July 24, 2026 New Releases from Navona, Ravello, Albany, and MSR Classics

Benjamin Shorstein and Stephen Michael Newby pair spontaneity with the formal beauty of Western classical music on THE DRUM AND THE DREAM, featuring Shorstein’s Concerto for Drums and Orchestra, written for three-time GRAMMY® Award-winning drummer Ulysses Owens Jr., and Newby’s Symphony No. 2, dedicated to gospel composer Andrae Crouch.

Following her acclaimed recording of the Florence Price Violin Concertos, Er-Gene Kahng continues her work of reshaping the violin’s recorded landscape with THREADED CURRENCIES. Bringing together influences from classical, jazz, blues, and electronics, the program is an exploration of how these idioms intersect and accumulate meaning over time.

Pianist Brian Woods offers a striking reexamination of Sergei Prokofiev’s short-form piano works in PROKOFIEV: MINIATURES. The album features three collections: Visions fugitives, Tales of an Old Grandmother, and Sarcasms, each revealing a distinct facet of Prokofiev’s biting irony and lyrical nostalgia. For Woods, these works are not marginal encores but central expressions of a radical modernist voice.

TELL ME A STORY from chamber duo consonari (violinist Anna Larson and pianist Kaden Larson) explores music inspired by literature, legend, and folk tradition. Evoking the timeless power of storytelling, the album features 20th and 21st-century works rooted in nocturnes, lullabies, and musical depictions of the moon and stars.

On STRANGER THINGS, pianist and composer Inna Faliks reflects on the musical forces that have shaped her artistic voice. Childhood compositions written just before emigrating from Odesa appear alongside works by Arnold Schoenberg and Johannes Brahms, tracing a path from Romantic tradition to the expressive freedoms of early modernism.

Tom Larson’s THE CURRENT SITUATION is a three-part musical meditation on the current cultural, political, and psychological moment of the United States. Blending instrumental electronic music, improvisation, and spoken narration, the album traces a narrative arc from diagnosis, to confrontation, to the possibility of renewal. It is at once critical, ironic, unsettling, and ultimately hopeful.

HEARTLAND POEM by composer James Viggo Poulsen carries the legacy of American orchestral music into the 21st century with performances by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra featuring conductor Geoffrey Paterson and pianist Robert Thies. Evoking pioneer history alongside the uncertainties of modern times, the music ultimately culminates in a resounding musical triumph over adversity.