2022 will be remembered for many reasons, but the outpouring of artist expression that followed the lockdown was felt by us all. As we ring in 2023, our 15th year, and set off on the road ahead, here are a few highlights that made 2022 one for the books.
2022 GRAMMY® Awards
PARMA entered 2022 with a number of exciting events on the horizon including the awards ceremony for November 2021’s GRAMMY nominations. On April 3, SOUNDTRACK OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER from The U.S. Army Field Band and Navona Records received a GRAMMY® Award for Best Immersive Audio Album.
Engineered by multi GRAMMY®-winner Leslie Ann Jones and produced by Latin GRAMMY®-winner Dan Merceruio at Skywalker Sound in 2019, SOUNDTRACK OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER utilized Dolby Atmos® to achieve its immersive audio.
The GRAMMY® win is the first for the United States Army Field Band, and the album marks the first of many immersive audio albums to be released by PARMA.
2023 GRAMMY Nominations
Just seven months after the 2022 ceremony, the Recording Academy released the full list of nominations for the 65th annual GRAMMY® awards, in which two albums and one digital single from Navona Records are nominated across three different categories.
Miguel Zenón
EL PAÍS INVISIBLE
Best Instrumental Composition
The Crossing
BORN
Best Choral Performance
Shawn Okpebholo
LORD HOW COME ME HERE
Best Classical Solo Vocal Album
The ceremony will take place on February 5, 2023 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles CA, and will be broadcast live on CBS.
The Road to 1000
With a GRAMMY® award in the books and three more nominations, Navona Records hit a major milestone on October 28th with AMPLIFY, the first installment in All Classical Portland’s Recording Inclusivity Initiative (RII) series, which marks the 1,000th release from PARMA’s family of labels.
AMPLIFY not only marks an important chapter for All Classical Portland and PARMA, but for the classical music industry as a whole as well. The RII album is a response to the industry’s long-time need for greater diversity, with the purpose of increasing awareness and opportunity for previously marginalized artistic communities.
“We could not be more pleased and proud for AMPLIFY to be our 1,000th album release, and to represent the work of these outstanding artists,” says PARMA CEO Bob Lord, one of the sponsoring partners of the RII.
Around the World and back with PARMA Productions
Recording session with the London Symphony Orchestra in July 2022 | photo by Nick Rutter
The PARMA production team traveled far and wide this year, working with some of classical music’s finest artists to create new music, new experiences, and new horizons. Our production team was active across the globe, ending 2022 on a strong note with the long-awaited recording of pieces selected in PARMA/Sphinx Call for Scores for an upcoming album featuring cellist Thomas Mesa and pianist Michelle Cann.
See the full catalog of PARMA’s Production Recaps here:
PARMA Creative: Our New Digital Agency for the Arts
After successfully producing thousands of musical projects, recording sessions, releases, and collaborations with artists across the world, we realized that over the course of our nearly 15 years in business we had, in fact, grown an agency for the arts inside our own organization.
We launched PARMA Creative in 2022 to deliver inspired content, impactful strategies, and hands-on help for musicians, their careers, and their companies: www.parmacreative.com.
Here are some of the areas of focus for PARMA Creative:
Design and Web Development for Artists and Labels
Notable projects this year include website design/management for artists such as Andrew Malloy and Dan Brown, e-commerce score stores for Akua Dixon and Joseph Summer, and electronic press kits for Rain Worthington and Michael Evans.
Following the intensive redesign of the Navona and Ravello Records websites in 2021, the final stages of the project were completed this year with the launch of brand-new websites for Big Round and Ansonica Records.
The PARMA Creative web team integrated intuitive features and eye-catching aesthetics that enable viewers to browse with ease, all wrapped within a fresh yet familiar presentation. Additionally, PARMA artists across all four labels now have updated profile pages that include a headshot, bio, website and social media links, related PARMA blog posts, and a list of albums with links to their content and audio streaming on the label site.
Read more about the project and PARMA’s other web design endeavors here: parmarecordings.com/the-keys-to-effective-web-design
In Living Color: Video Production
Our video team specializes in producing high-quality visuals, including documentary shorts, in-studio recording sessions, live concerts, and more, and our 2022 saw a tremendous amount of new content drop.
Portland Symphony Orchestra concerts
Animated video for “The Toy Factory” by John Wineglass
Sizzle reel for our new album with the London Symphony Orchestra
The making of CURRENTS IN TIME
Putting Things in Motion: Animated Album Covers
PARMA did a deep dive into the world of design on a number of fronts this year. When working with album art, PARMA added another layer of dimension to albums with motion cover art, a feature that was showcased on INTO THE GREEN from Wesley Ferreira, THREE STORIES BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, and more.
Honors, Awards, and more in the PARMA Family
This year, PARMA was honored with a National Arts Award in the annual American Prize Independence Day Honors. Presented by The American Prize National Nonprofit Competitions in the Performing Arts, the award was given in recognition of “outstanding services to the performing arts.”
Numerous PARMA artists were also honored in this year’s American Prize competition.
Returning to Live Performances
Scene from Carl Vollrath’s opera The Quest | photo by: Emil Kyostebekov
Following years of reduced live performance opportunities, PARMA artists took to the stage in droves this year to concertize again. Anna Kislitsyna, Sirius Quartet, and many others performed at New York’s historic Carnegie Hall, and multiple PARMA artists and their music were featured at the annual Tanglewood Music Festival over the summer.
Dan Brown’s “Wild Symphony” continued its mission to bring families back to the concert hall with performances in Sarajevo, Sofia, Bilbao, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Portland, Portsmouth, and more. Upcoming performances include Iceland, Buffalo, Saginaw Bay, and many more: wildsymphony.com
The PARMA Live Stage saw a number of wonderful performances as well. From overseas productions with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, to concerts in the United States with Michael Evans and the Portland Youth Philharmonic, our artists gave remarkable performances this year, all of which are still available to view via the PARMA Live Stage archive.
Bernstein’s Legacy
Shepherded from its rediscovery to public performance by former Boston Symphony Orchestra librarian John Perkel, Leonard Bernstein’s long-lost Music for String Quartet is now set to receive its premiere studio recording and release, with a newly discovered second movement, as yet unheard publicly, to be included on the program.
The piece, composed by Bernstein in 1936 at age 18 while a student at Harvard University in Cambridge, will be performed by Lucia Lin, Natalie Rose Kress, Danny Kim, and Ronald Feldman, produced by PARMA Recordings, and released on Navona Records.
In the News:
For more press reactions to PARMA, our releases, and our artists browse our collection of press roundups.
In Memoriam
Amidst a year of impactful moments, we’re sad to say that we’ve lost some monumental members of the PARMA family. These artists leave us with a legacy that will play on and continue to inspire us for years to come, and we’re honored to have been a part of their journey.
