Earthy Records releases eligible for GRAMMY® nomination
Lyra
Best Contemporary Classical Composition
Best Chamber Music Performance
Lyra brings to life hybrid digital-acoustic atmospheres that surround the musicians, revealing a composer who is invested in exploring the dramatic potential of technology in ways that highlight, rather than diminish, the resonant beauty of acoustic instruments. Samuel Adams’s score imagines percussionist Andy Meyerson and guitarist Travis Andrews as one single hyperinstrument—a 21st century lyre—whose plucked and hammered sounds are mirrored with layers of computer-generated just-intoned resonance. The result is music that straddles the fragile and often imperceptible line between earthly and digital realms.
Music for Hard Times
Best New Age, Ambient Or Chant Album
Though its creators describe Music For Hard Times as a “New Age” album, the music is more experimental and adventurous than one might expect from such a label. Instead of spreading out on a flat, horizontal plane and acting as wallpaper, each track gently articulates emotional peaks and valleys. When composers speak of musical “architecture” we’re usually talking about form: what happens, when, for how long. But Music For Hard Times becomes a more literal sort of architecture in our minds as we participate in it; it’s a well-considered space to exist in for a while, one which merits attention without demanding it.