Daugherty’s Tales Of Hemingway Dominates New Music Grammy’s

Adele’s album of the year win and Beyoncé’s transfixing awards ceremony performance have captured Grammy recap headlines, but Michael Daugherty and the team behind the Naxos release Tales Of Hemingway were yesterday’s big new music winners during the 59th annual awards celebration. The disc captured wins for Best Contemporary Classical Composition (Tales Of Hemingway), Best Classical Compendium (the album also includes Daugherty’s American Gothic and Once Upon a Castle, featuring the Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero), and Best Classical Instrumental Solo (performed here by cellist Zuill Bailey).

Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance went to Third Coast Percussion for their recording of work by Steve Reich on the Cedille label. Third Coast performed the third movement of Mallet Quartet with Ravi Coltrane during performances before the televised broadcast. Video is available here.

Best Opera Recording went to John Corigliano’s The Ghosts Of Versailles (Pentatone Music; LA Opera, James Conlon conducting), which also won for Best Engineered Album, Classical (Mark Donahue, Fred Vogler, and David L Williams, engineers).

Ted Nash Big Band’s Presidential Suite: Eight Variations On Freedom (Motema Music) was named Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album with its “Spoken At Midnight,” composed by Nash, picking up the Best Instrumental Composition nod.

David Frost was once again lauded as Producer Of The Year, Classical.

The Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media went to Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Walt Disney Records), composed by John Williams. The Color Purple (Broadway Records) won for Best Musical Theater Album.

More about these albums and the winners in all 84 categories is now posted on the Grammy website.