A broad range of recordings featuring works by Wise Music composers have been nominated for the 2026 GRAMMY Awards, striking a chord across many categories. We congratulate the many artists, engineers, producers, and organizations that brought these recordings to fruition, and eagerly anticipate the announcement of the award winners on February 1, 2026.
Best Contemporary Classical Composition
Donnacha Dennehy: Land of Winter
Donnacha Dennehy, composer (Alan Pierson & Alarm Will Sound)
Land of Winter racks up two nominations this year, first in the prized “Best Contemporary Classical Composition” category. As The Wire observes, “Dennehy’s naturalistic inspiration is translated into music […] that is vividly present, yet subtly variegated in texture and coloration […] Its sections have been contrived to mirror the months of the passing year, yet overall this engrossing composition conveys organic flow rather than programmatic sequence.”
Best Engineered Album, Classical
Julius Eastman: Symphony No. II; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2
Gintas Norvila, engineer; Jennifer Nulsen, mastering engineer (Franz Welser-Möst & The Cleveland Orchestra)
The Cleveland Orchestra’s beautiful rendition of the only symphony by Julius Eastman is dark, rich, and patient. As Gramophone notes, “Eastman (1940-1990) was an experimentalist and provocateur, but in this atmospheric work — composed as a gift for a former lover to mark the end of their tumultuous affair — there’s nothing but aching sincerity.”
Dmitri Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
Shawn Murphy & Nick Squire, engineers; Tim Martyn, mastering engineer (Andris Nelsons, Kristine Opolais, Günther Groissböck, Peter Hoare, Brenden Gunnell & Boston Symphony Orchestra)
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is widely considered Dmitri Shostakovich’s most ambitious stage work, filled with “some of [his] most savagely ironic and parodic invention” (The Guardian). Shostakovich has long been one of conductor Andris Nelsons calling cards with the vaunted Boston Symphony Orchestra, and this recording is likewise on of their most ambitious to date, featuring an impressive cast that including Kristine Opolais, Brenden Gunnell, Günther Groissböck, and Peter Hoare.
Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance
Donnacha Dennehy: Land of Winter
Alan Pierson & Alarm Will Sound
Land of Winter is a remarkable 52-minute exploration of the changing light and weather across the seasons of Dennehy’s homeland of Ireland, performed with characteristic virtuosity and poignant subtlety by new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound under the baton of Alan Pierson. In a 5-star review of the album, BBC Music Magazine called the album "propulsive yet static, intensely melancholic yet knowingly playful."
Best Classical Instrumental Solo
Inheritances
Adam Tendler
Pianist Adam Tendler’s Inheritances project involved commissioning 16 composers using the money he inherited upon his father’s death. The album is a direct result of this beautiful processing of grief and includes two remarkable piano solos by Wise Music composers Missy Mazzoli and Sarah Kirkland Snider. Mazzoli’s taut Forgiveness Machine “opens with nervy, high-register oscillations that give way to grave bass interjections, before making space for a more relaxed treatment of melody in its middle section” (The New York Times). The “rich chorale” (Sequenza 21) of Snider’s the plum tree I planted still there is tender and contemplative.
Florence Price: Piano Concerto in One Movement in D Minor
Han Chen; John Jeter, conductor (Malmö Opera Orchestra)
Florence Price has enjoyed a richly deserved swell of interest over the past few years. Her Piano Concerto in One Movement is a masterpiece of both economy and emotional breadth; as The Philadelphia Inquirer writes, “Listeners marvel at the concentrated musical language Beethoven used in some of his late works. But here is Price moving from storm to carefree summer idyll to ecstatic joy — so deftly, with so many other more subtle emotional messages along the way — in well under 20 minutes.”
Dmitri Shostakovich: “The Cello Concertos”
Yo-Yo Ma; Andris Nelsons, conductor (Boston Symphony Orchestra)
The Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelson’s depth of interpretation for the catalogue of Dmitri Shostakovich was given the nod again here — this time for a compelling performance of Shostakovich’s cello concerti with living legend Yo-Yo Ma. Cello Concerto No. 1 firmly established Yo-Yo Ma on the international scene decades ago, and it is fascinating to hear the maturation and change in his rendition here. By contrast, this is his first recording of Cello Concerto No. 2, but “its initial Adagio brings out the best in this partnership, with sombre inwardness balanced by mounting agitation” (Gramophone).
Dmitri Shostakovich: “The Piano Concertos; Solo Works”
Yuja Wang; Andris Nelsons, conductor (Boston Symphony Orchestra)
A third nomination for Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s recent Shostakovich recordings rounds out this category, given to a brilliant pair of piano concerti and set of solo works performed with superstar pianist Yuja Wang. In Concerto for Piano No. 1, “her way with the […] Lento — its mock-baleful, world-weary waltz — is as dreamy and confiding as her brio elsewhere is infectious” (Gramophone). In Concerto for Piano No. 2, “Shostakovich veers away from gaiety and abandon to a gentler idiom, though touches of parody are never far away […] again, Yuja Wang’s response is vivacious and bright as a pin.”
Best Classical Solo Vocal Album
In This Short Life
Devony Smith, soloist; Danny Zelibor, pianist; Michael Nicolas, artist
Mezzo-soprano Devony Smith and pianist Danny Zelibor’s debut album is “is a bold, all-American tapestry woven from new and rarely heard works” (Classical Post). The longest work on the album is a beautifully varied cycle of five songs by Mark Adamo entitled The Racer’s Widow, presented in its premiere recording. As always, Adamo’s talent for musical narrative and his “way with a nostalgic bittersweet lyricism” (South Florida Sun Sentinel) is in full force.
Best Global Music Performance
Daybreak
Anoushka Shankar featuring Alam Khan & Sarathy Korwar
The opening track of acclaimed sitarist, composer, author, and curator Anoushka Shankar’s newest album, “Daybreak,” features “sun-dappled sitar tracing languid loops over Alam Khan’s sarod, before Sarathy Korwar’s feather-light percussion brings in a sense of urgency and forward momentum” (Pitchfork).
Best Global Music Album
Chapter III: We Return To Light
Anoushka Shankar featuring Alam Khan & Sarathy Korwar
Following on the success of Shankar’s previous two album “chapters,” Chapter I: Forever, For Now and Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before Dawn, this final album of the trilogy is marked by a poignant mood of renewal and hard-won optimism. Pitchfork calls it “the clearest expression yet of Shankar’s vision for contemporary Indian music, where looking back and moving forward are not opposing forces but part of the same motion.”
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