American Counterpoints (Bright Shiny Things, 2024) is nominated for two 2025 Grammy Awards for Best Classical Compendium and for Best Classical Instrumental Solo.
American Counterpoints is the first album released by Experiential Orchestra since their Grammy® Award in 2021, and is the co-creation of Grammy®-winning conductor James Blachly, and 4-time Grammy® Nominee Curtis Stewart. Featuring the world-premiere recording of Julia Perry's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, the album asserts the central importance of composers Julia Perry and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson in American classical music, juxtaposing early and late works of both composers and interweaving their compositions with original music by Curtis Stewart.
Purchase the album here.
Dame Ethel Smyth: The Prison
About Dame Ethel Smyth
British composer Dame Ethel Smyth was famous for breaking gender barriers through her music and her effective activism in the suffrage movement, for which she went to jail in 1912. Until 2016, she was the only woman in history to have had an opera performed at the Met.
Determined to become a composer despite discrimination based on her gender, she defied her father, studying music in Leipzig. In short order, she met and became close with Dvorak, Grieg, Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, among others; Tchaikovsky once wrote: “Miss Smyth is one of the comparatively few women composers who may be seriously reckoned among the workers in this sphere of music.”
Critics of her music could often only hear her music in terms of her gender. One review said of her opera The Wreckers that it was “a remarkable achievement - for a woman." Others saw her as one of the great English composers, and treated her music as such. But even favorable reviews tended to make some derogatory comment about either her gender (finding the music “too feminine”) or her femininity (finding the music “too masculine”).
In 1934, on a festival of her music organized on her 75th birthday, Sir Thomas Beecham conducted a gala concert in the presence of the Queen. By that time, however, her deafness had advanced to such a degree that she could not hear the rapturous applause.
About The Prison
Composed in 1930, The Prison is Smyth's last large-scale work, scored for two soloists (portraying The Prisoner and his Soul), chorus, and orchestra. Sometimes called an oratorio or a cantata, it is similar in scale and scope to the vocal symphonies of Mahler.
Due to her advancing deafness, shortly after composing this piece, she ceased to compose at all. It is her culminating work in several regards, both in content, textual significance, and musical language; the libretto is by Henry Bennet Brewster, who was her lover and one of her closest and life-long friends, with whom she exchanged more than 1,000 letters between 1884 and his tragic death in 1908. After he died, she wrote “I felt then like a rudderless ship aimlessly drifting hither and thither.” Shortly before the premiere of The Prison, she personally undertook to have the full text published as a book.
The depth of her intention may be understood from the quote she chose to place on the title page from Plotinus: “I am striving to release that which is divine within us, and to merge it in the universally divine.”
Until this release, there have been no commercial recordings of the work, and it has been performed very rarely since the premiere in 1931, which was conducted by Smyth herself.
As EXO Music Director James Blachly says, “we believe that the world is finally ready for her music.”
Press
"’The Prison’ is sure to be one of the notable classical releases of the benighted year 2020: a transfixing piece, gorgeously recorded.” – The Rest is Noise (Alex Ross)
“Very strongly recommended.” – Gramophone
“The chorus and the soprano soloist (the soul) indulge in a lush, luxuriant vein — now spangly and ornate, now piercingly heartfelt — that underscores the terms of the interior drama … the listening experience is strikingly persuasive. Part of that is due to the splendor of the performance, powerfully conducted by James Blachly — a champion of the work and of Smyth’s music in general — and featuring remarkable vocal contributions by bass-baritone Dashon Burton and soprano Sarah Brailey.” – San Francisco Chronicle
“The performance, I suspect, could not be bettered. The New York City-based Experiential Orchestra and Chorus both perform with luscious tone and poise. James Blachly’s leadership brings the work’s lyricism to the forefront; it would be easy to over-emphasize passages but he works best within the dramatic arc of the narrative.” – Classics Today
“… From its opening, pregnant with foreboding, the music embarks on a journey of exploration, each emotional state leading to a new sphere of musical interest. The excellent Dashon Burton as the prisoner, Sarah Brailey as the soul, and the New York-based Experiential Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by James Blachly, give The Prison a wholly recommendable first recording. How typical of Smyth to make such an individual contribution to the English oratorio tradition.” – Financial Times
“James Blachly, conducting New York’s Experiential Chorus and Orchestra, catches the music’s sweeping, sonorous energy. Sarah Brailey’s soprano radiates assurance, and Dashon Burton is outstanding as the pensive Prisoner.” – The Guardian
“All praise…to Blachly, whose engagement with the work began in 2016 when he conducted excerpts of it and who has been the driving force behind its resurrection.” – Textura
“This performance is a riveting experience and a must-listen.” – The Classic Review
“My top CD this year must be the world premiere recording of Ethel Smyth's late masterwork The Prison, an amazing discovery and a terrific recording….James Blachly draws a richly sophisticated and evocative performance.” – Planet Hugill
“The recording is a personal triumph for conductor James Blachly….his conducting seems to me to be full of conviction and I find it hard to imagine that The Prison could have received stronger advocacy.” – MusicWeb International
“James Blachly who leads the superb Experiential Orchestra and Chorus with balance and credit must also be given credit for the resurrection of this work in its revised edition. The young maestro elicits a wonderful performance from all the forces he helms in a one-of-a-kind addition to the recorded repertoire available on various platforms.” – All About the Arts
“This flowing, highly charged performance features soprano Sarah Brailey and Grammy-winning bass-baritone Dashon Burton. Together with the orchestra and chorus they do full justice to the enormous creative power Smyth wielded as her career crested…” – BlogCritics
Feature in France Musique
Feature in The Boston Globe
Radio
Feature on MPR’s Performance Today
Feature on Pittsburgh’s WQED with Jim Cunningham
Feature on Louisville’s WUOL with Alan Brandt
Feature on Toledo’s WGTE with Hayley Taylor
Feature on Hampton Roads’s WHRO with Waylo Chambo