Congratulations to Kronos Quartet and Nico Muhly, who have been named winners of ECHO Klassik 2015 awards. Kronos Quartet is the winner of the Classics Without Borders award for its 40th anniversary release A Thousand Thoughts, and Nico Muhly's opera Two Boys, recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera, has been named Opera Recording of the Year for 20th/21st century music. The ECHO Klassik awards are conferred by the Deutsche Phono-Akademie (German Recording Academy), akin to the Grammy Awards in the United States. This year's awards ceremony will take place in Berlin on October 18 and will be televised on ZDF in Germany.
Congratulations to Kronos Quartet and Nico Muhly, who have been named winners of ECHO Klassik 2015 awards. Kronos Quartet is the winner of the Classics Without Borders award for its April 2014 Nonesuch Records release A Thousand Thoughts, and Nico Muhly's opera Two Boys has been named Opera Recording of the Year for 20th/21st century music. The ECHO Klassik awards are conferred by the Deutsche Phono-Akademie (German Recording Academy), akin to the Grammy Awards in the United States. This year's awards ceremony will take place at Konzerthaus Berlin on October 18 and will be televised on ZDF in Germany.
Released in Kronos Quartet's 40th anniversary year, A Thousand Thoughts is a look at the group's geographically wide-ranging sources, featuring music from 14 different countries, including China, India, Sweden, and Vietnam. The album includes the four cellists who have been in Kronos Quartet over the last 36 years. Ten of the album’s 15 pieces are previously unreleased. Songlines gives it five stars, calling Kronos "one of the musical marvels of our age."
Nico Muhly’s Two Boys was recorded live during the Metropolitan Opera’s 2013 production with conductor David Robertson and director Bartlett Sher, featuring mezzo-soprano Alice Coote and tenor Paul Appleby. The opera, featuring a libretto by award-winning playwright Craig Lucas, is loosely based on true events and follows a lonely detective whose investigation of a seemingly simple crime draws her into a complex web of online intrigue. The New Yorker praised Two Boys as a "bighearted, fearless work." BBC Music Magazine lauds "Muhly’s radiant post-minimalistic score." The Independent on Sunday calls it "enthralling." Opera magazine says this "excellent" recording confirms "the arrival on the operatic scene of a mature and striking new compositional voice."
The Deutsche Phono-Akademie has handed out the ECHO Klassik awards annually since 1994. The Klassik award were preceded by the ECHO Music awards in 1992 and followed by the ECHO Jazz prizes in 2010. Pat Metheny won the ECHO Jazz 2015 Award or International Instrumentalist of the Year, Guitar, this past spring.
For additional details on the ECHO Klassik awards and the complete list of this year's nominees, visit echoklassik.de.
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