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Crossover Media


Founded in 1994, Crossover Media's client list includes: Sony Masterworks, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, BMG, and Concord, along with many Independent Labels and Artists. Projects include collaborations with the following artists: 2CELLOS, Alexandre Desplat, Andras Schiff, Andrea Bocelli, Andris Nelsons, Anna Netrebko, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Angele Dubeau, Angelique Kidjo, Anoushka Shankar, Antonio Sanchez, Arcade Fire, Arturo Sandoval, Bebel Gilberto, Becca Stevens, Bela Fleck, Bettye LaVette, Bill Frisell, Bill Charlap, Bill Murray, Billy Childs, Billy Joel, Bob James, Bobby McFerrin, Brandee Younger, Branford Marsalis, Brian Eno, Burkard Schliessmann, Cassandra Wilson, Cecilia Bartoli, Charlie Haden, Chick Corea, Chilly Gonzales, Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Hope, Daniil Trifonov, David Crosby, David Foster, David Sanborn, Devonte Hynes, Diana Krall, Don Sebesky, Ella Fitzgerald, Emanuel Ax, Ennio Morricone, Evgeny Kissin, Frank Sinatra, Gabriel Kahane, George Benson, George Winston, Gustavo Dudamel, Gustavo Santaolalla, Hans Zimmer, Helene Grimaud, Hilary Hahn, Hildur Guonadottir, Hubert Laws, Hubert Sumlin, Huey Lewis & The News, Igor Levit, Itzhak Perlman, Jake Shimabukuro, Jan Garbarek, Jarvis Cocker, Jeff Goldblum, Jessye Norman, Jethro Tull, Jimmy Webb, Joan Baez, Joe Lovano, Joey Alexander, Johann Johannsson, John Coltrane, John Scofield, John Williams, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, Jonny Greeenwood, Joshua Bell, Joy Harjo, Joyce DiDonato, Keith Jarrett, Kenny Barron, Krzysztof Penderecki, Kurt Masur, Lee Konitz, Leif Ove Andsnes, Lena Horne, London Symphony Orchestra, Luciano Pavarotti, Madison Cunningham, Mark O'Connor, Martha Argerich, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Max Richter, Medeski Martin & Wood, Melody Gardot, Michel Camilo, Paul McCartney, Paul Winter, Pete Townshend, Phil Woods, Rachel Portman, Randall Goosby, Ray Charles, Regina Carter, Renee Fleming, Richard Reed Parry, Rick Wakeman, Rodney Dangerfield, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Rufus Wainwright, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Samara Joy, Seiji Ozawa, Sergio Mendes, Seth MacFarlane, Shabaka Hutchings, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Sinead O'Connor, Snarky Puppy, Sonny Rollins, Sons of Kemet, Soweto Gospel Choir, Stanley Turrentine, SYML, Terence Blanchard, Terry Riley, The Bad Plus, The Choir Of King's College Cambridge, The Comet Is Coming, The Cranberries, The Derek Trucks Band, The Hilliard Ensemble, The Hot Sardines, The Piano Guys, The Stan Getz Quartet, The Manhattan Transfer, The New York Philharmonic, Thelonious Monk, Theo Bleckmann, Theo Croker, Third Coast Percussion, Time for Three, Tony Bennett, Tuck and Patti, Vangelis, Vienna Philharmonic, Vijay Iyer, Vikingur Olafsson, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Horowitz, VOCES8, Willie Nelson, Wynton Marsalis, Yannick Nezet-Sequin, Yo-Yo Ma, Yuja Wang, and many others. 
 

"Music is a science. Music is mathematical. Music is a foreign language. Music is History. Music is physical education. Music develops Insight and demands research. Music is all these things, but most of all, MUSIC IS ART. That is why we teach music. Not because we expect you to play or sing all your life...But so you will be human...So you will recognize beauty...So you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world...So you will have something to cling to...So you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good- in short, more LIFE."   - Ludwig van Beethoven

For more information contact Max Horowitz    maxcrossover@gmail.com

Top 10 Albums For December 3, 2024

  • Lisa Reagan

    Coventry Carol

    A very special release for the holidays from Lisa Reagan, is the newly produced video for “Coventry Carol,” from Lisa’s album Noel. This ephemeral video directed by Jordan Mizrahi, captures the tone of the Tudor period of the English Renaissance, which saw a flourishing of art, architecture, trade, exploration and commerce.

    Lisa explains, “’Coventry Carol’ dates back to the mid-1500s and was a part of the Coventry Pageant, an annual performance in Coventry, England. In this pageant, Joseph receives a visit from an angel who instructs him to take his child to Egypt to protect him from Herod's massacre of the innocents. In our video, we chose to use a ballerina to represent these innocent souls.

    “Each Christmas season brings renewed hope once more: for peace on earth and goodwill toward all. This is my heartfelt prayer.”

    “Coventry Carol” is the second of three songs included in the nativity portion of the Pageant. It enjoyed its greatest popularity in the 1940s shortly after having been performed in the bombed-out World War II ruins of Coventry Cathedral.

    Lisa’s operatic history with the Washington National Opera, provides her with the prowess to impart pathos to the words of the women of Bethlehem. While at the WNO, she had the honor of sharing the stage with icons Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and Renee Fleming among others, as well as performing at White House special events.

    Lisa continues to explore new territory. On her most recent release, this year’s album, What We Need Is Here, Lisa composed music to 10 of her favorite classic poems, including works from poets Shakespeare, Yeats, Frost, Wordsworth, Keats, Berry and Bel-Moore. Tony-Award winning, Grammy-nominated, producer/ orchestrator, Jamshied Sharifi, collaborated with Lisa on the project.

  • Clement Ducol & Camille

    Emilia Perez OMPS

    Sony Music Masterworks releases EMILIA PÉREZ (ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK) featuring original songs and score music written by CLÉMENT DUCOL and CAMILLE for the award-winning musical drama from Jacques Audiard. Acclaimed composer Clément Ducol and chart-topping French singer Camille have crafted an expansive body of music covering multiple genres, each tailored to the onscreen story and its cast of characters. Included within the album are 16 Spanish-language vocal tracks featuring performances by the film’s ensemble cast including Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz. With music supervision by Pierre-Marie Dru, who also acts as the album’s executive producer, the soundtrack captures the complexity of each character’s innermost thoughts and feelings, further immersing viewers into the onscreen story while complimenting Audiard’s bold filmmaking vision. Following an award-winning festival run, Emilia Pérez debuts in select US theaters today before making its streaming debut in the US, UK and Ireland exclusively on Netflix beginning Wednesday, November 13.

    INSTAGRAM

  • Samara Joy

    Portrait

    “I’m still speechless,” says Samara Joy, reflecting on her 2023 Grammy win for Best New Artist. When the Bronx-raised jazz vocalist, 24, tries to place herself back in that historic moment today, she feels nothing but gratitude.

    At the same time, Joy understood then that she couldn’t let the award define her. She still had a lifetime of music to explore, a tight-knit crew of extraordinary collaborators to guide, and a passion for songwriting to nurture. So Joy did what any committed, eternally curious jazz musician would do: She hit the road. For her and her band, a seemingly endless run of sold-out tour dates became a nightly opportunity to reach new creative heights. “I just got back to work, doing what, in essence, got me the Grammy in the first place,” she says. 

    Joy’s new Verve Records release, Portrait, is the proper follow-up to Linger Awhile, her 2022 breakthrough LP, and it represents the next phase in her continuing artistic evolution — unbound by expectations. 

    Portrait documents the immersive, seemingly telepathic rapport she’s developed with her touring band, which includes musicians she learned the jazz craft alongside while earning her undergraduate degree; in fact, it wasn’t until college that Joy began to pursue jazz singing. On the strength of that cozy dynamic — on the road, "I'm among friends, which explains personal chemistry that translates to our live performances,” Joy says. The vocalist offers an album that both honors jazz heritage while staking out bold, singular territory. Whatever a rote, singer-with-sidemen record is, Portrait is not.  

  • Jon Batiste

    Beethoven Blues

    Multi-Grammy and Oscar Award winner Jon Batiste today announced his eighth studio album, Beethoven Blues (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 1), out November 15 via Verve Records / Interscope. Marking the first installment in Batiste’s new solo piano series, the project showcases his interpolations of some of Beethoven’s most iconic works, which he has reimagined through an expansive lens. These reimagined classics embody the indomitable spirit of the blues, and – true to Batiste’s “message of open-armed inclusivity” (New York Times) – embrace a broad genre spectrum.  

    The inspiration for Beethoven Blues gained momentum after a 2023 interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace, where Batiste demonstrated music’s ability to transcend genre borders by transforming Beethoven’s Bagatelle No. 25 (“Für Elise”) at the piano (watch HERE). The profound response from audiences across social media helped signal the timing was right to make this long-held album idea a reality. For years, Batiste has incorporated interpolations of classical music into his albums, TV performances, and live shows, but Beethoven Blues marks the first time he’s dedicated an entire album to this practice.

    “For each work on the album, the starting point was one of Beethoven’s original compositions,” Batiste shared. “From there, I created something new at the piano, in real time. Spontaneous composition is a practice that’s all but lost in classical music, which can sometimes feel overly canonized.  Recording this album was a deeply spiritual experience. It allowed me to honor Beethoven’s transcendent artistry while bringing his work into dialogue with my own creative journey.”

    Batiste has been variously described as “a certified musical genius” (The Guardian), “a protean pianist and megawatt personality” (Variety), and “a once-in-a-generation talent, with a passion for … connecting people through a shared love of music-making” (Classic FM). Born into a long line of Louisiana musicians, he trained as a classical pianist and received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano from New York’s Juilliard School. He now works with students and faculty as an inaugural Juilliard Creative Associate, as well as serving on the Juilliard board.  Additionally, Batiste is on the Board of Trustees at Carnegie Hall as an Artist Trustee.

    He returned to his classical roots in the 2021-22 season, when he curated a multi-concert “Perspectives” series at New York’s Carnegie Hall. This was crowned by the world premiere of his American Symphony (2022), a Carnegie Hall commission, on the venue’s main stage. Classical Source welcomed this large-scale orchestral work as “a joyous and beefy blend of orchestral sounds, funk, Dixieland, Latin, gospel, country, cool jazz, swing, hip-hop, R&B, as well as other styles and genres,” while Variety reported: 

  • Labeques / Dessner / Chalmin

    Sonic Wires

    “Several years ago as we were finishing our album ‘El Chan’ which my dear friends Katia and Marielle Labèque made for Deutsche Grammophon, Katia and Marielle asked me if I would consider adding a piece in which I also play on the album (the record consists of music I had written for Katia and Marielle including a two piano piece and the large double concerto which they have performed very widely.) I thought it was a great idea and I composed ‘Haven’ for two pianos and two electric guitars that we would record along with guitarist and producer David Chalmin. This piece was the start of the Dreamhouse Quartet and a several year journey which has included many concerts and premieres and new commissions.

    Prior to ‘Haven’, Katia, Marielle and David had been working on several installments of their ‘Minimalist Dreamhouse’ project which dedicates their incredible musicianship toward the various strands of the American minimal movement in music. Katia and Marielle have a long personal history playing new creations by many of the 20th century’s greatest composers including Berio, Boulez, Messiaen, Bernstein. Their passion and dedication to music transcends genre and has brought a whole new repertoire for two pianos to life.

    Prior to meeting Katia and Marielle and David in 2014, I had spent the better part of 20 years living in New York City. My own experience of minimal music began in my early twenties just after finishing music school at Yale, I was asked to tour and record with the great American composer Steve Reich. Some of my first trips to Europe as a twenty five year old were performing with him. This was a highly influential time for me and Steve was also very supportive of my own compositions. Around that time I also toured with Philip Glass performing on stage with him several of the early Glass compositions from the 60s and 70s including ‘Music in Fifths’ and ‘Music in Similar Motion’.

  • Jean-Michel Blais - Lara Somogyi

    desert

    Jean-Michel Blais and Lara Somogyi collaborate on an entirely improvised new album désert, to be released 28th February 2025 through Mercury KX. Pioneering electronic harpist Lara Somogyi and award-winning pianist/composer Jean-Michel Blais have joined forces for a groundbreaking album project, désert. The album emerged from a serendipitous encounter at Lara’s remote studio amidst the serene expanse of Joshua Tree. Entirely improvised, it captures the natural, organic interaction between the two artists, reflecting both their intuitive musical connection and the true essence of the moment in which they recorded it.

    Inspired by the passage from dawn to dusk, their improvisation distilled into eleven tracks – mirroring a journey from illumination to obscurity, from simplicity to intricacy, and from strangers to kindred spirits. Melodies convey transcendence and harmonies channel synchronicity – weaving an unforeseen, timeless narrative. 

  • Mao Fujita

    72 Preludes - Chopin Scriabin Yashiro

    Following his “consistently impressive” (Gramophone) traversal of Mozart’s complete Piano Sonatas for Sony Classical - winner of an Opus Klassik Award - Japanese pianist Mao Fujita presents a similarly ambitious project: matching sets of 24 Preludes by three composers, Frédéric Chopin, Alexander Scriabin and Akio Yashiro. In so doing, Fujita unites the Europe in which he now lives with the Japan where he was born and raised. His new Sony Classical Album - 72 Preludes - is set for release on September 6, 2024. Accompanying today’s news is the new track 24 Preludes: No. 8. in F-Sharp Minor - Andante tempo di Barcarolle

    Chopin’s landmark set of 24 Préludes, completed in 1839, was the first work to treat the piano prelude as a self-contained work capable of standing alone. After the model laid down in Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, the set traverses every key from C major to D minor, alternating major tonalities with their relative minors.

    On his new album 72 Preludes, Fujita treats Chopin’s expressive yet elusive cycle as the basis for a dialogue that traverses borders and epochs. In 1884, Russian visionary Alexander Scriabin began work on his own set of 24 Preludes, directly inspired by Chopin’s. Scriabin’s pieces build on the grace and fluency of Chopin’s - also using his key scheme - while showing glimpses of the composer’s emerging radical harmonic and rhythmic character. They suggest that Scriabin, known for music on a huge scale, was an exquisite miniaturist.

  • Kian Soltani

    Schumann

    For his new Deutsche Grammophon album, cellist Kian Soltani is focusing on the music of Schumann. The cornerstone of Soltani’s much-anticipated follow-up to Cello Unlimited – winner of the 2022 OPUS KLASSIK Innovative Listening Experience award – is Schumann’s masterful Cello Concerto in A minor, op. 129. This is a work Soltani has played to enormous acclaim many times (“The cello bow seemed to be a mere extension of his arm, his fingers flying over the fingerboard as if it were the most natural thing in the world … an unforgettable musical experience” – Seen and Heard International on his performance with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in September 2023). 

    Joined here by the players of Camerata Salzburg, led by concertmaster Gregory Ahss, Soltani directs the ensemble from the cello in the Concerto and in orchestrations of four other works by Schumann. The album also features Soltani’s own transcriptions for cello and piano of music by both Robert and Clara Schumann, in which he is accompanied by French pianist Julien Quentin. Kian Soltani – Schumann is released digitally and on CD on today. The orchestrated version of “Abendlied” from the 12 Klavierstücke, op. 85 is available to stream or download, complete with performance video, and the Sehr lebhaft finale of the Cello Concerto.

    In the detailed analysis of the Cello Concerto he has written to accompany the album, Soltani considers the skill with which the composer combines the boundaries of form with lyrical freedom, as well as giving space to the two sides of his artistic personality: “the fierily tempestuous Florestan and the bashful and introvert Eusebius”. As he notes, the work “performs a high-wire act as it moves between these two extremes, which confront one another right from the outset: on the one hand, we have the free flow of the music, the compositional skill and the interiority of Eusebius, and on the other, Florestan’s propulsive passion.”

    The fact that Schumann takes so many diverse elements and builds a concerto of such finely balanced architecture is all the more remarkable given that he sketched and orchestrated it within the space of a fortnight in October 1850. Four years later, in early 1854, he spent time revising the proofs of the work sent to him by the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel, despite the fact that by this time he was suffering terrible aural hallucinations. Six days after finishing his revisions, he attempted suicide. He died in 1856 having never heard the Cello Concerto performed. It finally received its public premiere in 1860 but only established its rightful place in the repertoire decades later, after being championed by the legendary Pablo Casals.

  • Igor Levit

    Brahms w/Vienna Philharmonic-Christian Thielemann

    “Feel-good vibes effervesced, while applause resounded around the stage: that’s amore!” This is how the Viennese newspaper Der Standard described the audience’s enthusiastic reaction after Igor Levit, Christian Thielemann, and the Vienna Philharmonic performed Brahms’s First Piano Concerto at Vienna’s famous Musikverein in April 2024: “During these fifty minutes, an irresistible dose of emotion was conveyed – but at the same time the sophisticated structure of Brahms’s masterpiece remained crystal-clear.” Levit and Thielemann had already performed the Second Piano Concerto with the same orchestra in December 2023; the headline in Die Presse at the time ran: “Igor Levit sets a new gold standard for Brahms.” 

    These two concertos make up the first joint recording by Levit and Thielemann, which will be released as a triple album with Levit’s recording of Brahms’s well-known solo works opp. 116–119. Levit’s and Thielemann’s first meeting was quite unplanned, although both had been curious about each other for a long time. In 2015, Levit spontaneously stepped in for a colleague who had fallen ill and performed Mozart’s C major Concerto K 467 with Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden in Munich. Despite an extremely short rehearsal period, the two hit it off straight away: “We have such a similar way of thinking that it is not necessary to discuss many things,” says Thielemann. And Levit adds: “When the piece begins, I simply have complete confidence in you. I know I can’t take a wrong turn. Having such unconditional trust is extraordinary.”

  • Musica Viva NY

    Crimson Roses w/Choir, Orch. von Stade, Sensenig

    New York City’s leading chamber choir, Musica Viva NY, today announced its forthcoming album Crimson Roses: Contemporary American Choral Music. On its first release for Naxos, due out Nov 22nd, Musica Viva NY reveals why it has recently been hailed as a treasured institution. The album showcases the choir’s gifts as performers and interpreters and bridges its deep and far- reaching exploration of the full contemporary choral spectrum. Led by Musica Viva NY’s artistic director/conductor, Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, celebrating his 10th year at the choir’s helm, 30+ singers and orchestra perform an indispensable compilation of contemporary American choral music by three living composers: Joseph Turrin, Richard Einhorn, and Gilda Lyons.

    ALL PRESS SECURED BY April Thibeault - Amt Public Relations

Stories For December 3, 2024

  • Yessonata: Hearing Rick Wakeman playing a grand piano, the mastery and majesty is all too clear / At The Barrier
    Posted At : November 6, 2024 12:00 AM
    At The Barrier's Mike Ainscoe writes…..After the extravaganza of his London Palladium release and an appearance at Cropredy, Rick is back to basics. Perhaps basics is the wrong word, but like Richard Thompson armed with an acoustic guitar, seeing and hearing Rick Wakeman playing a grand piano, the mastery and majesty is all too clear. Forget the flurries of notes from the minimoog or the short-lived birotron or the massive church organ from Awaken or Close To The Edge. Rick and a piano has to be the desert island choice.Not for the first time on solo piano by a long chalk, the latest outing is of two long form pieces which are both created from larger works. Both are played on Rick’s favourite Steinway Model D Concert Grand, owned by Andrew Giller, at The Old Granary in Suffolk.i’ll name that snippet…
    We’re told that on the new Yessonata, there are allegedly more than 30 musical fragments of Yes music of which Rick was a part, plus The Meeting from the ABWH. That’s ‘sort of’ Yes – Yesmusic plus it was called at the time – but couldn’t possibly be ignored. That’s quite some ask and like a fellow reviewer elsewhere, I got as far as seventeen sections (some from the same track) I could identify.Starting off with the immediately recognizable intro to Awaken, the feel is of a performance of elegiac quality. Awaken is revisited a couple of times, providing the strong spine and there are a couple of trips to Close To The Edge (you can seek out a fuller performance on the Youtoob). It’s hard not to join in with a burst of “I awoke this morning, love laid me down by the river,” at one point and on a couple of occasions, where the tempos take a jolt, you feel that were Jools Holland at the keys, parts of Yessonata might turn into a boogie woogie passage. Fortunately, Rick reins in any real temptation to radically re-imagine.gone are the days of the knights
    As an encore, flip the record over from a similar piece that cherry picks from The Myths & Legends Of King Arthur and The Knights Of The Round Table, fortunately re-titled as The King Arthur Piano Suite. Again, main themes are highlighted and it possibly sits more comfortably with the ‘medley’ being taken from a two sided album rather than a body of work like the Yes piece.Within a couple of seconds, the main theme makes its mark and we’re off once more into a ride through the pageantry and legend that plays out. Regular bouts of ‘dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah, daaaah!’ over the first few minutes remind us where we are. Guinevere sets off a section that sits easily in the elegiac category before Merlin bursts into life. The final quarter is a journey of fleet fingered pleasures that can, and does, end on the only way it could.Some might argue that Rick could probably play these piece sin his sleep. Even that he could knock them off in a couple of afternoons. The key is simply to reinforce what an exceptional composer and musician Wakeman is; his contributions as session player and band member are plain but he’ll go down in history as a pianist of unquestionable skill and taste.


    Rick Wakeman on solo piano – arguably his best format.Release Date: 8th November 2024Label: Cherry Red RecordsFormat: CD / digital / LP


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  • Katie Melua announces new album: 'Live At The Royal Albert Hall' / stereoboard
    Posted At : November 6, 2024 12:00 AM
    stereoboard's Jon Stickler writes……'Live At The Royal Albert Hall', as the title suggests, was recorded at the iconic London venue, capturing her sold-out performance there on May 16, 2023.Comprising 21 tracks, it features live renditions of some of Melua's most popular songs, including Nine Million Bicycles, I Cried for You, and The Closest Thing To Crazy. It also presents the first live recordings of newer songs such as Golden Record and Quiet Moves. Melua said:"Three years after the original show was cancelled due to COVID, a new tour was planned in the spring of 2023. Standing on that stage in front of a full house felt electrifying."The magic and madness of a live show are in the fact that we can't really stop. In the recording studio, you can stop; on a TV performance or any kind of recording, you can stop; but when it’s live it’s live. It’s a wave that, once it begins and people are watching, has to have a certain beginning and a certain end. That wave changes the tone and character of each song based on where it is in the set."We present the songs in this recording exactly as they were played. Each note here is exactly as it was played live. And as you listen from beginning to end, I’m sure you’ll get right inside that enormously powerful wave with us."'Live At The Royal Albert Hall' will arrive through BMG on December 6 as a limited edition double vinyl LP and 2CD album, and each pressing includes exclusive shots by concert photographer Christie Goodwin. As a preview, check out the live rendition of The Closest Thing To Crazy from the new record below.Melua released her latest studio album, 'Love & Money', in 2023. That same year, she put out a 20th anniversary reissue of her debut album, 'Call Off The Search'.tracklist:1. Joy
    2. Lie In The Heat
    3. Nine Million Bicycles
    4. Plane Song
    5. Golden Record
    6. Perfect World
    7. Your Longing Is Gone
    8. Darling Star
    9. Remind Me To Forget
    10. Love & Money
    11. A Love Like That
    12. Pick Me Up
    13. Wonderful Life
    14. 14 Windows
    15. Tiger In The Night
    16. The Closest Thing To Crazy
    17. Red Balloons
    18. Quiet Moves
    19. Those Sweet Days
    20. Call Off The Search
    21. I Cried For You 


    Photo: Christie Goodwin

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  • Harry Partch: the maestro of microtonal music / FAR OUT
    Posted At : August 8, 2024 12:00 AM
    FAR OUT's Ben Forrest writes….Across the modern history of music, few figures have dared to challenge the conventions of the art form. Although many of these pioneering characters were shunned or rejected during their time, their work often went on to have an infallible effect on the lineage of music, even if the artists themselves have long since been forgotten. Such is the case with American composer and theorist Harry Partch, who dedicated his existence to breaking down the boundaries of traditional composition through microtonal scales.Born in 1901, Partch could read music from an impressively young age, spurred on by the support of his mother. During his adolescence, the budding California composer took particular interest in the violin, piano, mandolin, and even the reed organ.

    This dedication to music soon took Partch to the doors of the University of Southern California’s School of Music. After two years at music school, Partch grew annoyed with the quality of teachers there; in 1922, he dropped out of the school to pursue his own musical desires.Only a year after his departure from music school, Partch completely rejected the conventions of traditional European composition, and he would later burn all his previous compositions as a statement against the conventional tuning used by European composers. This was the beginning of Partch’s interest in microtonal music, which would go on to define his music career.The vast majority of modern music, at least in the Western world, uses a standard tuning known as 12-ET, or 12 equal temperament. Essentially, this means that the octave is divided into 12 equal parts on a scale. The system is fairly complex, involving all sorts of mathematical equations and musical theories that are far too complicated to get into outside of a university lecture hall. However, the main thing to note is that this 12-ET system dominates Western music and has done so for centuries.This idea troubled Partch, who pursued an alternative tuning known as microtonal music, which splits the octave but not into 12 equal tones. Achieving such a feat was a fairly daunting task, particularly for somebody barely in their 20s at the time. To achieve the microtonal music he so desired, Partch began constructing his own unique instruments, such as a viola that featured the fingerboard of a cello.Partch worked tirelessly to research and experiment with microtonal music, employing a variety of other musicians and instrument-makers in the process. His work took him around the world, particularly to Europe where he met pivotal figures like Kathleen Schlesinger, who curated ancient musical instruments for the British Museum.Upon returning to the United States in 1935, Partch found himself homeless for a brief period of time at the height of the Great Depression. Still, he continued to research this defiant musical theory in the face of extreme adversity.Eventually, his work paid off. After performing a set of compositions by the name of Americana at Carnegie Hall in New York City, the composer began to receive support from organisations like the Guggenheim. Then, two decades after dropping out of university himself, Partch began to teach music at The University of Wisconsin. For the next few decades, Partch would espouse the joys of microtonal music to universities across the United States, causing many young students to challenge the conventions of modern music in the process.For much of his life, Partch relied on academic grants and financial support to get his compositions out there, and he was certainly successful in his aims. Continuing to compose into his old age, the musical rebel completely altered the norms of classical music and composition. His work continues to be hugely influential on the world of experimental music and the avant-garde to this day, 50 years on from Partch’s death in 1974.

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  • In advance of his debut Australian tour this October, Chad Lawson chats with SPOTLIGHT REPORT
    Posted At : August 8, 2024 12:00 AM
    Multi-award winning pianist and composer Chad Lawson has an impressive list of accomplishments in recent years that many artists could only hope for in a lifetime. He has released seven critically acclaimed albums, worked with renowned musicians and producers and has the distinguished honor of being a Steinway artist.Born in North Carolina, Chad knew he wanted to be a musician at the age of five. He pursued this dream at age 18 when he enrolled at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. While in school, Chad began his career as a studio musician and after his studies at Berklee, he decided to go on tour with Babik Reinhardt (son of legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt).Following his stint on the road, Chad formed the Chad Lawson Trio. They released their self-titled debut album in 1997 followed by Dear Dorothy; The Oz Sessions (jazz trio arrangements of The Wizard of Oz) in 2002 and Unforeseen two years later. Taking a sabbatical from the jazz trio in 2007, Lawson went on tour in Europe and South America with Julio Iglesias as a keyboardist.In 2009, Chad released his first solo album, Set on a Hill. The album was produced by the legendary Will Ackerman (Grammy winner/Founder of Windham Hill Records) and was voted "Album of the Year" by Whispering Solo Piano's 1 million listeners.2011 was a year of overachievement for Chad as he generated two albums and one single. The Piano was released in October to rave reviews and also awarded, "Classical Album of the Year" by Solopiano.com. In August 2011, Chad offered Song of Prayer, a 32-minute improvisational single. This musical masterpiece provided the perfect soundtrack for introspective reflection and meditation. He ended the year with the full-length, A Solo Piano Christmas, featuring his renditions of classic Christmas songs. Reviews New Age proclaimed, "Superb! 5 out of 5 stars."The Space Between, released in 2013, is Chad's latest effort. The album hit #12 on Amazon's Adult Alternative Chart which is an impressive feat for an independent release. Named by CDBaby as an Editor's Pick, The Space Between is also being recognized internationally on premier music podcast RTVE, the NPR equivalent in Spain, where "I Wish I Knew" and "A Love is Born" is on their playlist.Four songs from The Space Between can also be heard on "Echoes," a nightly melodious soundscape featuring ambient and downtempo music that is broadcast on over 120 public radio stations across the United States. The host, John Diliberto, an award-winning radio producer and music writer, has earned the reputation of only playing groundbreaking music and rarely selects pianist tracks for his program. By adding, "I Know a Love so Fair and True," "A Love is Born," "Falling Together" and a cover of Band of Horses' "No One's Gonna Love You" to the "Echoes" song rotation, this highly influential tastemaker reaffirms the artistic significance of Chad Lawson and his works.Chad's music has been played on NPR, Delta Airlines flights and in Starbucks coffee shops. Television shows (Dawson's Creek, MTV's Teen Mom 2), movies (DoughBoys, Plimpton!) and commercials (Bacardi, Relais Chateaux upscale boutique hotels) have also utilized his works. The Notebook, an upcoming Broadway musical where Chad was brought on to arrange and notate the show's musical pieces.While working as a keyboardist with an artist on Sony Records, the late and legendary music producer Phil Ramone told celebrated music director Jack Douglas, "You have an amazing keyboard player." It was an unforgettable compliment that Chad still cherishes to this day.Chad Lawson is a master musician and artist extraordinaire. This brilliance is evident in his gifted original compositions and his exceptional interpretations of the beloved classics.

    SPOTLIGHT REPORT's Skyjoker writes…..Renowned for modernizing “classical music for the Spotify generation,” pianist, podcaster, and certified breathwork coach Chad Lawson will embark on his debut Australian tour this October. To find out more about his fascinating journey from jazz roots to classical music and his passion for mental health, we had a chance to chat with Mr. Lawson ahead of his tour Down Under.        PHOTO: Teg Live

    READ THE Q&A
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  • Emmylou Harris & Joan Baez cover Steve Earle at 'Hardly Strictly Bluegrass' in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park / JAMBASE
    Posted At : October 8, 2024 12:00 AM
    April 30, 2024, marks the publication of When You See My Mother, Ask Her To Dance (Godine, Boston), an intimate, autobiographical poetry collection from Joan Baez. She has written poetry for decades - about her life, her family and friends, her passions for nature and art - poems that piled up in notebooks and on scraps of paper, but were never shared publicly. An inspiring personal diary emerges, reflections from her childhood, thoughts and memories of her family, including younger sister Mimi Fariña. The book's arrival in April coincides with the first Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Boston, honoring Joan and other iconic figures of our roots tradition.In the five years since the conclusion of Joan Baez's "Fare Thee Well" tour in 2019, which marked the end of her active touring career, the fast-paced whirlwind of her activities away from the concert stage has kept her busier than ever, beginning with the 43rd annual Kennedy Center Honors of 2020, welcoming Joan into the fold alongside Debbie Allen, Garth Brooks, Midori, and Dick Van Dyke.On the fateful day of January 6, 2021, three days before her 80th birthday, the second exhibition of Joan’s “Mischief Makers” portraits opened in California. “Mischief Makers 2” included portraits of Patti Smith, Michael Moore and Dr. Anthony Fauci. John Prine, Stacey Abrams and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have also been honored. Proceeds from the sales of limited edition archival pigment prints of selected “Mischief Makers” portraits have raised funds for a variety of worthy causes.In February 2023, the long-awaited Joan Baez I Am A Noise documentary entered the festival season with its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival. Directed by Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky and Maeve O’Boyle, the film was praised by the New York Times as “wistfully immersive … [the directors] make imaginative visual choices to give Baez a full cinematic dimensionality, such as animating her sometimes haunting sketches.” RogerEbert.com called it “a coherent, cohesive, and sometimes jarringly frank portrait.” In October, I Am A Noise began its exclusive theatrical run at the Film Forum in Greenwich Village.In April 2023, fans of Joan’s lifelong affection for line sketching – who doesn’t cherish her double-Lp artwork for 1968’s Any Day Now: Songs Of Bob Dylan – welcomed the publication of Am I Pretty When I Fly?: An Album of Upside Down Drawings (Godine, Boston). Kirkus Reviews was unequivocal: “By gracefully walking a fine line between blunt-force honesty and flights of fancy, the book is satisfying, enjoyable, and rewarding.” Admirers Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner said, “These drawings elicit a stunning depth of feeling as they spin off from humor and romp through tenderness, cynicism, anger, heartbreak and – cloaked in silliness – a terrifying peek at current events… These amazing ‘feelustrations’ are revelatory not only of Joan but humanity itself.”The "Fare Thee Well" tour, which began in March 2018 in Stockholm, concluded in Madrid in July 2019, after 134 sold out performances across the US and Europe. It was the climax of an historic ride that began in 2016, when Joan’s 75th birthday was celebrated at New York’s Beacon Theater. There she was joined by Paul Simon, David Crosby, Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris and more than a dozen other artists. The concert premiered on the PBS Great Performances series and was issued on DVD and CD.Joan’s April 2017 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame was well deserved. Many traditional songs that she presented on her earliest LPs in the 1960s found their way into the rock lexicon: “House Of the Rising Sun” (the Animals), “John Riley” (the Byrds), “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” (Led Zeppelin), “What Have They Done To the Rain” (the Searchers), and “Jackaroe” (Grateful Dead), to name a few. A multitude of British artists who trace their origins to Fairport Convention, Pentangle, and Steeleye Span were inspired by Joan’s versions of “Geordie,” “House Carpenter,” and “Matty Groves.”Joan went on to focus awareness on songwriters ranging from Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Richard Fariña, Leonard Cohen, and Tim Hardin, among others. Her repertoire grew to include songs by Jacques Brel, Lennon-McCartney, Paul Simon, Johnny Cash and his Nashville peers including Kris Kristofferson and Mickey Newbury, South American composers Violeta Para, Victor Jara and more. Songwriters whose work was recorded or performed by Joan grew to encompass Jackson Browne, Janis Ian, John Prine, Stevie Wonder, Steve Earle, Tom Waits, and many others, including songs written by Joan herself.From the beginning, the life’s work of Joan Baez was mirrored in her music. At a point when it was neither safe nor fashionable, she sang about freedom and Civil Rights everywhere, from the flatbed trucks in Mississippi to the Lincoln Memorial at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963. She sang at the birth of the Free Speech movement at UC Berkeley, and co-founded the Institute For The Study Of Nonviolence near her home in Carmel Valley. She sang in fields alongside Cesar Chavez and migrant farm workers striking for fair wages, and opposed capital punishment during a Christmas vigil at San Quentin.The soundtrack for the turbulent ’60s is heard on Joan’s remarkable, timeless Vanguard LPs. In 1968, she began a four-year recording stint in Nashville, with Music City’s famed “A-Team” backing her biggest career single, a cover of the Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (1971). During this time, Joan traveled to Hanoi, and helped establish Amnesty International on the West Coast. In 1975, her self-penned “Diamonds & Rust” began its course as a beloved (and frequently covered) American standard. She co-headlined Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tours of late 1975 and ’76, as well as the resulting film, Renaldo & Clara (1978).Continuing as a musical and social force of nature, Joan marched in Northern Ireland with the Irish Peace People in 1978, and appeared at rallies on behalf of the nuclear freeze movement. She performed at benefit concerts to defeat California legisla¬tion that would have banned openly gay people from teaching in public schools. She received the American Civil Liberties Union’s Earl Warren Award for her commitment to human and civil rights issues; and founded the Humanitas International Human Rights Commit¬¬tee, which she headed for 13 years.She dedicated her first entirely Spanish album, Gracias a la Vida (1974) to Chileanos who suffered under the rule of Augusto Pinochet. In 1981, hostile authoritarian regimes across Latin America tried to prevent her concerts there – three decades later, her return tour of 2014 was heralded as a triumphant success.Joan was a fixture on Amnesty International’s Conspiracy of Hope tour in 1986, with U2, Peter Gabriel, Sting and others. Her 1989 concert in Czechoslovakia was cited by president-to-be Vaclav Havel as a tipping point in the Velvet Revolution that established the Czech Republic. In 1993, Joan was invited by Refugees International to war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina. A year later she was singing to her friend and mentor Pete Seeger at the annual Kennedy Center Honors.The Four Voices benefit concerts with Mary Chapin Carpenter and the Indigo Girls that took place later on in the 1990s (reprised as a full tour in 2017), reinforced Joan’s belief in the new generation of songwriters’ ability to speak to her. The 1995 live album Ring Them Bells expanded on the Four Voices format (featuring duets with Mary Chapin Carpenter, the Indigo Girls, Dar Williams, Janis Ian, and more). It was followed by Gone From Danger (1997), with songs from a new generation of songwriters including Dar Williams, Richard Shindell, Sinéad Lohan, and others.Into the new millennium, Joan received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 49th annual Grammy Awards® in 2007, where she introduced the Dixie Chicks (now known as the Chicks) and saluted their courage to protest the Iraq war. She stood with old friend Nelson Mandela in London’s Hyde Park as the world celebrated his 90th birthday in 2008. Also that year came a critically acclaimed new album, the Grammy®-nominated Day After Tomorrow, produced by Steve Earle.More in 2008: Several events commemorated the 50th anniversary (1958) of Joan’s arrival on the coffee house scene that had emerged around Club 47 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her 50th anniversary return to the Newport Folk Festival (1959) was another highlight. It was under-scored by the PBS American Masters series premiere of her life story, Joan Baez: How Sweet The Sound (May 2009). She attended the first presidential inauguration of Barack Obama that year, and returned to D.C. in 2010, for In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement, an all-star concert broadcast live from the East Room.Joan’s landmark debut album of 1960 was honored by the National Academy of Record¬ing Arts & Sciences in 2011, which inducted it into the Grammy® Hall Of Fame; and by the Library of Congress in 2015, which selected it to be preserved in the National Recording Registry. That same year, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, Amnesty International’s highest honor was bestowed on Joan, in recognition of her exceptional leadership in the fight for human rights.2017 ended with Joan’s first solo exhibition of “Mischief Makers” paintings in Mill Valley, ranging from Congressman John Lewis, Dr. King, and Bob Dylan, to Maya Angelou, Vaclav Havel, and the Dalai Lama – risk-taking visionaries who, like herself, helped bring social change through nonviolent action, thoughts and deeds, that her friend, the late Rep. Lewis called “good trouble.”As the “Fare Thee Well” tour began in Stockholm (March 2018), Joan released her first new studio album in a decade, Whistle Down The Wind, produced by Joe Henry. Joan recognized some of her favorite songwriters, from Tom Waits and Mary Chapin Carpenter, to Eliza Gilkyson and Josh Ritter. The Grammy®-nominated album prompted Rolling Stone to proclaim, “The takeaway from Joan Baez’s latest is how essential her work remains.”At the 20th annual Latin Grammys® in November 2019, Joan received the Lifetime Achievement Award. That same week, at the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame in Boston, Joan presented the Club Passim aka Club 47 Lifetime Achievement Award to the club’s longtime guiding light Betsy Siggins, a cherished friend since their time as Boston University freshmen in 1958. Full circle then to 2024, the first annual FARHOF induction ceremony, where Joan was among the Solo Living Artists being inducted, with Betsy inducted alongside among the Non-performers.In April 2020, the prestigious American Academy Of Arts & Sciences (founded in 1781), announced the election of Joan Baez to its membership, in the company of Henry David Thoreau, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Toni Morrison, President Jimmy Carter, and others. Joan’s recent portraits of Kamala Harris, Greta Thunberg, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela, Emma Gonzalez, Coretta Scott King, and a young Mahatma Gandhi reveal how deep the “Mischief Makers” river flows.As she has done for her entire career, Joan Baez continues to support and encourage worthwhile charities and human rights causes around the world. Because she is, and always will be, very much a “Mischief Maker” in her own right.
     JAMBASE - Andy Kahn writes…..Festival mainstay Emmylou Harris once again performed at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park last weekend. The 77-year-old Harris’ golden hour set at the Banjo Stage on Sunday (October 6) featured a surprise appearance by folk legend Joan Baez.Harris was near the midpoint of her HSB set when she and her band played “God Is God” by Steve Earle, who performed at the event on Saturday and was joined by Harris during his set.Harris prefaced the song by speaking about her affection for Earle and Baez. Harris noted that “God Is God” was recorded by Baez for her 2008 Earle-produced album, Day After Tomorrow. Harris and Mary Chapin Carpenter performed “God Is God” at the 2021 Kennedy Center Honors ceremony recognizing Baez.Harris was in the midst of performing “God Is God” when Baez, who has rarely performed publicly since retiring in 2019, made a seemingly impromptu decision to join the performance. Sharing Harris’ microphone, the pair of legendary musicians worked their way through the song together, helping each other remember lyrics.Watch the surprise collaboration between Joan Baez and EmmyLou Harris while performing Steve Earle’s song “God Is God” via the link below via JAMBASE
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  • The tragic life of Jacqueline du Pre told in opera / SFCV
    Posted At : August 12, 2024 12:00 AM
    SFCV's Steven Winn writes…….“I have a terrible, terrible disease,” sings the heroine in the opening measures of Jacqueline, an operatic fantasia on the life of cellist Jacqueline du Pré (1945–1987). In soprano Marnie Breckenridge’s stunning, fully embodied performance, there’s an unnerving coy glibness to the line, as if the only way to handle the multiple sclerosis that withered du Pré’s blooming career and took her life at 42 is to stare it down with a cheeky grimness.There are, as the opera develops over the next two hours (including intermission), many other notes in the scale of living with a death sentence lurking in the future and gradually coming into view. Scored for soprano and onstage cello (played here by Matt Haimovitz), Jacqueline is a danse macabre duet, by turns frank, poignant, off-putting, emotionally raw, funny, agonizing, and terribly sad. It can also be elliptical, redundant, and musically wearisome. Nothing settles easily or consolingly. Director Michael Hidetoshi Mori’s staging for West Edge Opera opened on Saturday, Aug. 10 at the Scottish Rite Center in Oakland.Structured in four discrete “movements,” Luna Pearl Woolf’s music and Royce Vavrek’s libretto take the full measure of an artist’s fierce humanity. How well or fully the du Pré of Jacqueline conforms to the reality of the cellist’s life is one of the many provoking questions the opera raises. What can we ever know of another’s nature, even when unflinchingly observed? For that matter what can we know of our own?

    After the blackly joking tone at the outset, the precis of the cellist’s life turns to her early fascination with the instrument, the young du Pré insisting to her “mummy” that she can wrap her arms around it at age 5. Her enchantment is reflected in some musical playfulness, with the singer and cellist trading gliding figures that the character happily diagnoses as “glissanditis.” Soon enough, she falls in love with the conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim and converts to Judaism to marry him. This important development flies by too quickly.A few costume pieces, which Breckenridge fetches from an upstage swarm of black chairs, mark time — a little red jacket for the child, a wedding veil. A richly patterned blanket serves double duty as a childhood memory of the wild herbs du Pré and her sister loved and the enveloping sensuality of lovemaking. The nature imagery, with the cello busily churning and swooning, brings Hamlet’s Ophelia to mind.Du Pré pictures herself as the more powerful yet vulnerable figure of Samson. Before the MS makes its presence felt, she’s full of vitality and ambition. She revels in her first recording (of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto), crossing the stage to show off the LP to Haimovitz and softly caress him as he plays on.

    Breckenridge’s voice is a gilded thread, gleaming from top to bottom but never self-indulgent, always with a dramatic purpose. Her acting is perhaps even more impressive, whether she’s feeling the pulse of music through her mobile torso, delighting in a dirty joke about naked Buddhist monks, or bumping her way up a set of stairs on her “bum” when the MS has made walking impossible.Through it all, Haimovitz blazes away. Woolf’s score sometimes puts him in directly echoing musical exchanges with the singer, occasionally quotes from Elgar and other composers, but for the most part comments on or veers away from the text, not always productively and at times distractingly.The closing two movements take Jacqueline to an excruciating new level, with sex and disease, the delights and ravages of the body intertwined. Confined to and desperately lonely at home, du Pré calls her mother, longs for Barenboim, and feels her life dwindling. The animating erotic force she felt in her pre-MS years curdles. Breckenridge can make a reference to the “F-holes” of a cello sound positively obscene.With the black seats now heaped into a kind of battlement, the character stares into the abyss. “What is left?” she asks. At one point, when she snarls her rejection of the cello she can no longer play, Haimovitz lays down his instrument and leaves the stage. Yet in all the bleakness, some tender moments shine. One comes in a sweet strophic melody, almost like a nursery song, that du Pré sings in summoning back her childhood.

    The music rises again, quite literally, when Haimovitz returns and takes a place high on the battlement to play on. In a scene that might feel heavy-handed with a lesser performer, Breckenridge struggles onto a chair and scissors off chunks of her hair, her doomed Samson made powerless by her own hand.A smallish crowd made a big noise at the final blackout. Whatever misgivings it might have had, the audience knew it had witnessed, from Breckenridge, a remarkable, uncompromising alchemy of body, voice, and soul.There are two more performances of Jacqueline, on Aug. 16 and 18, in repertory with West Edge Opera’s other two productions this summer, Bulrusher and Legend of the Ring.Steven Winn is a San Francisco-based writer and critic and frequent interviewer for City Arts & Lectures. His work has appeared in Gramophone, Musical America, Opera, Symphony, and the San Francisco Chronicle.        Photo Credit: Cory Weaver            SEE THE SFCV PAGE
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  • Fourth Wall Ensemble - Executive Director/producer Johnathan McCullough chats about 'AD MANUS' with New Jersey Net
    Posted At : September 20, 2024 12:00 AM
    Fourth Wall Ensemble is quickly emerging as New York’s premiere vocal ensemble. They are dedicated to storytelling through sound and movement, bringing new works to life while simultaneously exploring the earliest roots of vocal music.Launched in the fall of 2023, Fourth Wall Ensemble’s first season includes performances at Carnegie Hall and Merkin Hall at The Kaufman Center, a concert with Death of Classical, a series at Power Station at Berklee NYC, and a residency with Avaloch Farm Music Institute. They will release their debut album with GRAMMY Award-winning® trio, Time for Three, and five-time EMMY Award-winning composer of House of Cards, Jeff Beal, as well as a live-recorded album, “Fourth Wall: Live from Power Station,” featuring instrumentalist Stuart Bogie.

    Fourth Wall Ensemble's debut Album “AD MANUS” is a bold and innovative project that brings together some of the most celebrated names in contemporary music was released by Tiger Turn, will be available on all streaming platforms beginning August 16th, 2024. The album features the GRAMMY® Award-winning trio, Time for Three, known for their genre-defying performances that blend classical, bluegrass, and popular music. They perform on a newly commissioned track by five-time Emmy award-winning composer Jeff Beal (House of Cards, Monk, ROME) The Tracks are as follows:

     
    1. Track 1: Caroline Shaw: And the Swallow
    2. Track 2: Dietrich Buxtehude: Membra Jesu Nostri- Ad manus
    3. Track 3: Jeff Beal: Oh Painful Joy ft. Time for Three
    4. Track 4: Eric Whitacre: Sainte-Chapelle
    5. Track 5: Traditional: Danny Boy (Arr. Pacey) 
    6. Track 6: Morten Lauridsen: O Magnum Mysterium
    7. Track 7: Reena Esmail: TaReKiTa


    Fourth Wall Ensemble recently made their Carnegie Hall debut, performing Jeff Beal's film score of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." They are set to appear on the Death of Classical series at Greenwood Cemetery on September 5th, 6th, and 7th and will make their Merkin Hall debut at the Kaufman Center on October 7th.

    Based in New York City, Fourth Wall Ensemble is known for their adventurous programming and engaging performances. Dedicated to pushing the boundaries of classical and contemporary music, their debut album showcases their innovative approach and commitment to artistic excellence.

    About Fourth Wall Ensemble: Fourth Wall Ensemble is quickly emerging as New York’s premiere vocal ensemble. They are dedicated to storytelling through sound and movement, bringing new works to life while simultaneously exploring the earliest roots of vocal music. 

    Launched in the fall of 2023, Fourth Wall Ensemble’s first season includes performances at Carnegie Hall and Merkin Hall at The Kaufman Center, a concert with Death of Classical, a series at Power Station at Berklee NYC, and a residency with Avaloch Farm Music Institute. They will release their debut album with GRAMMY Award-winning® trio, Time for Three, and five-time EMMY Award-winning composer of House of Cards, Jeff Beal, as well as a live-recorded album, “Fourth Wall: Live from Power Station,” featuring instrumentalist Stuart Bogie. 

    The ensemble is led by award-winning Artistic and Creative Director, Christopher Allen and Executive Director and producer Johnathan McCullough. McCullough sits down with New Jersey Net - Cadenza host: David Osenberg.

    LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION
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Max Horowitz

maxcrossover@gmail.com

A graduate of the Aaron Copland School of Music, Max Horowitz is principle of Crossover Media Music Promotion. Founded in 1994, Crossover Media's client list includes: Sony Masterworks, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group along with Independent Labels and Artists. Prior to establishing Crossover Media, Mr. Horowitz served as ‘Producer for SiriusXM,’ ‘Music Choice,’ ‘Classical-104WNCN - New York,’ and the ‘DayNET Talk Network.' A recipient of The George Foster Peabody Award, the ‘International Radio Festival of New York Award, and the ’New York State Broadcaster Awards, as a producer, Max has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Chick Corea, Jonny Greeenwood, Richard Reed Parry, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Leonard Slatkin, Yannick Nezet-Sequin, Vladimir Horowitz, Emanuel Ax, JoAnn Falletta, Daniel Hope, Nico Muhly, John Scofield, Steve Swallow, The Bad Plus, Marcus Roberts, Rachel Portman, Alexandre Desplat, Ilan Eshkeri, Jeff Beal, Jung Jaeil, and many others. Mr. Horowitz is also a contributor to ‘Understanding The Music Business’ published by Simon & Schuster.

Amanda Bloom

amandacrossover@gmail.com

Amanda Bloom is the publicity and communications manager at Crossover Media. A Brooklyn resident, Amanda is also an active NYC jazz vocalist who draws musical inspiration from a wide range of influences. Crossover Media's projects which encompass multiple genres has been a great fit for her both personally and professionally. Amanda earned a BM in jazz vocal performance from the Peabody Institute of Music at Johns Hopkins University under the guidance of Jay Clayton & Gary Thomas.

Zachary Swanson

zacharycrossover@gmail.com

Zachary Swanson began studying the double bass at the age of 6 in his home state of Massachusetts. Using gut strings and a personalized technique, Zachary has developed a conception of the double bass that heightens the integrity of various musical environments. He can be found playing around New York City and beyond in a variety of styles, ranging from adventurous improvised music to backing singer-songwriters. Zachary is a graduate of the Peabody Institute of Music at Johns Hopkins University and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY where he has made his home since 2012.