If you weren’t in the Orchestra Hall audience in May to hear the premiere of brea(d)th, the work inspired by the death of George Floyd and the struggle for racial justice across history, Decca Records has now released a recording of it on all streaming platforms.
The piece, by Grammy-winning composer Carlos Simon and librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, was recorded over three live performances May 18-20, with the Minnesota Orchestra joined by 150 choral musicians and directed by Jonathan Taylor Rush.
The orchestra commissioned Simon and Joseph in 2021 to create the work, which asks listeners, “How do we move forward? What is the breadth of the task at hand?” The recording features the voices of the Minnesota Chorale, Twin Cities Choral Partners and the South African ensemble 29:11 International Exchange, as well as Joseph’s spoken-word performance.
In related news, a forthcoming recording, African American Voices II, features three pieces that were included in the Minnesota Orchestra’s 2021 Listening Project but had not previously been recorded. Conductor Kellen Gray leads the Royal National Scottish Orchestra in performances of Margaret Bonds’ Montgomery Variations, Ulysses Kay’s Concerto for Orchestra and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Worship: A Concert Overture on the recording, which will be released by Linn Records on Oct. 13.
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