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Classical Music: You've Gotta Hear It Live!

Hilton 55
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GRAMMYs
Dec 2, 2014 - 3:22 pm

While the annual GRAMMY Awards highlights excellence in recorded music with a star-studded live telecast that always makes for one of the hottest live shows of the year, The Recording Academy pays tribute to the live music experience in the week leading up to GRAMMY Sunday with a series of events featuring performers from many genres. This year, events will include a tribute concert to 2013 MusiCares Person of the Year Bruce Springsteen, a GRAMMY In The Schools Live! concert and Play It Forward: A Celebration of Music's Evolution And Influencers — the 15th Annual GRAMMY Foundation Music Preservation Project.

Before recording technology existed, music was always live. We're now fortunate to have the technology to hear nearly any music we want, whenever we want. And technology has enabled artists to make fantastic studio-based and electronic music that live instruments can't replicate. But live performance is still an incomparable and irreplaceable part of music.

This is especially true of the classical genre. Too often, classical music is pegged as soothing background music or mistakenly considered boring and stuffy. But in my experience, a live classical performance can be just as thrilling as a rock concert. Sure, the atmosphere is a bit more formal, but when you hear an orchestra play in a hall with great acoustics, the sound will rock you as much as a band in a stadium, and usually without any amplification.

While classical performances come in several flavors, below are a few different types that everyone should experience live at least once, along with examples of past GRAMMY-winning performances.

Orchestra: You may have heard bits and pieces of Beethoven's symphonies in films and commercials, but nothing compares to hearing them live. Conductor Georg Solti won Best Orchestral Recording in 1987 for his performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 In D Minor.

Opera: John Adams' Doctor Atomic won Best Opera Recording in 2011. Not your typical opera, it tells the story of the test of the first atomic bomb, with Robert Oppenheimer as the lead character.

Chamber: The string quartet is one of my favorite chamber ensembles, and the Emerson String Quartet has won GRAMMYs for their recordings of works by Beethoven, Bartók and Shostakovich, among others.

Solo piano: Pianist Vladimir Horowitz won two GRAMMYs in 1987 for Horowitz In Moscow, a live recording of a recital he gave upon returning to his native land for the first time since 1925.

Choral: Light & Gold by Eric Whitacre won Best Choral Performance in 2011 with works for unaccompanied voices. Riccardo Muti's recording of Verdi's Requiem, which won two GRAMMYs in 2010, features soloists and a chorus with orchestra.

In 2012 at the GRAMMY Pre-Telecast Ceremony, GRAMMY winner Joyce DiDonato performed "Non Più Mesta" from Gioachino Rossini's La Cenerentola.

"The invitation to perform at the Pre-Telecast Ceremony came as a complete shock because 'opera' often seems to be viewed as a somewhat dirty word outside of our world of corsets and cadenzas, and our performances are not often granted the coveted spotlight in mainstream events," DiDonato later wrote in a blog post on GRAMMY.com.

While I was afraid that a performance by just one singer with piano accompaniment might not capture the audience's attention, DiDonato's voice filled the entire space and the performance resulted in a standing ovation.

I would like for everyone to experience the sense of awe that filled the room last year when DiDonato sang. Even if you don't think you're a classical fan, when heard live, the right orchestra or opera star might just change your mind.

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Classical GRAMMY Winners Highlight New Music

Hilton
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GRAMMYs
Dec 2, 2014 - 3:22 pm

I was thrilled to be in attendance at the 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards this year. Although the live television broadcast is the crowning event of GRAMMY Week, most of the awards are given out during the Pre-Telecast Ceremony that takes place before the live show, including the awards in the Classical Field categories.

It was a big year for American classical music, as well as for living composers, who were reflected on winning recordings in five out of seven classical categories.

Best Opera Recording went to Adams: Doctor Atomic, a Metropolitan Opera performance conducted by Alan Gilbert and featuring baritone Gerald Finley in the title role.

Light & Gold, a disc of music composed and conducted by Eric Whitacre, won Best Choral Performance. Performers included the King's Singers, Laudibus, Pavão Quartet, and the Eric Whitacre Singers.

Best Small Ensemble Performance went to Mackey: Lonely Motel  Music From Slide, composed by Steven Mackey and performed by vocalist Rinde Eckert and chamber ensemble Eighth Blackbird. This was the second nomination for a collaboration between Mackey and Eckert.

Best Classical Instrumental Solo went to percussionist Christopher Lamb for Schwantner: Concerto For Percussion & Orchestra. Giancarlo Guerrero conducted the Nashville Symphony.

Another American opera, Aldridge, Robert: Elmer Gantry, was selected as Best Contemporary Classical Composition. In their acceptance speech, composer Aldridge and librettist Herschel Garfein said it took 17 years to get the opera produced! The recording also won Best Engineered Album, Classical for engineers Byeong-Joon Hwang and John Newton, and mastering engineer Jesse Lewis.

Representing traditional classical repertoire, conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic won Best Orchestral Performance for their digital-only release of Brahms: Symphony No. 4. It's the first GRAMMY win for the popular young conductor.

Best Classical Vocal Solo went to mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato, who dazzled the Pre-Telecast Ceremony audience with her live performance of "Non Più mesta" from the opera "La Cenerentola" by Gioachino Rossini. Her winning recording Diva Divo is a collection of opera arias from both "trouser" roles (where a female singer plays a male character) and "skirt" roles. She was accompanied on the recording by Kazushi Ono conducting the Orchestre de L'Opéra National de Lyon and Choeur de L'Opéra National de Lyon.

Producer Judith Sherman took home the award for Producer Of The Year, Classical for her work on 11 recordings. It was her seventh GRAMMY win and second Producer Of The Year, Classical trophy.

Even as we are living in a challenging time for the arts, classical musicians continue to do heroic work. In less than a year, the 55th GRAMMY Awards nominees will be announced, and I'm looking forward to another fabulous group of recordings in the classical categories!

Top GRAMMY winners of all time
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Who Are The Top GRAMMY Winners Of All Time?

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From Georg Solti to U2 and Beyoncé, these are the top 22 winners in GRAMMY history through the 60th GRAMMY Awards
GRAMMYs
May 15, 2017 - 2:36 am
GRAMMY.com

With a total of 84 categories celebrating the best of pop, rock, R&B, jazz, classical, Spoken Word, Musical Theater, and Music For Visual Media, among others, thousands of music creators have been recognized by the GRAMMYs since its inception in 1957.

The prestige of one GRAMMY win can catapult an artist's career to the next level, but there are some who have amassed more than 10, 20 and even 30 career GRAMMY wins. Ever wonder who these elite GRAMMY winners are? Look no further. We've compiled a list of the top 22 GRAMMY winners of all time.

Georg Solti, 31

Not only does the late conductor Georg Solti hold the record for the most GRAMMY Awards won in any genre with 31, he has the most wins in the Classical Field. Solti's last win was for Best Opera Recording for Wagner: Die Meistersinger Von Nurnberg for 1997.

Quincy Jones, 27

Quincy Jones' GRAMMY career as an artist/arranger/producer spans more than 10 Fields, from Children's to Jazz, Pop, Rap, R&B, and more. He is also one of only 15 artists to receive the GRAMMY Legend Award.

Alison Krauss, 27

Alison Krauss holds the distinction as the female artist with the most GRAMMYs, and the female with the most awards in the Country Field. Krauss shares 14 of her wins with her backing band of nearly 30 years, Union Station.

Pierre Boulez, 26

Pierre Boulez earned his GRAMMYs primarily conducting the work of renowned 20th century composers such as Bela Bartók, Alban Berg and Claude Debussy. Boulez received The Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.

Vladimir Horowitz, 25

The late virtuoso pianist/composer Vladimir Horowitz earned GRAMMYs in every decade from the 1960s to the 1990s. He was also awarded a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990 and has five recordings in the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame.

Stevie Wonder, 25

No stranger to the GRAMMY stage, Stevie Wonder is the only artist in GRAMMY history to win five or more awards on three separate nights. His career and GRAMMY history were celebrated on the television special "Stevie Wonder: Songs In The Key Of Life — An All-Star GRAMMY Salute" in 2015.

John Williams, 24

John Williams has cashed in on cinema soundtrack classics such as Jaws, Star Wars and Schindler's List for a place among the GRAMMY elite. Of his 24 GRAMMY wins, Williams has earned 12 in the Music For Visual Media Field and six for his work on the Star Wars franchise. His most recent win came at the 60th GRAMMYs for Best Arrangement, Instrumental Or A Cappella for "Escapades For Alto Saxophone And Orchestra From Catch Me If You Can."

Beyoncé, 22

Who run the world? Beyoncé. The 22-time GRAMMY winner holds the second-most wins by a female artist and is tied with Adele at six for most GRAMMY wins in one night by a female. Aside from her wins, Queen Bey has amassed 63 GRAMMY nominations, more than any other female artist.

 

Beyoncé wins Best Urban Contemporary Album GRAMMY

Chick Corea, 22

Musician/composer Chick Corea is currently the artist with the most jazz GRAMMY wins. Corea's Latin jazz piano stylings, compositions and arrangements have also earned him four Latin GRAMMY Awards.

U2, 22

Led by frontman Bono, U2 hold the record for most GRAMMY wins by a rock act. Their most recent wins came in 2005, including Album Of The Year for How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb.

Vince Gill, 21

Singer/songwriter Vince Gill has earned 20 of his GRAMMY wins in the Country Field, the most of any artist. He earned his first GRAMMY outside of the Country Field in 2017 for Best American Roots Song for writing the Time Jumpers' "Kid Sister." He also holds the distinction of garnering the most GRAMMYs in the 1990s (14), winning one or more GRAMMYs in every year of the decade.

Jay-Z, 21

Tied for the most GRAMMY wins by a rap artist, Jay-Z has wins in each of the four Rap Field categories. Hova's blueprint for GRAMMY success includes collaborations with other artists such as Beyoncé ("Drunk In Love"), Rihanna ("Umbrella") and Justin Timberlake ("Holy Grail").

Kanye West, 21

Kanye West is neck-and-neck with Jay Z for top GRAMMY-winning rap artist, but he has often competed against himself. For example, he had two nominations (and a win) each for Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song for 2012, Best Rap Album for 2011, and Best Rap Song and Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group for 2007.

Henry Mancini, 20

The composer behind TV and film themes such as "Peter Gunn" and "The Pink Panther Theme," the late Henry Mancini made early GRAMMY history with a then-record five wins in one night for 1961. Mancini's popular "Moon River" and later "Days Of Wine And Roses" each won both Record and Song Of The Year.

Pat Metheny, 20

Pat Metheny is all that jazz. The guitarist earned his first GRAMMY for Best Jazz Fusion Performance, Vocal Or Instrumental for Offramp for 1982. He has earned GRAMMYs in four consecutive decades since, most recently in 2012 as the Pat Metheny Unity Band for Unity Band for Best Jazz Instrumental Album.

Al Schmitt, 20

Working on projects by artists Ray Charles, Natalie Cole, Chick Corea, and Paul McCartney, among others, Al Schmitt won his 20 GRAMMYs as an engineer/mixer. Schmitt has also earned two Latin GRAMMYs and he received the Recording Academy Trustees Award in 2006.

Bruce Springsteen, 20

In addition to GRAMMY wins in every decade from the '80s through '00s, Bruce Springsteen has seen his albums Born To Run and Born In The U.S.A. inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame. In 2013 the quintessential rocker was honored as the MusiCares Person of the Year.

Tony Bennett, 18

An artist who truly seems to get better with age, Tony Bennett has won nine of his 18 career GRAMMYs since 2002. Including his 2015 win with Bill Charlap for The Silver Lining: The Songs Of Jerome Kern, Bennett has earned Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album honors 13 times, the most in the category's history.

Aretha Franklin, 18

Aretha Franklin reigns as the queen of R&B. She has 18 GRAMMY wins to date, five recordings in the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame, a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award (1994) and a GRAMMY Legend Award (1991).

Yo-Yo Ma, 18

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has strung together 18 GRAMMY wins, earning his first in 1984 for Bach: The Unaccompanied Cello Suites. Since then he's won GRAMMYs in the Folk and World Music Fields, the latter of which came for 2016 for the Best World Music Album-winning project with his Silk Road Ensemble, Sing Me Home. 

Paul McCartney, 18

Winning Best New Artist with the Beatles for 1964, Paul McCartney has gone on to earn 18 career GRAMMYs as an artist, composer and arranger. While most of McCartney's GRAMMY history lies in pop and rock, he earned two 58th GRAMMY nominations for Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance for Kanye West's "All Day" with Theophilus London and Allan Kingdom.

Jimmy Sturr, 18

Out of the 25 GRAMMYs ever awarded for polka, Jimmy Sturr earned 18 of them, including 13 wins for Best Polka Album. He will likely remain the highest GRAMMY-winning polka artist in history (given the discontinuation of the category), and was "Born To Polka."

Who Are The Top Latin GRAMMY Winners Of All Time?

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Who were the biggest GRAMMY winners of the 70s?

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Vladimir Horowitz, Paul Simon, Georg Solti, and Stevie Wonder are the artists who won the most GRAMMY Awards in the '70s
Paul Grein
GRAMMYs
May 15, 2017 - 2:36 am
GRAMMY.com

Who are the biggest GRAMMY winners for each decade from the 1950s to the 2010s? In our ongoing Music's Biggest Winners series, we'll take a look at the four artists (more in the case of ties) who received the most awards in each decade. You'll learn a little bit about the artists, their GRAMMY wins during the decade and other notable Recording Academy honors. Let's fire up the GRAMMY time machine and go back to the '70s.

'70s

Stevie Wonder, 15
Wonder is the only artist in GRAMMY history to win five or more awards on three separate nights. All three sweeps included Album Of The Year. The albums, which were consecutive studio releases, were Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale and Songs In The Key Of Life. Wonder won Best Producer Of The Year in his third sweep, in 1976. He received a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.

Georg Solti, 13
Solti won Best Classical Album (sometimes called Album Of The Year — Classical) four times during the decade, for his interpretations of works by Mahler, Berlioz, Beethoven, and Brahms. Remarkably, the Hungarian-born conductor picked up another 13 GRAMMYs in the '80s. No other classical artist has ever won 13 GRAMMYs in a decade. Solti received a Recording Academy Trustees Award in 1967 (in collaboration with producer John Culshaw) and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. He died in 1997.

Paul Simon, 10
Simon received seven GRAMMYs in 1970 for his work on Simon & Garfunkel's instant standard "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and the duo's album of the same name. (This set a new record, breaking Roger Miller's record of six GRAMMYs in one night.) Simon received three more GRAMMYs in 1975 for his third solo album, Still Crazy After All These Years. Both of these albums were voted Album Of The Year. Simon & Garfunkel received a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003.

Vladimir Horowitz, 9
After winning eight GRAMMYs in the '60s, Horowitz did even better in the '70s, taking nine awards. Horowitz won Album Of The Year, Classical in 1971 for Horowitz Plays Rachmaninoff (Etudes-Tableaux Piano Music; Sonatas) and Best Classical Album in 1977 for Concert Of The Century, a collaboration with such giants as Isaac Stern, Leonard Bernstein and Mstislav Rostropovich. The Ukrainian-born pianist died in 1989. He was awarded a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1990.

The 56th Annual GRAMMY Awards will be held Jan. 26, 2014, at Staples Center in Los Angeles and once again will be broadcast live in high-definition TV and 5.1 surround sound on CBS from 8–11:30 p.m. (ET/PT). For updates and breaking news, visit The Recording Academy's social networks on Twitter and Facebook. 

(Paul Grein, a veteran music journalist, writes for Yahoo Music.)

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Classical Excellence

Hilton
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GRAMMYs
Dec 2, 2014 - 3:22 pm

(For a complete list of 54th GRAMMY Awards nominees, click here.)

I have a very vivid memory of one my first experiences after I had the good fortune to be invited to be a GRAMMY.com Community Blogger. It was two years ago, when the nominees were announced for the 52nd GRAMMY Awards. I remember eagerly scanning the nominations list as soon as it came out, feeling elated and slightly overwhelmed by the sheer volume (more than 50 recordings in 11 categories!) and variety of classical excellence gathered in one place. Maybe it's just because it was that time of year, but I felt like I had just received a giant virtual Christmas present!

I had the same feeling last year, and this year is no different. With seven categories, the Classical Field is a musical feast that demonstrates just how rich and multifaceted the classical world is.

Because I'm a composer myself, I'm always excited to see plenty of 20th- and 21st- century music on the nominee list. As in previous years, newer music is not only confined to the Best Contemporary Classical Composition category; this year, 18 out of 35 nominated recordings feature music composed after 1900! Among the composers are well-known figures such as John Adams and Benjamin Britten (Best Opera Recording), Eric Whitacre (Best Choral Performance), John Corigliano (Best Classical Instrumental Solo), and George Crumb (Best Contemporary Classical Composition), as well as a few names I hadn't heard before, like York Bowen (Best Orchestral Performance) and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (Best Choral Performance). I was very excited to see music by my friend Gabriela Frank in the Best Small Ensemble Performance category. For the second year in a row, Steven Mackey is nominated for a collaboration with vocalist Rinde Eckert, in both Best Small Ensemble Performance and Best Contemporary Classical Composition categories.

Of course, earlier eras of classical music have not been neglected. The Best Orchestral Performance category includes symphonies by Haydn and Brahms, and Verdi's La Traviata is nominated for Best Opera Recording. There's a wealth of baroque, including a Vivaldi opera, vocal music by Handel and Purcell, and guitar music from Spain and Italy.

Four of the five nominated recordings for Best Classical Instrumental Solo feature a soloist with orchestra, while one is a piano solo. But pianist Ursula Oppens can hold her own against anyone, and I'm happy to see her nominated. This category also has two recordings of Rachmaninov piano concertos in competition: Yuja Wang playing Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2 In C Minor, Op. 18 and Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini, and Leif Ove Andsnes playing Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 4.

There's even more classical goodness to be found in the Best Engineered Album, Classical and Producer Of The Year, Classical categories — more than I can do justice to in this space!

I'm looking forward to learning more about this stellar group of recordings and artists. My musical Christmas stocking is overflowing!