FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

69th GRAMMY AWARDS – FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

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It has been my busiest year yet. With hundreds of compositions as yet unrecorded, I have been trying to catch up on the backlog, mostly in vain! I know there’s a lot of music here but I hope you’ll take time and gradually listen your way through.

A SONG ALBUM submitted in the Classical Solo Vocal Album category. Featuring soprano Lisa Rombach and the Chamber Orchestra Mannheim conducted by Marek Štilec. The album includes four song cycles: 1918, A SINGLE THORN, STONE & STAR and CANZONI D’AMORE.

A SONG ALBUM

CHAMBER MUSIC submitted in the Classical Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance category. A double CD length album of music for viola and piano, piano solo and cello and piano. Featuring Brett Deubner, Christina Gullans and Allison Brewster Franzetti.

CHAMBER MUSIC

THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER submitted in the Classical Instrumental Solo category. Featuring trumpeter Josef Hofbauer with the Zagreb Sinfonietta conducted by Miran Vaupotić. Music inspired by the poem of the same title by Walt Whitman.

THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER

TWO SYMPHONIES submitted in the Classical Orchestral Performance category. Featuring music from my MUSIC FOR THE EARTH and MUSIC FOR PEACE projects. Performed by the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marek Štilec.

TWO SYMPHONIES

SYMPHONY FOR PEACE submitted in the Classical Composition category. Work on SYMPHONY FOR PEACE started late in 2023 as wars raged in both Ukraine and the Middle East. Unlike other wars that have been fought since the last century, these are wars that pose a threat of escalating on a world-wide scale. Not that music ever brought peace. But, as Lenny Bernstein famously said, “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly, than ever before.” Scattered throughout the score, in somewhat altered form, are melodies by various composers ranging from the Renaissance through the 20th century that were settings of the words “dona nobis pacem.”

SYMPHONY FOR PEACE can be heard on my album TWO SYMPHONIES.

For your consideration – WHEN THE WAR ENDS WE WILL DANCE AGAIN

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For your consideration, WHEN THE WAR ENDS WE WILL DANCE AGAIN is a symphony for string orchestra in four movements. An addition to my MUSIC FOR UKRAINE series, this string symphony was inspired by hope that Ukrainians will achieve their dream of freedom from Russian violence and oppression. It imagines a time when Russian soldiers no longer occupy Ukrainian villages and Ukrainians can live freely and without fear of attack.

BEST CLASSICAL COMPOSITION

 

CREDITS:

Composer: Stanley Grill
Conductor: Dongmin Kim
Ensemble: New York Classical Players
Recorded at: NV Factory, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Recording Engineer: Sean Yoo
Recorded: October 13, 2023
Release Date: March 29, 2024

Listening links to WHEN THE WAR ENDS WE WILL DANCE AGAIN (Tracks 2-5 on the album WE WILL NOT FORGET)

For your consideration – DIE ERSTE ELEGIE

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For your consideration, DIE ERSTE ELEGIE, a five movement “concerto” for soprano and chamber orchestra setting the first of Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous Duino Elegies.

BEST CLASSICAL COMPOSITION

 

DIE ERSTE ELEGIE.  It is Rilke, more so than any other poet with whom I am familiar, who writes about the invisible world around us. Other poets describe the beauties (or the terrors) of the world we can see, but Rilke uses words that may be rooted in that world only to leave it and open a door beyond that to what we cannot fathom. Although I do not believe that angels, in the ordinary meaning of that word, exist, I had an immediate visceral, gut acceptance of Rilke’s words when I read “Every Angel is terrifying.” It reminded me of my love of studying stars when I was a child, and the terror that I felt when I began to understand, in a small way, the immeasurably vast distances between stars and how minute in comparison to the scale of the universe we all are (despite our species’ limitless capacity for self-aggrandizement). That terrifying realization put a quick end to that line of study for me. And he does, at least to my understanding, clearly describe how in the face of that vastness, humans shut themselves down, to shield themselves from the enormity of what surrounds us in order to protect ourselves. His opening line of the first elegy so powerfully expresses this – “Who, if I cried out would hear me among the Angels’ Orders? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly to his heart: I’d be consumed in his more potent being.”

But, more than an expression of humanity’s relationship to the infinite, invisible world, the poems are elegies – laments for the dead. But it is not just the dead that concern Rilke, but the relationship that the living have to those who have left the world of the living. The perhaps inevitable result of the too early death of my own father, this subject has never been far from my mind. How it is that we can bear such grief of loss is at the heart of these poems. While most people seem to me to find ways to ignore their mortality, or push it down to some deep place where they can avoid thinking about it, that has never been the case for me. And, as I grow older, it becomes still harder to ignore. The division between the living and dead is always present for me, and that, perhaps, is the thing that attracts me to Rilke’s ten elegies.

Composer: Stanley Grill

Soprano: Lisa Rombach

Conductor: Marek Štilec

Orchestra: Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice

Producer: Jiri Štilec

Recording Engineer: Vaclav Roubal

 

Listening links to stream DIE ERSTE ELEGIE

For your consideration – TRANSFIGURATION

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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

TRANSFIGURATION

BEST CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL COMPOSITION

From online performances to benefit albums, musicians kept their art alive throughout the most dire days of the coronavirus pandemic. Among them are composer Stanley Grill and violist Brett Deubner, who collaborated via remote recording sessions to transform Grill’s multi-instrumental chamber pieces into an intimate collection of multilayered works for viola. The resulting album, TRANSFIGURATION, showcases a singular connection between composer and performer. Throughout three works — Sonatine, Sea and Sky, and Transfiguration— lush, crisp soundscapes fill the ears as the viola’s soothing timbre and Deubner’s seamless technique create a pastoral quality that underscores the spiritual and introspective themes of Grill’s compositions.

TRANSFIGURATION, the album’s title work, was composed as an expression of that extraordinary faculty of humankind to adapt and change – for the better. For all our faults, we have it within us to become something entirely different and better. We may be locked inside a hardened chrysalis of self-interest and illusions, but we can emerge as butterflies and fly.

For your consideration – REMEMBER

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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

REMEMBER

BEST CHAMBER MUSIC/SMALL ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE

Stanley Grill’s REMEMBER is presented by Navona Records. Featuring viola and piano, these inventive works aptly demonstrate Grill’s unique style; rooted in his passion for medieval and Renaissance music, his compositions are as pioneering and contemporary as they are fundamentally traditional. Grill’s work focuses particularly on melody, modal harmonies, and contrapuntal, interweaving lines. The result is a musical experience greater than the sum of the instruments involved. Two themes that permeate much of his work can be found throughout this album as well: a desire to translate elements of the physical world into sound, and a dedication to cultivating and promoting peace through music. REMEMBER offers listeners a fresh and memorable collection of works for viola and piano.

Music by Stanley Grill. Performed by Brett Deubner and Thomas Steigerwald. Produced by Stanley Grill. Recorded by Scott Anderson. Mastered by Randall Crafton.

PARMA RECORDINGS.

Gapplegate Classical/Modern Music Review: “Stanley Grill is a phenomenon who crafts a directly accessible presence that would appeal to a wide spectrum of music lovers in addition to the serious followers on what is happening in New Music.”

For your Consideration – AFTERWARDS

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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

AFTERWARDS

BEST CHAMBER MUSIC/SMALL ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE

AFTERWARDS… presents music that imagines a world different from the one we find ourselves in today, music that strives towards a sound that might be heard in a world where violence is no longer the ready answer to men’s disputes, a world where reason prevails, a calmer world.  On this album, the vehicle for this expression of hope is the string quartet, an ensemble about which composer Stanley Grill writes,  “it is the string quartet that has mostly occupied my attention over the years, as the intimate sound of a small consort of bowed strings is the perfect medium to express the contemplative sound landscape I strive to create.”  The music presented on this album reflects the same themes that dominate much of Stanley Grill’s work: an attempt to influence the minds and hearts of those who hear it in such a way as to encourage thoughts about the possibility of world peace, as well as music composed in an attempt to translate something about the nature of the physical world.

Music by Stanley Grill.  Performed by Camerata Philadelphia.  Produced by Ralph Farris. Recorded by Randall Crafton.

Luigi Mazzochi, violin; Blake Espy, violin; Jonathan Kim, viola; Stephen Framil, cello

An Innova Recording.

64th Annual Grammy Awards season

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As the 64th Grammy awards season begins, I’m looking forward to my 2nd year as a member, and weeks of listening to all of the wonderful music that has been submitted. Everything I heard last year was pre-pandemic, but this year will reflect the response of musicians to the pandemic, and demonstrate how they persevered through these extraordinary times.

I feel deeply fortunate that a year at home, in isolation, led to more opportunities than in a normal year. This year my submissions will include 3 new albums.

AFTERWARDS, an album of string quartets performed by Camerata Philadelphia. The title track, “Afterwards, there were no more wars” is one of my many works from my MUSIC FOR PEACE PROJECT – music I imagined might be heard in a time in the future when someone, opening up the pages of a history book, might read those words. BEST CHAMBER MUSIC/SMALL ENSEMBLE.

REMEMBER is an album that assembles music composed over the years for viola – both solo and with piano. Beautifully performed by Brett Deubner and Thomas Steigerwald. The title work, Remember (5 intermezzi for the earth), reworks themes from my music for chorus and chamber ensemble, setting poems about both the glory of our planet – and the future we face if we fail to recognize our responsibilities as stewards of our only home. BEST CHAMBER MUSIC/SMALL ENSEMBLE.

TRANSFIGURATION, a COVID shutdown project, features music for 2, 3 and 4 violas, all performed and recorded by Brett Deubner, alone in a studio, while I listened on-line from home. The title work, a viola quartet, expresses my thoughts about how, whatever our human failings and limitations, we have within ourselves the possibility of transforming into something better. Encased in a hardened chrysalis, we can emerge as butterflies. TRANSFIGURATION (for 4 violas). BEST CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL COMPOSITION.

For your consideration…

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“and I paint stars with wings…”

BEST CLASSICAL COMPENDIUM

“The Four Elements”

BEST CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL COMPOSITION
BEST CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTAL SOLO

Music by Stanley Grill. Performed by Camerata Philadelphia. Stephen Framil, conductor and cello soloist; Brett Deubner, viola soloist; Peggy Pei-ju Yu, soprano. Produced by Ralph Farris. Recorded by Randall Crafton.

An Innova Recording.

World Music Report: “Mr Grill puts his profound stamp on music that
celebrates heaven and earth. The results are transcendent music presented in a
recording with considerable power and warmth…”

Textura: “Grill’s music provides the soloists and the Camerata Philadelphia with splendid material to work with, and he in turn is well-served by the conviction the participants bring to the performances.”