As reported here at the announcement of GRAMMY nominations, looking for classical music artists and local honorees among the award winners takes work... but we are here for you and here they are:
• The San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, conducted by George Manahan (who will also lead San Francisco Opera's world premiere of Bright Sheng’s Dream of the Red Chamber in the fall), is featured in Laura Karpman's Ask Your Mama, named winner of Best Engineered Album and Best Producer of the Year (Classical). The work is four-time Emmy-winning composer Karpman's music to Langston Hughes' 1961 poetry, performed by sopranos Janai Brugger and Angela Brown, hip-hop innovators The Roots and Medusa, jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon.
• Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony won the Best Orchestral Performance award for their Deutsche Grammophon recording of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10. (The San Francisco Symphony, which has been nominated for 19 GRAMMYs and won 15 awards, was not nominated this year.)
• Best Opera Recording winners are Seiji Ozawa and the Saito Kinen Orchestra, and soprano Isabel Leonard, in Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortilèges. (Former San Francisco Opera Music Director Donald Runnicles' recording of Janácek's Jenufa, with Deutsche Oper Berlin, was among nominees.)
• Charles Bruffy and the Kansas City Chorale were named winners of Best Choral Performance for their recording of Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil.
• eighth blackbird has won another Best Chamber Music GRAMMY for Filament on Cedille Records.
• Best Classical Instrumental Solo went to Augustin Hadelich, Ludovic Morlot-Seattle Symphony, for performing the music of Dutilleux.
• Joyce DiDonato, accompanied by Antonio Pappano, won Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for Joyce & Tony - Live from Wigmore Hall on Erato.
• Stephen Paulus, composer of the 1982 opera The Postman Always Rings Twice, has won both Best Contemporary Classical Composition with Prayers & Remembrances and Best Classical Compendium with Three Places Of Enlightenment.