CARLOS SIMON ANNOUNCES NEW ALBUM ‘TOGETHER’ ON DECCA CLASSICS, WITH FIRST SINGLE ‘NEAR THE CROSS’ OUT NOW
28/7/2023
GRAMMY-nominated composer, pianist and curator Carlos Simon will release his new album Together on 8 September globally via Decca Classics. The 10-track project collates and celebrates the multifaceted layers of Carlos’ personality, upbringing, and musical understanding.
In addition to performing on a number of tracks, Carlos has enlisted violinist and fellow Decca recording artist Randall Goosby, two-times GRAMMY Award-winning mezzo J’Nai Bridges (“the ‘Beyoncé of opera” — BET), acclaimed GRAMMY Award-winning baritone Will Liverman and GRAMMY-nominated rising star cellist Seth Parker Woods. The album also features contributions from the Carlos Simon Collective, a group that Simon founded and conducted.
Carlos describes the album as “a record that is truly representative of my musical life right now, one of collaboration, improvisation and pure music-making.”
This is his second album on Decca, following on from the GRAMMY-nominated album Requiem for the Enslaved, which was released in June 2022.
Together marks another major success in a momentous year for Carlos, which has already seen his new work Four Black American Dances premiered by Boston Symphony and Andris Nelsons, the trombone concerto Troubled Water by Detroit Symphony and Kenneth Thompkins, Songs of Separation with J’Nai Bridges, Giannandrea Noseda and National Symphony Orchestra. Later this year, we see UK premieres of Four Black American Dances at the BBC Proms, premieres of his new Concerto for Orchestra with San Diego Symphony and Raphael Payare as well as his first multi-episode television series score, which will be aired in winter 2023.
Earlier this summer, the Minnesota Orchestra premiered what The New York Times called “arguably the most important commission of Simon’s career so far”: brea(d)th, Simon’s work that commemorates the murder of George Floyd and honours the ongoing struggle for racial justice in Minnesota and beyond.
Presave the album and listen to the first single here.