church maestro Julian Wachner, paired Mr. Adams’ creation with works by contemporary composers Luna Pearl Woolf and Jessica Meyer. All three composers were in attendance. Continue reading “Superconductor: Concert Review: Let Me Drown. Novus NY plays Become Ocean.” →

New York Music Daily: Vast, Intricate, Awe-Inspiring Oceans of Sound Downtown

May 19, 2017

…From the first few stark, distantly enigmatic notes of Luna Pearl Woolf’s After the Wave, …it was clear that Julian Wachner’s fearlessly eclectic ensemble had come to deliver a message…a flood of low tonalities and bracing close harmonies as haunting as anything in Adams’ work…

What’s the likelihood that the two opening works on a program featuring John Luther Adams’ Become Ocean would hold their own alongside that epically enveloping, meticulously churning, playfully palindromic masterpiece? It happened yesterday at St. Paul’s Chapel downtown, where Novus NY delivered a mighty coda to this season’s program of music on themes of water justice, staged by Trinity Church.

The pervasive cynicism that still exists at corporate rock concerts has roots in the classical world: “Let’s warm up the crowd with something short and random and then get down to business.” From the first few stark, distantly enigmatic notes of Luna Pearl Woolf’s After the Wave, a portrait of the 2004 Indonesian tsunami and its aftermath, it was clear that Julian Wachner’s fearlessly eclectic ensemble had come to deliver a message. With just the hint of foreshadowing, the methodical pulse of daily routine gave way to a flood of low tonalities and bracing close harmonies as haunting as anything in Adams’ work. From there the orchestra made their way through an unexpectedly triumphant latin-tinged fanfare of sorts, up to a conclusion that signaled triumph and recovery over an ocean of devastation. Continue reading “New York Music Daily: Vast, Intricate, Awe-Inspiring Oceans of Sound Downtown” →

NOVUS NY performance: After the Wave

NOVUS NY Ensemble will feature their fantastic performance of After the Wave from the Sunken Cathedral series on their website.

From the New York Times Classical Music in NYC listings:

NOVUS NY at St. Paul’s Chapel (May 18, 1 p.m.). If your John Luther Adams cravings are not fulfilled by the Crossing’s concert on Friday and Alarm Will Sound’s on Sunday, here’s a free lunchtime opportunity to hear “Become Ocean,” his symphonic masterpiece of tone painting, compositional process and ecological awareness, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. Alongside it, Julian Wachner conducts a premiere from Jessica Meyer and Luna Pearl Woolf’s “After the Wave.”

212-602-0800, trinitywallstreet.org