Canary Classics Releases New Gill Shaham & TON 'Premieres'

 

 

For Immediate Release:
Media contact:
Amanda Sweet/Bucklesweet
amanda@bucklesweet.com

 

CANARY CLASSICS RELEASES LEON BOTSTEIN, THE ORCHESTRA NOW (TON) AND GIL SHAHAM’S PREMIERES OUT DECEMBER 19

Recording Features Three Concertos Written For Violinist Gil Shaham

 

Violinist Gil Shaham joins conductor Leon Botstein and TON for Premieres, a new Canary Classics release featuring three concertos written expressly for Shaham. The album, out December 19, spotlights works by Scott Wheeler, Avner Dorman, and Bright Sheng—each composed to showcase Shaham’s distinctive artistry and musical curiosity.

 

"It is an honor to have premiered and been a part of the creation of the three compositions featured on this album,” said Gil Shaham. “I treasure my friendships with Avner, Bright, and Scott, whose inspired music has already resonated with so many, and with Leon, whose singular artistry and vision made this project happen.”

Commissioned by Bard College for TON and its music director, Leon Botstein, Scott Wheeler’s “Birds of America” (Violin Concerto No. 2) premiered in 2021.      It is dedicated to Gil Shaham and features bird-like sounds throughout the work.

“The first movement includes a hawk, a whippoorwill, loons, and a mourning dove,” said composer Scott Wheeler. “The second movement, which features prominent solos for celeste and flute, draws on my music for the ballet ‘Nightingale.’ The finale is a dance, or a series of dances, perhaps set in an aviary.”

 

In the program notes from the premiere, Wheeler also noted that “There are brief references to ‘Spring’ from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, the opening of The Birds by Respighi, Schumann’s Bird as Prophet, and a novelty tune called The Hot Canary, famously played by the jazz violinist Joe South.”

 

Winner of the 2018 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music, Avner Dorman’s “Nigunim” (Violin Concerto No. 2) was originally commissioned in 2011 as Sonata No. 3 for violin and piano by New York’s 92nd Street Y, as well as Gil and Orli Shaham. In 2014, the violinist premiered the orchestrated version.

 

The title originates from the word Nigun, a fundamental musical concept of traditional Jewish music. According to Habbad literature, the Nigun serves as a universal language; it ascends beyond words and conveys a deeper spiritual message than words can.

 “I found that there are some common musical elements to North African Jewish cantillations, Central Asian Jewish wedding songs, Klezmer music, and Ashkenazy prayers, said Dorman. “Though I did not use any existing Jewish melodies for ‘Nigunim,’ the main modes and melodic gestures of the piece are drawn from these common elements.”

Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng’s violin concerto “Let Fly” had its premiere in 2013 with Gil Shaham and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, led by Leonard Slatkin. The work is simply structured: three movements in one, with a cadenza between the second and third movement. The soloist is encouraged to write his or her own cadenza, of no more than 1-2 minutes, ideally based on the materials which have appeared up to this point of the concerto.

“Borrowed from a folk song genre in southeast China (‘flying song’), the title of the work came from two inspirations. First, it is the aural image of the violin melody just flying off in the air, an everlasting sensation when I first saw Gil Shaham perform a concert, said composer Bright Sheng. “The second inspiration of the title came from my daughter Fayfay (homonym for ‘to fly’ in Chinese). I wrote a child rhyme named after her...the first phrase of the song appears a few times in the composition.”

 

Premieres (CC26) will be available on Canary Classics starting December 19 on all major platforms and at canaryclassics.com. 

Download music and assets here
Private streaming link is available here

Album art is available here, and the booklet is available here
Artist photos are available here

Works:

Scott Wheeler – “Birds of America”

Avner Dorman – “Nigunim”

Bright Sheng’s “Let Fly”

Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time; his flawless technique combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his renown as an American master. The Grammy Award-winner, also named Musical America’s “Instrumentalist of the Year,” is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors, and regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world’s great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals.

Highlights of recent years include the acclaimed recording and performances of J.S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin. In the coming seasons in addition to championing these solo works he will join his long-time duo partner pianist, Akira Eguchi in recitals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

Appearances with orchestra regularly include the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and San Francisco Symphony as well as multi-year residencies with the Orchestras of Montreal, Stuttgart and Singapore. With orchestra, Mr. Shaham continues his exploration of “Violin Concertos of the 1930s,” including the works of Barber, Bartok, Berg, Korngold, Prokofiev, among many others.

Mr. Shaham has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, earning multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. Many of these recordings appear on Canary Classics, the label he founded in 2004. His CDs include 1930s Violin Concertos, Virtuoso Violin Works, Elgar’s Violin Concerto, Hebrew Melodies, The Butterfly Lovers and many more. His most recent recording in the series 1930s Violin Concertos Vol. 2, including Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto and Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2, was nominated for a Grammy Award. He will release a new recording of Beethoven and Brahms Concertos with The Knights in 2020.

Mr. Shaham was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1971. He moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music at the age of 7, receiving annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic, and the following year, took the first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition. He then became a scholarship student at Juilliard, and also studied at Columbia University.

Gil Shaham was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990, and in 2008 he received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012, he was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America. He plays the 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius and performs on an Antonio Stradivari violin, Cremona c1719, with the assistance of Rare Violins In Consortium, Artists and Benefactors Collaborative. He lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.

Leon Botstein is founder and music director of The Orchestra Now (TON), music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO), artistic codirector of Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival, and conductor laureate and principal guest conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra (JSO), where he served as music director from 2003 to 2011. He has been guest conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre, Russian National Orchestra in Moscow, Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Taipei Symphony, Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, and Sinfónica Juvenil de Caracas in Venezuela, among others. In May 2025, he led two concerts with TON in Koblenz and Nuremberg, Germany marking 80 years since the surrender of Nazi Germany. With ASO he has revived numerous neglected operas and rare repertoire, such as Schoenberg’s massive Gurre-Lieder, Richard Strauss’s first opera, Guntram, and the U.S. premiere of Sergei Taneyev’s final work, At the Reading of a Psalm.

 

Albums include The Lost Generation and Exodus, two 2024 releases with TON; Hindemith’s The Long Christmas Dinner with the ASO; a Grammy-nominated recording of Popov’s First Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra; and other recordings with TON, ASO, the London Philharmonic, NDR Orchestra Hamburg, and JSO, among others. Fall 2025 releases include Premieres with violinist Gil Shaham and Transcription as Translation, both with TON. He is editor of The Musical Quarterly and author of numerous articles and books, including The Compleat Brahms (Norton), Jefferson’s Children (Doubleday), Judentum und Modernität (Böhlau), and Von Beethoven zu Berg (Zsolnay). Honors include Harvard University’s prestigious Centennial Award; the American Academy of Arts and Letters award; and Cross of Honor, First Class, from the government of Austria, for his contributions to music. Other distinctions include the Bruckner Society’s Julio Kilenyi Medal of Honor for his interpretations of that composer’s music, the Leonard Bernstein Award for the Elevation of Music in Society, and Carnegie Foundation’s Academic Leadership Award. In 2011, he was inducted into the American Philosophical Society.

 

THE ORCHESTRA NOW (TON)

Founded in 2015 by Bard College and led by Leon Botstein, TON is a graduate program that is training the next generation of music professionals, offering a master’s degree or an advanced certificate. The members of the orchestra are graduates of the world’s leading conservatories, and hail from countries across North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Many have gone on to have successful careers in orchestras around the world. 

 

TON performs dozens of concerts a year at venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Fisher Center at Bard. In 2025, TON performed two concerts in Koblenz and Nuremberg, Germany. The orchestra has performed with numerous distinguished guest conductors and soloists, including Leonard Slatkin, Gil Shaham, Neeme Järvi, Stephanie Blythe, Fabio Luisi, Vadim Repin, Joseph Young, Peter Serkin, Naomi Woo, and JoAnn Falletta. 

 

TON has released several albums on the Hyperion, Sorel Classics, and AVIE labels. Fall 2025 releases include Premieres with violinist Gil Shaham and Transcription as Translation. Recordings of TON’s live concerts from the Fisher Center can be heard regularly on Classical WMHT-FM and WWFM The Classical Network, and the orchestra has appeared over 100 times on Performance Today, broadcast nationwide. More info at https://ton.bard.edu/

 

Canary Classics is an independent record label established in 2003 by GRAMMY Award-winning violinist Gil Shaham. The name itself invokes both the sweet-singing songbird and the Hebrew word ‘canar,’ which means “violinist.” Since its inception, Canary Classics has built a focused, prestigious catalog of over two dozen recordings, including two that have received GRAMMY nominations.