At the 61st annual Grammy Awards ceremony held on February 10, the Boston Symphony Orchestra won Best Orchestral Performance and Best Engineered Album, Classical for its recording of Shostakovich Symphony Nos. 4 and 11, led by Music Director Andris Nelsons. It was the third year that the BSO won the Best Orchestral Performance award for its Shostakovich cycle. The Seattle Symphony’s recording of Aaron Jay Kernis’s Violin Concerto, led by Music Director Ludovic Morlot with soloist James Ehnes, won Best Contemporary Classical Composition and Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance went to Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet’s Landfall. Winner in the Best Classical Compendium category was Kenneth Fuchs’s Piano Concerto (“Spiritualist”), Poems of Life, Glacier, and Rush, with JoAnn Falletta conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and pianist Jeffrey Biegel, countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, electric guitarist D.J. Sparr, and alto saxophonist Timothy McAllister. Apollo’s Fire’s Songs of Orpheus: Monteverdi, Caccini, D’India, and Landi, led by Music Director Jeannette Sorrrell, won Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Best Classical Vocal Album. Winning Best Choral Performance was The Crossing’s recording of Lansing McLoskey’s Zealot Canticles; winner in the Best Opera category was Santa Fe Opera’s Mason Bates’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs conducted by Michael Christie. Ludwig Göransson’s score to Black Panther won Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. Terence Blanchard’s Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil) won Best Instrumental Composition in the composing/arranging category.
Posted February 11, 2019
