The Arkiv Blog

  • Kenneth Fuchs on Naxos & Chandos | ArkivMusic x Explore Classical Music

    · By Jesse Bobick

    My seventh album for Naxos, Point of Tranquility (Seven Works for Symphonic Winds), recorded by the United States Coast Guard Band, was a dream-come-true recording project. I was first inspired to become a composer through my early exposure to band music in high school. Throughout the course of my career, I have composed a number of works for wind band, including overtures, concerti, and tone poems, and I knew that one day I would release an album devoted exclusively to these scores. I became a professional composer due to the profound musical mentorship I received from Bentley Shellahamer, band director...

  • Nina Kotova: Solo Cello | 50 Years of Delos

    · By Nicholas Stevens

    Cellist Nina Kotova recorded her first entirely unaccompanied album amid the global pandemic and released it into a reopening world. Hear her stunning recordings, read about the experiences and musical principles that informed the album's eventual shape, and as a bonus, hear an interview with the head of the label that released the record - and has been in Kotova's corner for over 20 years!
  • Anthony Roth Costanzo on The Lord of Cries

    · By Nicholas Stevens

    In John Corigliano's opera The Lord of Cries, Dracula receives a striking backstory: he is the Greek god Dionysus, returned to earth for a bloody Bacchanal in repressed Victorian London. What does it feel like to sing this role—no straightforward villain, but much more than that? We asked superstar singer Anthony Roth Costanzo!

  • "Let Music Swell the Breeze:" A Roundtable

    · By ArkivMusic Contributor

    Oklahoma City Philharmonic music director Alexander Mickelthwate knew he was commissioning a work from a composer of gravitas and grace when he asked Jonathan Leshnoff to memorialize the victims of an American tragedy. But thanks in part to violin soloist Noah Bendix-Balgley, listeners get to hear another side of Leshnoff on a Naxos album gathering works both elegiac and celebratory.
  • All Set(s): Sinclair & Swafford on Charles Ives

    · By Nicholas Stevens

    Lesser-known than The Unanswered Question or the Concord Sonata, Charles Ives's Sets for Small Orchestra had never been gathered on one recording until conductor James Sinclair released his latest album in 2023. In this Arkiv Live Q+A, watch as Sinclair and fellow Ivesian Jan Swafford discuss this exciting title!
  • Friends in Low Countries: Erik Bosgraaf at Boston Early Music Festival

    · By Nicholas Stevens

    In June 2023, Erik Bosgraaf and Francesco Corti play live at the Boston Early Music Festival. Learn more about their program, and their Brilliant Classics album Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer & the Recorder in the Low Countries, with our exclusive interview!