Concerti Magazine: "Successful Debut" of Transatlantic

From Concerti Magazine (click here to read in the original German)

Successful debut

© Kiran West

Under the direction of Garrett Keast, the newly founded Berlin Academy of American Music succeeds in making its album debut with works from overseas.

By Eckhard Weber, November 24, 2021

When the pandemic completely thwarted the concert sector, the Berlin-based US conductor Garrett Keast dared to venture out together with like-minded people: They founded a new chamber orchestra, the Berlin Academy of American Music. The debut album makes you sit up and take notice. The collected pieces, from modern classics to today’s contemporaries, are designed with fine work in detail and with a dynamic pull on a large scale. This becomes clear in Stravinsky's “Dumbarton Oaks” concerto: the interpretation is fresh, transparent, sculptural, crisply articulated, and intensely colored. The atmosphere is conjured up in the “seascapes” from Takemitsu and at Copland's “Appalachian Spring”. In Craig Urquhart's “Lamentation”, flautist Stathis Karapanos and the orchestra find the subtle nuances in a type of spherical floating. And with Avner Dorman's “Nofim (Sights)”, soprano Chen Reiss and the musicians demonstrate musical and dramatic qualities. Successful debut!

Transatlantic

Works by Stravinsky, Urquhart, Copland, Dorman, and Takemitsu.

Chen Reiss (soprano), Stathis Karapanos (flute), Berlin Academy of American Music, Garrett Keast (conductor)

Onyx