Now Playing Fall 2025
Selected New Releases from CMA Members.
This special sponsored section was originally published in the Fall 2025 issue of Chamber Music.
Ali Kian Yazdanfar & Brigitte Poulin
Sayeh-Roshan
LEAF MUSIC • NOVEMBER 21
On Sayeh-Roshan, whose title means “chiaroscuro” in Persian, double bassist Ali Kian Yazdanfar and pianist Brigitte Poulin perform contemporary compositions that reflect how a layered identity can enrich one’s perspective. The works commissioned specifically for this project were written in 2022 by Iranian-Canadian composers Amir Eslami and Parisa Sabet and Iranian-American composer Reza Vali with this concept in mind. They are interspersed with traditional Iranian works for kamancheh and tombak, featuring musicians Behnoosh Behnamnia and Bamdad Fotouhi. One of the pieces, “His Gabbah is Turquoise,” references the patterns, rough textures, and bright colors found in gabbah, a raw, natural, and uncut type of Persian rug. Turquoise traditionally represents wisdom, tranquility, protection, good fortune, and hope. The piece is an homage to Sabet’s and Yazdanfar’s fathers. Yazdanfar, who grew up in the U.S. and previously performed with the National Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony, is the principal double bassist of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. Poulin has also performed with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal as a soloist in works such as Stravinsky’s “Les Noces” and Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire.” In addition to their work with the orchestra, both performers are accomplished soloists and chamber musicians.
Dan Blake
Got My Wings
ADHYÂROPA RECORDS • AVAILABLE NOW
The new album by internationally acclaimed saxophonist and composer Dan Blake is dedicated to Jarvis Jay Masters, an author and death row inmate whose memoir That Bird Has My Wings inspired this work. Masters’ spiritual journey has unfolded over decades of brutal and unjust incarceration, and his life is a testament to the human capacity for finding freedom without losing dignity and deep love for one other. Got My Wings is also a ballet work choreographed by Tomiko Magario, which has led to successful partnerships with Westchester Ballet Company, Bethany Arts Community, and other performing arts organizations. The music is scored for saxophones, clarinet, flute, piano, keyboards, and programmed drums, all performed by Blake, with additional sound design by Mike Sempert and acoustic drums by Bryan Copeland. Masters’ own voice is featured on the final piece, “Doesn’t Mean You’re Free.” Finally, working in partnership with Masters and a range of community organizations, Got My Wings is an educational project that uses the arts as a vehicle for thinking about criminal justice. With support from Humanities New York, this program was implemented through a series of workshops for high school students and their teachers in 2022 and 2023.
Joel Feigin
Piano and Chamber Music, Vol.1
TOCCATA CLASSICS • AVAILABLE NOW
The music of New York-born and internationally performed composer Joel Feigin bridges the traditional and the modern, combining the resources of tonality and atonality with equal relish, naturally extending the styles of the recent past. Its freewheeling energy is tempered by an elegant restraint, revealing the warm, humanist impulse behind his sound-world. His first volume of piano and chamber music contains a passionate piano trio and a moving tribute to a much-missed teacher, followed by four sets of variations: three by Feigin and one an arrangement of Bach, the composer who Feigin says is the root of all his music. Feigin’s music encompasses operas as well as orchestral, chamber, and piano works that have been praised in Opera magazine for their “very strong impact, as logical in musical design as they are charged with emotion and drama.” A professor emeritus of composition at University of California, Santa Barbara, Feigin studied under Nadia Boulanger at Fontainebleau and Roger Sessions at Julliard. Performers on Piano and Chamber Music, Vol. 1 are Claudia Schaer, violin, Robert LaRue, cello, Marc Peloquin, piano, Mikhail Dubov, piano, and Mona Khaba, piano.
Concordian Dawn
Veni Redemptor Gentium
AVIE RECORDS • NOVEMBER 14
Concordian Dawn’s third studio album, Veni Redemptor Gentium, is a joyful and introspective musical celebration of the Christmas season centered around songs spanning the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. The album includes some of the most beautiful and rarely heard repertoire from the medieval holidays alongside a few seasonal and traditional jewels from the more commonplace holiday corpus. In addition to the medieval and traditional selections, the album also contains two world-premiere recordings of new compositions by Australian-born composer David Yardley, whose music has been described by classikON as “transcendent medieval-inspired music for modern times.” The resplendent sound world of this centuries-old repertoire, reconstructed and reimagined in Veni Redemptor Gentium, brings the listener much-needed moments of peace, reflection, and enjoyment during the holiday season and beyond. Concordian Dawn specializes in medieval vocal repertoire, drawing on primary source material and focusing on socio-philosophical similarities between texts from centuries ago and the mindset of modern society. In doing so, the ensemble produces a musical experience accessible to contemporary audiences, relating the human condition of the past to familiar experiences of the present.
Telegraph Quartet
Edge of the Storm
AZICA RECORDS • AVAILABLE NOW
The Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) follows its acclaimed 2023 album Divergent Paths with Edge of the Storm, the second volume in its 20th-Century Vantage Points series. Where the first volume explored the century’s opening decade of unbridled creativity, this new installment examines the turbulent years of war and its aftermath from 1941-1951 through string quartets by Grażyna Bacewicz, Benjamin Britten, and Mieczysław Weinberg. As Kai Christiansen writes in the liner notes, “Each composer featured on the album lived a unique wartime life that unmistakably influenced their equally unique quartet masterworks of the period.” Together, these quartets form a powerful triptych of wartime experience: Britten’s exile and displacement; Weinberg’s direct confrontation with genocide and loss; and Bacewicz’s emergence from underground resistance into post-war renewal. Each composer’s response to this defining historical moment creates a cohesive artistic statement about creativity’s persistence through one of humanity’s darkest periods. Celebrated by the San Francisco Chronicle as having “soulfulness, tonal beauty and intelligent attention to detail,” the Telegraph Quartet has connected with audiences from all walks of life, bringing their emotional chemistry and meticulous technique to concert halls, classrooms, and vineyards alike.
Kelley O’Connor and Robert Spano
Songs of Orpheus
SONO LUMINUS • AVAILABLE NOW
kelleyoconnor.com
robertspanomusic.com
This collection reunites two Grammy- winning collaborators: mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor and pianist, composer, and conductor Robert Spano. The album, O’Connor’s first recital recording, derives its title from Spano’s own Sonnets to Orpheus, a song cycle based on the poetry of Rilke. It also features songs by Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, and George Crumb. O’Connor and Spano have made numerous live appearances together since first collaborating for the premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar” at Tanglewood in 2003, which later became a Deutsche Grammophon recording for which both musicians were awarded Grammys. Spano had long wanted to compose for O’Connor and found time to do so when performances ceased during the Covid-19 pandemic. Sonnets to Orpheus, the resulting music, is an intimate conversation between piano and soprano—to quote Rilke, it “draws one voice out of two separate strings.” Works new to O’Connor and one beloved piece in her repertoire complement Spano’s new composition: Grieg’s “Haugtussa,” a charming account of one woman’s first love and pastoral surroundings; three early songs by Crumb that are surprisingly melodic compared to the surreal extended techniques of his best-known work; and one of O’Connor’s longtime favorites, Debussy’s “Chanson de Bilitis.”
Brigitte Poulin
György Kurtág – Játékok
LEAF MUSIC • AVAILABLE NOW
These miniature works, composed by one of Hungary’s greatest composers—who is still living, at age 99—were written over seven decades and pay homage to composers, friends, and influences that shaped him. These include Bach, Schumann, Bartók, and others, as well as gestures drawn from folklore, Gregorian chants, improvisation, and spoken rhythms. Pianist Brigitte Poulin has curated five “acts” of Játékoks, featuring several world premiere recordings together with pieces dedicated to Kurtág’s late wife Márta Kinsker, his muse and partner for over 60 years. “I received the 10th volume of the Játékok, which had just been published, during the Covid-19 pandemic,” says Poulin. “In it, I discovered several pieces dedicated to Márta. Over the course of their 60 years together, Kurtág offered her a dozen such birthday presents, most of which, as far as I know, had not yet been recorded.” Born in Romania to Jewish parents, György Kurtág moved to Hungary and survived the communist regime, gaining international recognition following its dissolution. His work engages in a dialogue with history, reconciling the urgent need to create something new with the legacy of the past.
CMA members: Showcase your music in our pages!
This is the first edition of “Now Playing,” a new column specifically designed to spotlight new music from our members. Here’s a chance to celebrate your releases in our national publication—reaching listeners, presenters, press, and others in our field through polished and edited prose.
Interested in increasing your exposure?
Contact advertising manager Brenden O’Hanlon at bohanlon@chambermusicamerica.org to learn more about this opportunity.