BERLIN ACADEMY OF AMERICAN MUSIC

Our debut album Transatlantic was recorded at the beginning of 2021 against all odds, in the winter and at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the first signs of life for this new orchestra began coming together six months earlier. In the summer of 2020 - simply for the sake of doing so - myself and bassist Rosie Salvucci (also American and fellow Berliner) decided to organize some impromptu, distanced orchestra readings with chamber orchestra repertoire that could easily be played in a studio in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. We felt we needed to take action for a creative outlet - so many summer festivals and engagements were cancelled, and musicians simply wanted to play together again. We invited professional musicians who we thought would enjoy works by composers like Adams, Stravinsky and Copland. These collaborations were so meaningful and instilled a deep curiosity for the possibilities of experiencing and sharing this repertoire.  

Then in November of 2020, two friends, American composer Craig Urquhart and Greek flutist Stathis Karapanos, and I began discussing the possibility of recording Craig’s newly orchestrated Lamentation for Flute and Strings. I had heard Craig’s piano version of the piece and found it deeply touching. Stathis had performed the piano version with Christoph Eschenbach at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, where he was awarded the 2020 Leonard Bernstein Award. Based on our summer orchestra readings, I suggested that Rosie and I could put together a talented orchestra and quite quickly this project began to come together. There was a flurry of communication, and the project quickly grew from recording one work into recording an entire album. Just two months after our conversations began, the orchestra was formed, and in January and February of 2021 we rehearsed and recorded Transatlantic in one of Germany’s legendary recording locations, Teldex Studio.  

With Craig’s piece set as a cornerstone of the album, Stathis and I began to think of what repertoire would best accompany this. Craig is, an American-now-Berliner and long-time executive of the Leonard Bernstein Office. I was also steeped in life as a Berliner. This made me think - perhaps the connection for works could be the fact that they, too, had transatlantic connections. Being an American conductor who is often asked to perform American repertoire, I looked to works by Americans and American immigrant composers, and even to those who wrote works based on American ideals or stories.

We were all quite fond of the fact that the transatlantic theme also occurs throughout the orchestra’s personnel. The musicians on this recording are from a tapestry of nationalities spanning five continents. While conversing during the coffee breaks of the recording sessions, we learned from each other that more than half of the orchestra either came from the U.S. or had studied there.

Transatlantic was released with worldwide distribution and streaming by London’s ONYX Classics on October 29, 2021. We are proud to present this recording to an international audience, which serves as the world debut of the Berlin Academy of American Music. The album features an array of orchestra musicians based in Berlin, soprano Chen Reiss, flutist Stathis Karapanos, Berlin Philharmonic’s concertmaster and principal harpist, Noah Bendix-Balgley and Marie-Pierre Langlamet. BAAM’s first Berlin concert series followed in November of 2021.