This year’s album releases from 21C artists for your consideration

(October 2026) — 21C artists have had another busy year in the studio. As we approach the season of gift guides, Grammys*, and year-end round-ups, here’s a reminder of the recordings released over the past twelve months by 21C artists, in repertoire ranging from Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, and Bartók to new music from Anthony Davis, Gabriela Lena Frank, Michael Hersch, and other original voices.

Albums already released in 2026

*Michael Hersch: Michael Hersch: across … in grief and detail (Jan 21, KAIROS Music)
“One of the most prominent composers in the country,” Michael Hersch “writes masterly modernist music of implacable seriousness” (The New Yorker). His stark musical language comes into concentrated form on across … in grief and detail, which presents three chamber works that draw on texts and resonances from Christopher Middleton, Anja Utler, Sweelinck, and Schumann. Featuring soprano Ah Young Hong, violinist William Overcash, and bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward – three of the composer’s most trusted interpreters – the recording offers “a striking demonstration of how music – when aptly conceived – can give voice to darkness and tragedy, to stasis and torment, to fragility and desolation” (Percorsi Musicali, Italy)

*Paavo Järvi: Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (March 13, Alpha Classics)
In this third volume of their complete recording of Mahler’s symphonies, Paavo Järvi and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich – a nominee for Gramophone’s 2026 Orchestra of the Year – present the Seventh Symphony. Mahler, who was extremely busy in his role as director of the Vienna Opera, composed the symphony on the shores of Lake Wörthersee in Austria during the summers of 1904 and 1905. Also known as “Song of the Night,” this symphony is characterized by rich instrumentation – including a guitar and mandolin in the fourth movement – and spectacular orchestral effects. The Gramophone reviewer commented: “What I really like about Järvi’s Mahler is his acute understanding of the musical language and most especially its volatility. He’s really in sync with those dramatic volte-faces be they driven by tempo or dynamics or both. And he’s not shy of the extremes.”

*From Warner Classics: Lyyra: Rising (March 27, Warner Classics)
The only U.S.-based all-women a cappella ensemble of its kind, Lyyra made its album debut with Rising. Featuring the first performances of new arrangements made especially for the group, the recording combines music by singer-songwriters, including Vienna Teng, Donny Hathaway, Simon & Garfunkel, and Billie Eilish, with that of composers ranging from Hildegard von Bingen to Amy Beach and Leslie Savoy Burrs, as well as such traditional favorites as “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” In a five-star review, Choir and Organ welcomed the new release as “an entrancing debut,” explaining: “It’s their masterful sense of ensemble which grips the ear and doesn’t let go.”

*From Il Pirata Records: Steven Banks: Cries, Sighs, and Dreams (May 8, Il Pirata Records)
The first saxophonist to be recognized with an Avery Fisher Career Grant, Steven Banks made his duo and compositional album debuts with Cries, Sighs, and Dreams. Drawing inspiration from Berlioz’s poetic description of the saxophone’s ability to capture the furthest reaches of audible sound through “cries, sighs, and dreams,” the recording celebrates the full expressive range of the saxophone family through works by Saint-Saëns, Creston, Carlos Simon, and Banks himself, who performs in collaboration with his longtime recital partner, pianist Xak Bjerken, and the two-time Grammy-nominated Dover Quartet. As the San Francisco Classical Voice recognizes, “Banks is reimagining the saxophone for classical music.”

*Fabio Luisi: Der Ring des Nibelungen (May 22, Delos)
Grammy-winning Music Director Fabio Luisi and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO)’s landmark live recording of Richard Wagner’s epic Der Ring des Nibelungen represented a rare undertaking for an American orchestra and was released during the DSO’s 125th anniversary season, 150 years after the first performance of the complete Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festival in 1876. Luisi and the DSO recorded their live performances of the four operas – Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung – at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas across the year in 2024, culminating in full-cycle opera-in-concert performances that October. As The Dallas Morning News summed up the landmark presentation: “The Ring in the Meyerson Symphony Center is a sonic spectacular.”

*From Outhere Music: Barbara Hannigan: An American Dream? (May 22, Alpha Classics)
As Principal Guest Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Canadian soprano-conductor Barbara Hannigan helms an all-American 20th-century program. Together with Robert Russell Bennett’s symphonic take on Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Copland’s Nosferatu-inspired Dance Symphony, and an arrangement of Richard Rodgers’s Carousel overture, the repertoire includes At the Fair: a suite created by composer-arranger Bill Elliott in collaboration with Hannigan herself, who sings the hit songs that bookend it. Gramophone admired her “vocal tour de force” and “nuanced interpretation” of the Copland, while The New York Times named the album among  “The Best Classical Music and Opera of 2026, So Far.”

*From Warner Classics: Thomas Bangalter: Mirage (June 5, Warner Classics)
A vast and atmospheric piece of electronic minimalism conceived as a ritual for 16 dancers in eight movements, Mirage was created by musician, composer, and Daft Punk cofounder Thomas Bangalter in collaboration with choreographer Damien Jalet and contemporary artist Kohei Nawa. Describing the results as “a cohesive work that blurs the boundaries between the concert hall and the dance floor,” mxdwn.com pronounced Mirage “a complete artistic statement.”

*From Warner Classics: Nathalie Stutzmann – Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 (July 24, Warner Classics)
Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann leads the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, a cornerstone of the repertoire that few women before her have ever recorded. MusicWeb International wrote: “Stutzmann’s care for balance and transparency comes through unimpeded. I like everything about this performance; the Stutzmann-Atlanta partnership is proving most fruitful.”

*Jon Batiste: Black Mozart (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 2) (Aug 14, Decca Records)
*Jon Batiste: Monk Meditations (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 3) (Aug 14, Verve)
*Jon Batiste: Monk Movements (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 4) (Aug 14, Verve)
Multi-Grammy, Emmy, and Oscar winner Jon Batiste released three albums in the Batiste Piano Series on August 14: Black Mozart (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 2) on Decca Records US; and Monk Meditations and Monk Movements (Batiste Piano Series Vols. 3 and 4) on Verve Records. Following up on the inaugural release of Beethoven Blues (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 1), the next three installments in Batiste’s solo piano series continue to showcase the pianist’s engagement with transformative composers from multiple eras using elements of spontaneous composition and improvisation. An artist who “actively promotes the normalization of musical ambidexterity” (DownBeat), Batiste’s intention with the three albums is to “curate a musical conversation between Monk and Mozart with me at the piano, honoring them and contributing to their kindred legacies.” JazzTimes, prefacing an interview with the pianist, said: “Nothing is literal in Jon Batiste’s examination of Monk. As he did previously with his volumes on Beethoven and Mozart, there’s interpolation, reinterpretation, free-associative composition and weird magic as Batiste turns around Monk’s music and often his titles, into something fresh and holy.”

*Joshua Bell CBE, Academy of St Martin in the Fields: PAGANINI (Aug 21, Sony Classical)
Grammy winner and honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) Joshua Bell released PAGANINI on Sony Classical with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (ASMF). The digital-only album features Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1 – with an original cadenza by Bell – and Cantabile, arranged by James Stephenson for solo violin and chamber orchestra. Bell’s recording of Paganini’s Carnival of Venice, originally released on the Ladies in Lavender soundtrack, is included as a bonus track. Since succeeding Sir Neville Marriner as Music Director of ASMF in 2011, Bell has “brought a new bite and vigour to the band’s well-established aristocratic nobility,” which makes for “captivating music-making” (The Scotsman). As the UK’s Arts Desk put it: “Who needs a conductor with a leader-soloist of this calibre?”

*Eastman School of Music: IN PLAIN SIGHT: The Black Anthology (Aug 21, Lexicon Classics)
Featuring outstanding young vocal students from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, together with three stars of the school’s distinguished faculty – Grammy nominee Joshua Conyers, BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Nicole Cabell, and Marian Anderson Competition winner Kiera Duffy – IN PLAIN SIGHT: The Black Anthology showcases selections from the Anthology of Art Songs by Black American Composers, shining a light on one of the nation’s richest but most overlooked musical traditions. Welcoming the double album as “an ambitious and rewarding project,” Rochester’s City magazine observed: “You’ll find beauty in these songs, both the words and the music, and in the sensitive, striking performances.”

*Anthony Parnther: The Central Park Five (Aug 28, Platoon)
Anthony Parnther conducts Long Beach Opera’s premiere studio recording of Anthony Davis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, The Central Park Five, which dramatizes the true story of the “Exonerated Five”: five Black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted for the violent 1989 rape and assault of a woman jogging in Central Park. San Francisco Classical Voice wrote: “The jazz elements are deftly integrated into the generally atonal classical structure…, and conductor Anthony Parnther makes them swing.” As the San Francisco Chronicle affirmed, the recording is “conducted with acute sensitivity.”

*Rafael Payare: Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 (Aug 28 digital; Sep 11 CD, Delos)
To launch their new collaboration with Delos, Music and Artistic Director Rafael Payare and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra recorded Shostakovich’s monumental Seventh Symphony live, in a performance that marked their first in the newly renovated acoustics of San Diego’s Jacobs Music Center. The disc was named a Gramophone “Editor’s Choice” for October 2026, with the accompanying review commenting: “The rhythms are crisp and the ensemble consistently perfect. … The players of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra produce marvellous sounds that drew my attention to some lesser-known episodes. … [Payare’s] taut, disciplined approach is a fresh view worthy to take its place among the essential recorded accounts of the symphony.”

Chanticleer: Machaut (Sep 11, Delos)
Chanticleer’s Machaut presents music from two facets of the life of Guillaume de Machaut: his four decades as canon of Reims Cathedral, for which he composed the Messe de Nostre Dame, and his secular life as a 14th-century poet-composer sponsored by a series of noble patrons. The Messe de Nostre Dame is a seminal work that is believed to be the first setting of the Ordinary of the Mass by a single composer, yet Machaut is just as significant for leaving behind a large body of secular work in the courtly love tradition, like the chansons “Douce dame jolie” and “Riches d’amour,” among others recorded on the album. Reviewing a previous concert performance of Machaut’s chansons, The New Yorker declared: “In Chanticleer’s dulcet rendition, voices brushed against one another like roses swaying in a breeze. Across some six and a half centuries, a composer held an audience spellbound.”

Pierre-Laurent Aimard: Schönberg: Piano Works (Oct 2, Alpha Classics)
Grammy-winning French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard makes his Alpha Classics label debut with a solo piano collection tracing Schoenberg’s artistic evolution through five landmark works, from the Drei Klavierstücke (Op. 11), an Expressionist work dating from 1909, to Klavierstücke (Op. 33), written on the eve of the composer’s emigration to the United States, which reflects a world in transition. The album marks Aimard’s long-awaited first recording of Schoenberg’s music, following a full four decades of live performances; a 2024 recital at Berlin’s Musikfest prompted Seen and Heard International to marvel: “Here was a fantastical Schoenberg. … Aimard less argued than demonstrated beyond doubt that this music mattered.”

From Outhere Music: Beth Taylor: The Deeps Have Music (Oct 2, Linn Records)
Mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor and pianist Hamish Brown make their debut recital album with Linn Records. Taylor, a rising vocal star, came to international prominence as a finalist of the 2023 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, and has since collaborated with both the Berliner Philharmoniker and Wiener Philharmoniker. An award-winning pianist, Brown enjoys a highly diverse collaborative career with singers, instrumentalists, orchestras, and theater productions. The sea-inspired program starts with the evocative My Lagan Love arranged by Hamilton Harty – included by NPR’s Tom Huizenga in a recent edition of the popular “All Songs Considered” – followed by Hedwige Chrétien’s Petits Poèmes du Bord de l’Eau, Ethel Smyth’s Three Moods of the Sea, and Edward Elgar’s celebrated Sea Pictures. Placed among these gems are songs by Schubert and Alma Mahler, together with a world premiere recording of Cameron Biles-Liddell’s The Breakers.

Daniil Trifonov: Mi Historia Americana – Sur (Oct 2, Deutsche Grammophon)
Grammy-winning Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov’s My American Story – North was issued in 2024 to widespread critical acclaim: Gramophone heralded it as a “big, bold, brassy but touching double album” featuring “one of the best performances on record” of Copland’s Piano Variations, and, in a five-star review, the Financial Times declared the recording “a marvel.” Now, with Mi Historia Americana – Sur (My American Story – South), the pianist embarks on the second leg of his autobiographical journey through the Americas, delving into the music of South America and the Caribbean. As well as performing his own Tango and solo works by composers ranging from Villa-Lobos to Gabriela Lena Frank, he is joined by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) and Gonzalo Grau for Barroso’s Aquarela do Brasil and the world premiere recording of Golijov’s Cuadros del Sur, both of which were arranged especially for the project.

Grammy-eligible albums released in 2025

*Edward Gardner: Tippett: A Child of Our Time (Sep 5, LPO Live)
As Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), Gramophone Award-winning British conductor Edward Gardner conducts the LPO, London Philharmonic Choir, London Adventist Chorale, and soloists Nadine Benjamin, Sarah Connolly, Kenneth Tarver, and Roderick Williams in a live account of Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, an oratorio inspired by the events of Kristallnacht. The release was chosen as an “Editor’s Choice,” by Gramophone, which proclaimed Gardner “Tippett’s greatest living conductor.”

*Paavo Järvi: Credo (digital Sep 5; U.S. CD Nov 7, Alpha Classics)
In a review of the 2025 Pärnu Music Festival, which honored the 90th birthday of Arvo Pärt, Classical Voice North America declared: “Pärt’s career is inextricably and significantly associated with the so-called Järvi dynasty of conductors: patriarch Neeme and sons Paavo and Kristjan.” Neeme Järvi memorably conducted the 1968 premiere of Pärt’s monumental Credo in Tallinn, a dramatic event that saw the piece subsequently banned by Soviet officials for its religious and political provocations. Paavo Järvi’s Credo with the Estonian Festival Orchestra, digitally released a week before Pärt’s birthday, honors this turning point in the composer’s life. Included on the album is the world premiere recording of Pärt’s Silhouette – inspired by the Eiffel Tower – which was composed for Paavo Järvi in 2010 when he was Chief Conductor of the Orchestre de Paris. The New York Times commented: “Like his father, Neeme Järvi, Paavo has dedicated himself with profound understanding and excellence to the works of Arvo Pärt.”

*From Warner Classics: Pene Pati: Serenata a Napoli (Sep 26, Warner Classics)
“One of opera’s most-watched new stars” (Associated Press), Samoan tenor Pene Pati is joined by eight instrumentalists from the Il Pomo d’Oro orchestra for a collection drawn from the golden age of Neapolitan song. Hailing the album as “a revelation,” Gramophone magazine concluded: “Serenata a Napoli has been an unexpected and joyous experience to review. I give it the warmest of welcomes.”

*Daniil Trifonov: Tchaikovsky (Oct 3, Deutsche Grammophon)
On his double album, Tchaikovsky, Daniil Trifonov interprets the Russian composer’s rarely performed early Piano Sonata in C-sharp minor, his Children’s Album, and the “Thème original et variations” from his Six Piano Pieces, together with the Concert Suite from his ballet The Sleeping Beauty, as transcribed for piano by Mikhail Pletnev. According “reference-version status” to the pianist’s account of the Children’s Album, Gramophone hailed the album as “a high point in Trifonov’s discography.”

*Rafael Payare: Berlioz: Le carnaval romain & Symphonie fantastique (Oct 17, Pentatone)
Continuing their ongoing exploration of Romantic repertoire, in fall 2024 the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) and Music and Artistic Director Rafael Payare toured Europe with performances of Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture and Symphonie fantastique, culminating with live performances in Montreal that were recorded for this Pentatone release. In a special touch, the performance of Symphonie fantastique features OSM’s two newly acquired carillon bells – G and C – which play a prominent role in the climactic fifth movement, Witches’ Sabbath. Reviewing their performance of the Symphonie fantastique at London’s Barbican, The Times observed: “In a work that’s really about emotional fixation, Payare carefully planted the hero’s churning obsession into Berlioz’s seething textures, giving a brooding energy that tied the whole sprawling work together.”

*Paavo Järvi: Mahler: Symphony No. 1 (Oct 31, Alpha Classics)
Paavo Järvi released Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 on the Alpha Classics label with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in fall 2025. The release marked the second installment of a complete cycle that will span the remaining years of the conductor’s Zürich tenure. The recording was named a Gramophone “Editor’s Choice” for November 2025, with the reviewer declaring:  “I do believe this is one of the best – perhaps even the best – account of Mahler’s precocious First Symphony that I’ve heard on disc since the celebrated Bernstein/Concertgebouw version. … Paavo Järvi and his Zurich orchestra really do make it feel and sound brand new. Its daring colourations are relished, its youthful audacity writ large. Everything is ripe and vivid. … Put simply this account rekindles much of the excitement that I for one experienced in hearing the piece for the first time. Heartily recommended.”

*Chanticleer: Joy to the World (Oct 31, Delos)
Chanticleer’s beloved holiday program, “A Chanticleer Christmas,” has been featured on a PBS special and multiple appearances on NBC’s Today show, and hearkens back to some of the group’s most cherished traditions. Chanticleer reimagined some of those traditions with the release of the holiday album Joy to the World, blending fresh arrangements of favorites like “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World” with Renaissance masterworks and new commissions. Praising the album’s “elegantly meditative program,” a glowing review in The New York Times found that the “sophisticated new arrangements make even the most well-worn Christmas carols feel subtly altered and freshly luminous,” and that “unifying it all is Chanticleer’s hallmark powdery blend and intonation so pure that close dissonances produce faint, shimmering beats.” As the review concluded: “The result is a beautifully understated album with just enough strangeness to cut through the holiday glut.”

*From Warner Classics: Gautier Capuçon: Gaïa (Nov 7, Warner Classics)
“Gaïa is an album dedicated to the Earth, inspired by its beauty, fragility, and strength,” says French cellist Gautier Capuçon. On his new recording, the four-time ECHO Klassik award-winner performs 17 world premiere recordings by 16 contemporary composers. Showcasing diverse new works by innovative contemporary composers, ranging from such luminaries as Max Richter, Ludovico Einaudi, and Joe Hisaishi to emerging talents like Abel Selaocoe and Ayanna Witter-Johnson, the result is “an inspired new album of world premiere recordings” (All Classical Radio).

*Nicholas Phan: Rebecca Clarke: The Complete Songs (Nov 7, Signum Records)
Nicholas Phan recorded Rebecca Clarke: The Complete Songs over the course of two years with his British colleagues mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and pianist Anna Tilbrook. Featuring nearly 30 world premiere recordings of unpublished songs, most of them for voice and piano, the multi-disc album also includes Clarke’s vocal chamber pieces, for which Phan and Whately are joined by violinist Max Baillie, baritone Roderick Williams, soprano Gweneth Ann Rand, and members of the Seattle Chamber Music Society. These “rich, radiant performances bring a forgotten voice to life,” wrote The Guardian, and Australia’s Limelight magazine affirmed: “This beautifully recorded anthology is a must for any lover of English song.”

*Edward Gardner: Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius (Nov 21, LPO Live)
Edward Gardner conducts The Dream of Gerontius, widely regarded as the finest choral work by his compatriot Edward Elgar. Recorded live at the BBC Proms, the performance features Allan Clayton in the title role, Jamie Barton as the Angel, and James Platt as the Priest/Angel of the Agony, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Choir, and Hallé Choir. In its review of the recording, BBC Music Magazine wrote: “The impact of Edward Gardner’s cogent, understanding interpretation … cuts vividly through; it must have been quite an experience on the evening.”

Albums coming soon in 2026

Edward Gardner: Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin Suite, The Wooden Prince (Oct 23, LPO Live)
Edward Gardner conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in two Bartók ballet scores, captured live at the Royal Festival Hall. Marking his tenth release as Principal Conductor of the orchestra, the new recording combines Gardner’s “ferocious performance of the suite from Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin ballet, which was driven to a suitably supercharged climax” (The Guardian) with his “ravishing performance” (Opera Today) of The Wooden Prince; as The Times of London put it: “Gardner, alert to every mercurial twist and turn, made it sound the very opposite of wooden.”

Paavo Järvi: Mahler: Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection” (Oct 30, Alpha Classics)
In this fourth volume of their complete recording of Mahler’s symphonies, Paavo Järvi and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich – where Järvi is embarking on his eighth season as Music Director – present the monumental “Resurrection” symphony, with its five movements and massive orchestra complete with choir and vocal soloists. The orchestra and Järvi launched their Mahler cycle on Alpha Classics in 2025 with the releases of both the Fifth Symphony and the First, followed in March 2026 by the Seventh. The Classic Review praised the latter recording as “excellently played, lucid, and often revealing, with a lighter and sometimes more objective side of Mahler brought to the fore.”

Rafael Payare: Ravel Daphnis et Chloe; Stravinsky Le sacre du printemps (Oct 30, Pentatone)
Music and Artistic Director Rafael Payare and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal release their fifth recording on Pentatone, featuring Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. After a live performance of Daphnis et Chloé by the same forces in 2025, Bachtrack praised the “magnificent account,” continuing: “Payare’s interpretation of Ravel’s ballet revealed a profound understanding of the music’s complexity. … [His] freedom fostered an elevated degree of expressiveness. Payare’s blending of the cornucopia of colours in the score made for a spellbinding reading.”

From Il Pirata Records: Rebecca Scout Nelson: Wild Iris (Nov 6, Il Pirata Records)
Rebecca Scout Nelson’s sophomore album, Wild Iris, expands her distinctive musical world, building on the folk-Baroque sound of her acclaimed debut, Do Not Lament, with a seamless combination of Baroque and contemporary indie folk. The result is a perfectly natural and harmonious whole that spans several centuries of inspiration and instrumental technique, including a dash of bluegrass and radio hits from Nelson’s childhood. Most of the material on the album was written and/or arranged by Nelson herself, the exception being two songs written by album cellist and vocalist Cullen Coty O’Neil, who also has two arranger credits; one lyric adapted from Samuel Taylor Coleridge; a cover of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’s classic Americana song “Look at Miss Ohio”; and works by Handel and Telemann in Nelson’s arrangements.

Nicholas Phan: Fellow Citizens (Nov 13, Avie Records)
Grammy-winning tenor Nicholas Phan and his regular recital partner, pianist Myra Huang, explore narratives of migration and immigration through the lens of song. The centerpiece of their program is the world premiere recording of Shawn Okpebholo’s new song cycle, The Beautiful, of which they gave the first performance at Tanglewood this past summer. The cycle will be heard alongside songs by composers ranging from Schubert, Dvořák, Vaughan Williams, and Bartók to Irving Berlin, Florence Price, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Errollyn Wallen, Mohammed Fairouz, and Eric Malmquist, the Chicago-based composer from whose Fellow Citizens the album takes its name.

* Recording eligible for 2026 Grammy Awards nomination