They may not be performing any high-energy dance numbers or setting the red carpet ablaze, but the newly announced nominees of good ol’ Field 11 — i.e., the classical category — will be celebrated nonetheless at the Grammys, a.k.a. Music’s Biggest Night.
It’ll just be more like music’s biggest afternoon. The vast majority of Grammy nominees will be filled with hope and probably lunch when the “Premiere Ceremony” kicks off Feb. 1 at 12:30 Pacific time. (These awards will available to stream on live. grammy.com as well as the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel). If you want to catch up on the year’s finest classical albums, the list of nominees is not a bad place to start.
They may not be performing any high-energy dance numbers or setting the red carpet ablaze, but the newly announced nominees of good ol’ Field 11 — i.e., the classical category — will be celebrated nonetheless at the Grammys, a.k.a. Music’s Biggest Night.
It’ll just be more like music’s biggest afternoon. The vast majority of Grammy nominees will be filled with hope and probably lunch when the “Premiere Ceremony” kicks off Feb. 1 at 12:30 Pacific time. (These awards will available to stream on live. grammy.com as well as the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel). If you want to catch up on the year’s finest classical albums, the list of nominees is not a bad place to start.
The eight categories of the classical Grammys honor performances, recordings and compositions across orchestral, choral, small ensemble/chamber music and opera. And given how few and fleeting these kind of international spotlights can be when it comes to classical recordings, the impact of a Grammy win be a career-changing achievement.
Take composer Gabriela Ortiz, who this year echoes her three Grammy wins from 2025 with three fresh nominations. “Yanga,” a haunting, shape-shifting choral work recorded with the Los Angeles Philharmonic led by Gustavo Dudamel, Tambuco percussion ensemble and the Los Angeles Master Chorale under chorus master Grant Gershon, is up for best choral performance as well as best classical compendium.
From the same album, Ortiz’s searing four-movement “Dzonot” — another collaboration with Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic featuring cellist Alisa Weilerstein — is up for best classical contemporary composition. She could easily double her trophy count on Grammy night with these exciting recordings, which seem to reveal more with each listen.
Another notable multiple nominee is D.C.’s own National Philharmonic, which under Grammy-winning conductor Michael Repper earned two nominations. Its sumptuous-sounding collection of world premiere recordings of works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is nominated best orchestral performance; and violinist Curtis Stewart (along with Repper) earned a best classical instrumental solo nomination for his performance on that album of Coleridge-Taylor’s “3 Selections From ’24 Negro Melodies.’”
The National Philharmonic faces stiff competition in that orchestral category. Andris Nelsons and his Boston Symphony Orchestra certainly earned their nomination for an exceptional recording of Olivier Messiaen’s chilling 75-minute ″Turangalîla-Symphonie,” featuring pianist Yuja Wang as well as Cécile Lartigau unleashing spectral whoops from her ondes Martenot.
A revelatory album of “Symphonies and Variations” by William Grant Still and Margaret Bonds, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nezet-Seguin, makes this category even more contentious.
It’s a particularly strong year for opera recordings as well, with operas by composers Jake Heggie (“Intelligence”), Huang Ruo (“An American Soldier”), Mary Kouyoumdjian (“Adoration”), Emma O’Halloran (“Trade/Mary Motorhead”) and Jeanine Tesori (“Grounded”). These honors also extend to the librettist, conductor, album producer and principal soloists.
I have a feeling the award will go to Heggie and his “Intelligence,” a provocative powerhouse of an opera, inspired by the true story of two Civil War spies, Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Jane Bowser. Its libretto, by Gene Scheer, is forcefully sung by the trio of soprano Janai Brugger and mezzo-sopranos Jamie Barton and J’Nai Bridges. And Kwamé Ryan’s leadership of the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra is solid and sure.
But musically, my heart belongs to “Adoration,” its libretto by 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winner Royce Vavrek, its riveting score by Mary Kouyoumdjian, performed by the Silvana Quartet and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, conducted by Alarm Will Sound artistic director Alan Pierson. Its strange textures, cacophony of voices, and pervasive unsettling glow combine into an uncanny capture of the information age and its anxieties. It’s an opera that could help shape the future of the form.
Pierson shows up again in the nominations for best small ensemble/chamber performance, this time with Alarm Will Sound, whose performance of Donnacha Dennehy’s dazzling tone poem “Land of Winter” was one of my favorite recordings of the year. Structured to evoke the passage of time across the Irish landscape, the music lightens and darkens under sweeping waves of color, like a time-lapse film racing across slowly unfolding seasons.
Dennehy’s inventiveness finds its rival in fellow nominees Third Coast Percussion, whose “Standard Stoppages” explores, exploits and explodes time in a more hands-on fashion. The album includes works by Jlin, Jessie Montgomery, Tigran Hamasyan, Zakir Hussain and Musekiwa Chingodza, each realized by the ensemble with lucid precision and a bit of wild abandon.
Along with Ortiz’s “Yanga,” the category for best choral performance has some strong contenders, my favorite of which is David Lang’s concert-length “Poor Hymnal,” performed by The Crossing conducted by Donald Nally. Lang has crafted luminous vocal arrangements of texts drawn from sources as disparate as Mohandas K. Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Elizabeth Warren and the Old Testament. Its beauty is strange and relentless.
In the spirit of supporting the local team, I’d of course be happy for Curtis Stewart and the NatPhil to take the Grammy for best classical instrumental solo for his performance of Coleridge-Taylor. But my favorite nominee — and full disclosure, a friend — is pianist Adam Tendler and his ambitious commissioning project “Inheritances,” recently featured on CBS Sunday Morning.
After the unexpected death of his father, Tendler received an inheritance in the form of an envelope of cash — money which he turned into commissions from over a dozen composers including Devonté Hynes (Blood Orange), Laurie Anderson, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Angélica Negrón and Chris Cerrone. Each composition combines into a collective exploration of grief, and Tendler’s tenderly structured solo performance of the program (which I caught this summer at PS21 in Hudson, New York) delivered the biggest emotional gut-punch I got from a concert all year.
Cerrone appears two times as a nominee this year for “Don’t Look Down,” an 18-minute concerto for prepared piano and percussion quartet. His recording with Sandbox Percussion and pianist Conor Hanick is up for best classical compendium recording as well as best contemporary classical composition. Cerrone is a composer with poetry and wit to spare, and both are put to use in “Don’t Look Down,” one of his most adventurous and inviting pieces to date.
Of the nominees for best classical vocal solo album, I’m most taken with “Black Pierrot,” a collaboration between baritone Sidney Outlaw and pianist Warren Jones. Outlaw — a generous, expressive singer — pairs William Grant Still’s “Songs of Separation” alongside the world premiere recording of B.E. Boykin’s stunning song cycle, “26 Ways of Looking at a Black Man.” It’s both a document and a delight.
Lastly, the race for best contemporary classical composition is a crop of familiar names: Ortiz’s “Dzonot,” Dennehy’s “Land Of Winter,” and Cerrone’s “Don’t Look Down” square off against Tania León’s bracing “Raíces” and (my pick) Shawn E. Okpebholo’s “Songs in Flight.”
Okpebholo’s song cycle is inspired by entries from Freedom on the Move, “a database of fugitives from North American slavery,” documenting the ads placed in newspapers to locate runaway enslaved individuals.
A formidable cast of singers (baritone Wil Liverman, countertenor Reginald Mobely and soprano Karen Slack) take on texts from poets Tsitsi Jaji, Crystal Simone Smith and Tyehimba Jess; and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens is joined by pianist Paul Sánchez and saxophonist Julian Velasco. It’s a work of astonishing emotional depth and historical breadth by a composer who continues to meet and rise above the moment.
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