The New York Times announced their list of 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2021. Among those honored are Advisory Council member Christopher Cerrone (CRF 2012, Juror), and recently awarded and incoming Fellows Angélica Negrón and Gabriella Smith.
Seth Colter Walls said: “In his song cycle ‘I Will Learn to Love a Person,’ Christopher Cerrone combines Minimalism and a casually profane confessional text by Tao Lin, initially suggesting a certain ironic detachment. But then Lindsay Kesselman’s anguish wells forth, spilling over the song’s brim. As in much of Cerrone’s best work, this unraveling is too exposed to be blasé, and turns the piece into a genuine weeper, worthy of early opera.”
Anthony Tommasini said: “When the pandemic made in-person performances impossible, the superb violinist Jennifer Koh began an inspiring project to commission short solos, which she premiered online from her Manhattan apartment. ‘Alone Together’ offers the results: 39 strikingly diverse pieces, among them Angélica Negrón’s playful, inventive ‘Cooper and Emma.'”
Joshua Barone said: “This radio-ready opener to Gabriella Smith and Gabriel Cabezas’s album ‘Lost Coast’ is difficult to categorize. Art song, political anthem, pop — all or none of the above? Regardless, it’s a work of affecting counterpoint: the rage that accumulates in the layered sounds of Cabezas’s extended cello technique against the resignation of Smith’s elegiac vocals.”
See the full list here.