GRAMMY: Round-Up of Local Nominees

The Albany Symphony Orchestra is back in the Grammy hunt.

Two years ago, first time nominees conductor David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony Orchestra won the Grammy Award in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category for John Corigliano’s Conjurer: Concerto For Percussionist & String Orchestra, featuring master percussionist Evelyn Glennie.

On Monday morning (December 7), Miller and the ASO earned their second nomination – this time in the Best Classical Vocal Solo Album category for Christopher Rouse: “Seeing” — “Kabir Padavali.” Released in September on the Naxos label, the album also features soprano Talise Trevigne and pianist Orion Weiss. The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer’s “Seeing” is a non-traditional piano concerto, bringing together seemingly disparate elements to explore the notion of sanity through the music of Robert Schumann and Moby Grape’s Skip Spence. “Kabir Padavali” presents a range of the great Indian poet Kabir’s religious concerns.

But the ASO isn’t the only Greater nippertown nominees. Jocelyn Arem – Skidmore College alum, former director of the Caffè Lena History Project and co-producer of the 2013 3-CD box set Live At Caffè Lena: Music From America’s Legendary Coffeehouse, 1967-2013 – earned a nomination the the Best Historical Albany category as co-producer of the Erroll Garner album, The Complete Concert by the Sea on the Columbia/Legacy label. The 3-CD set celebrates the 60th anniversary of the jazz piano great’s concert from September 19, 1955.

The adventurous a cappella ensemble Roomful of Teeth and founder-director Brad Wells – who teaches at Williams College in Williamstown – racked up a nomination in the Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance category for Render. The group previously won a Grammy Award in 2014 for their self-titled title on New Amsterdam Records.

And Joan Tower – music professor at Bard College in Annandale-On-Hudson – was nominated in the Best Contemporary Classical Composition category for “Stroke,” a composition on the album Tower: Violin Concerto; Stroke; Chamber Dance, performed by music director Giancarlo Guerrero, violinist Cho-Liang Lin and the Nashville Symphony. In the same category is Julia Wolfe – co-founder of Bang On Can who make their annual summer residency at MASS MoCA in North Adams. Wolfe is nominated for “Anthracite Fields.”

Summer residents at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s new album Rachmaninov Variations snagged a nomination in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category for pianist Daniil Trifonov, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who make their summer home at Tanglewood in Lenox, earned a nod in the Best Orchestral Performance category for Shostakovich: Under Stalin’s Shadow, Symphony No. 10 on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

Good luck to all.

GO HERE for a complete list of all Grammy nominees…

The Grammy Award winners will be announced during the ceremony on Monday, February 15, broadcast live at CBS-TV.