Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)
Some readers may recall that, a little over two weeks ago, I wrote my first article about the release of a series of recordings of performances that took place last year at the annual Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina. The full title of that album was Live from Spoleto 2025: Orchestra. This coming Friday will see the release of the second album: Live from Spoleto 2025: Chamber Music, Vol. 1. As of this writing, Amazon.com has created a Web page, which is processing pre-orders for MP3 downloads.
Each of the eight tracks on this album involves at least one composer and/or arranger. The oldest of those composers is Alexander Borodin, represented by the “Nocturne” movement from his second string quartet in D major, best known for having been transformed into a song (“And This Is My Beloved”) for the Broadway musical Kismet. “Ricercar” was composed jointly by Trollstilt, the partnership of Dan Trueman and Monica Mugan); and the vocal line for Caroline Shaw’s “Other Song” was arranged by Steven Banks for performance on saxophone. The penultimate track is an improvisation (spontaneous?) by Mahsa Vahdat. Sadly, my impression of this new release was no better than my account of the Orchestra album. My only real satisfaction came from the string quartet account of Terry Riley’s “G Song,” performed by Alexi Kenney, Geneva Lewis, Ayane Kozasa, and Paul Wiancko.
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