Javier Camarena, Brian Mulligan, Cecilia Duarte & Aiden K. Feltkamp Lead New CD/DVD Releases

By Francisco Salazar

This week audiences will get to hear various world premiere recordings, a tenor singing Donizetti and Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

Emily & Sue

Adhyâropa Records is set to release a cappella pop-opera album from L.A.-based composer Dana Kaufman and librettist Aiden K. Feltkamp. The work will feature soprano Jasmine Muhammad and Iris Vocal Trio. This piece focuses on the little-known romantic relationship between Emily Dickinson and her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson.

The opera premiered on June 2 and 3, 2022, at Amherst College, which owns Dickinson’s home/The Emily Dickinson Museum and commissioned the work. The live version of the opera is composed for a fixed media a cappella pop trio (Iris Vocal Trio) backtrack and one live medium-high or high voice.

Cole Porter In Paris

Les Frivolités Parisiennes is set to release a new album based on the Parisian life of Cole Porter in the Roaring Twenties. b.records releases the album.

Alburnum

Bright Shiny Things releases Alburnum, an album of world premiere recordings featuring baritone Brian Mulligan and collaborative pianist, Timothy Long. The album’s repertoire includes the critically-acclaimed cycle, “Walden,” by Gregory Spears, which was composed for Mulligan, Missy Mazzoli’s “As Long As We Live,” and Mason Bates’s “Songs From the Plays.”

In a statement, Mulligan said, “I’ve wanted to create an album of world premiere recordings, my own contribution to the living, growing tree of music. After years of searching for the songs on this program, I knew these were the right ones for me. These are songs that I hope are going to be around for a good while, songs that will work their way into your heart, and into the heartwood of American Song.”

Signor Gaetano

Star tenor Javier Camarena makes his Pentatone debut with Signor Gaetano. The album features Gli Originali under the baton of Italian opera specialist Riccardo Frizza. Together they present an album featuring Donizetti’s greatest tenor arias from “L’elisir d’amore,” “Don Pasquale,” Roberto Devereux, “Betly,” “Maria de Rudenz” and “Il giovedì grasso.” The recording took place at the Teatro Donizetti in the composer’s hometown Bergamo, as part of the yearly Donizetti Festival, of which Frizza is the musical director.

“If I was asked about the composer who had the biggest impact on my life and my career, I would undoubtedly answer: Gaetano Donizetti. The first complete role I learned was Nemorino from L’elisir d’amore. In 2004 I won the Carlo Morelli’s National singing competition in Mexico with two of his most emblematic arias: ‘Come uno spirto angelico’ from ‘Roberto Devereaux’ and ‘Ah, mes amis! Quel jour de fête!’ from ‘La fille du régiment.’ Later that same year, I made my professional debut at the Palacio de Bellas Artes with La fille… and the following year, I debuted ‘Don Pasquale,'” said Camarena.

Reencuentros

Reference Recordings will release Cecilia Duarte’s first solo album. This album is a departure, containing 12 romantic boleros from multiple countries. Sung in Spanish, Duarte is accompanied by Trio Chapultepec: Vincent A. Pequeño, Israel Alcala, and William Carlton Galvez, joined by Jesús Pacheco on percussion.

Reencuentros was recorded in December of 2020 at Wire Road Studios, by engineer Andrew Bradley.

In a statement, Duarte noted, “This album is a reencounter with my past, a remembrance of the moments when I listened to my mother sing many of the songs compiled here, and a reflection of who I am as an artist today… Reencuentros represents where I come from and the stories that formed me. It is important for me to share this legacy of beautiful music, only a small token of the artistic richness of Latin American music.”

Der Ring des Nibelungen

Naxos releases Wagner’s four-part “Der Ring des Nibelungen” recorded last winter at Berlin’s Deutsche Oper. The new production is directed by Stefan Herheim, with Sir Donald Runnicles in the pit and Nina Stemme and Clay Hilley leading the cast as Brünnhilde and Siegfried.

All-Night Vigil

Cappella Records releases “All-Night Vigil” by award-winning American composer Robert Kyr. Performed by Cappella Romana and directed by its founder and music director Alexander Lingas, this is Cappella Romana’s 29th recording release.

Robert Kyr’s “All-Night Vigil” takes its formal inspiration from Sergei Rachmaninoff, who in 1915 set the same 15 selections from the Orthodox vigil for the Resurrection. Here Robert Kyr employs an English translation of those selections by the late Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), to whom this Vigil is dedicated.

Das Rheingold

Sir Georg Solti’s recording of “Das Rheingold” will get released featuring the Wiener Philharmoniker. Universal will also release “The Golden Ring: Great Scenes from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen.”

The Outer Edge of Youth

Acis presents the world premiere recording of “The Outer Edge of Youth,” a contemplative and thought-provoking new choral opera from the acclaimed composer, writer, and multimedia artist Scott Ordway. The two vocal soloists include Amy Broadbent and Emily Marvosh alongside Matthew Robertson and the Thirteen.

ECHO

Welsh soprano Ruby Hughes releases her latest albumin which she partners with pianist Huw Watkins, whose song cycle “Echo” was composed for Hughes and premiered in 2017 at Carnegie Hall.

The cycle sets texts by five different poets and focuses on melancholy, exploring transience, remembrance, and in the final song a numbed cry of inconceivable loss.

Telekinesis

The Crossing and Donald Nally release a new album on Nonesuch and New Amsterdam Records. The large, lush work, for electric guitars, orchestra, choir, and electronics, features The Crossing alongside Tyondai Braxton on electronics and celeste, the Metropolis Ensemble conducted by Andrew Cyr, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus conducted by Dianne Berkun Menaker.

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