21C congratulates 2013 Grammy Award nominees
21C Media Group congratulates artists including conductors Michael Tilson Thomas and Fabio Luisi, singers Deborah Voigt and Audra McDonald, composer Steven Stucky, and New York’s Trinity Wall Street on their nominations for the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, as announced this week by the Recording Academy. The awards will be presented in a live televised broadcast on February 10, 2013.
Nominated for “Best Contemporary Classical Composition”, Steven Stucky’s concert drama August 4, 1964 was commissioned by the Dallas Symphony and recorded live on the orchestra’s DSO label, prompting the Dallas Morning News to call Stucky “a master of orchestral writing.” This is the first time one of the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer’s works has scored a Grammy nod, although two have already graced award-winning albums in the “Best Performance” category.
Trinity Wall Street’s “superbly performed” (New York Times) studio recording of Israel in Egypt for Musica Omnia is the most complete version of Handel’s oratorio available today. With the Trinity Choir and period-instrument Trinity Baroque Orchestra led by Julian Wachner (first Director of Music and the Arts at the historic New York parish), the three-disc set is nominated for “Best Choral Performance”. This marks Trinity Wall Street’s first Grammy nomination in its hallowed 300-year history.
The Metropolitan Opera’s new recording of Wagner’s epic “Ring” cycle has been nominated for “Best Opera Recording”. Released on Blu-ray DVD by Deutsche Grammophon, it features Deborah Voigt’s star turn as Brünnhilde under the “exciting, insightful, and assured” leadership (New York Times) of Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi. Voigt, whose soprano “sliced through the orchestra and throbbed with intensity” (New York Times) in a “badass” (New York) portrayal, has several previous Grammy nods to her name, as well as a win for the 1996 “Best Opera Recording”.
Nominated for “Best Musical Theater Album”, The Gershwins’ Porgy And Bess stars Audra McDonald in the title role that secured her fifth Tony Award and was pronounced “a major work of musical portraiture” by the New York Times. The PS Classics set presents the singer/actress – already a two-time Grammy winner – alongside Norm Lewis, David Alan Grier, and her other castmates from the recent Broadway revival.
With ten wins under his belt, Michael Tilson Thomas is no stranger to the Grammys. His new “Best Orchestral Performance” nod is for John Adams’s Harmonienlehre and Short Ride in a Fast Machine, recorded live in concert with the San Francisco Symphony on the orchestra’s SFS Media label. As the San Francisco Chronicle notes, “Thomas is a proven master of this music. … In a powerhouse performance [of Harmonienlehre],…this brilliant and dynamic opus emerged with all its force intact.”
Finally, soprano and three-time Grammy-winner Renée Fleming, Creative Consultant to Lyric Opera of Chicago, scored a “Best Classical Vocal Solo” nomination for Poèmes. An album of sensual French orchestral song cycles, this Decca release features Alan Gilbert – also conductor of the “Best Opera Recording” of 2012 – “drawing plush, textured playing from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France” (New York Times).
For more information about the nominated artists, visit www.21cmediagroup.com.