On Friday, Nov. 8, the Recording Academy announced the nominees for the 67th annual Grammy Awards, with two CalArtians among 94 genre-spanning categories.
Nominated for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance is John Luther Adams’ (Music BFA 73) Waves & Particles, featuring the JACK Quartet. The album is the third recorded with the acclaimed string quartet through the Cold Blue Music label, and was commissioned by Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Summer Stages Dance at The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and Liz Gerring Dance Company.
Simon Duff of the Morning Star gave the following praise for Waves & Particles: “An important album of shimmering beauty, complexity and ambition, confirming John Luther Adams as a hugely important composer, successfully pushing boundaries and creating new territory for deep listening.”
Adams previously won Best Contemporary Classical Composition at the 58th annual Grammy Awards for Become Ocean, which also earned him the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2014.
Up for Best Jazz Vocal Album is 2022 honorary degree recipient esperanza spalding and Milton Nascimento for their joint record Milton + esperanza. A review by The Guardian applauded spalding for “cement[ing] her status as a collaborator capable of extracting mighty performances from her elders,” creating a “late-career masterpiece” showcasing Nascimento’s range.
spalding was nominated last year with Fred Hersch for Best Jazz Performance and Best Jazz Vocal Album for But Not For Me and Alive At The Village Vanguard, respectively.
The 2024 Grammys will take place on Sunday, Feb. 2 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The ceremony will air live on CBS and stream on Paramount+. Find the full list of nominees at the Grammy Awards website.
