Composer Jake Runestad, standing, and pianist Jeffrey Biegel look over the score during the 2023 recording session for โ€œA Dream So Bright.โ€ The album was nominated Friday for a Grammy.

True Concord Voices & Orchestra landed its second Grammy nomination on Friday for โ€œA Dream So Bright: Choral Music of Jake Runestad,โ€ released in August.

The Tucson ensemble is up for the 2025 Best Choral Performance Grammy for the album, which featured pianist Jeffrey Biegel. True Concord founder and music director Eric Holtan conducted the performance.

Get a sneak peek at a recording session of โ€œDreams of the Fallenโ€ and โ€œEarth Symphonyโ€ with True Concord Voices & Orchestra.

The nod follows True Concordโ€™s 2015 Best Choral Performance nomination for โ€œFar in the Heavens: Choral Music of Stephen Paulus.โ€ The ensemble, now in its 21st season, lost, but Paulus won a Best Contemporary Classical Composition Grammy for the albumโ€™s centerpiece โ€œPrayers & Remembrances,โ€ commissioned by True Concord in 2011 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Paulus, who died in 2014, was awarded posthumously.

True Concord is the only classical music ensemble from Tucson to ever get a Grammy nomination.

โ€œWeโ€™re thrilled with this one,โ€ Holtan said Friday. โ€œI definitely thought it was worthy of consideration. Jake is one of Americaโ€™s rising stars as a composer and he wrote two incredible pieces of music on two critically important topics.โ€

The album, on Reference Recordings, garnered critical acclaim, with Fanfare saying it had โ€œexceptionally fine music that has something original and important to say.โ€

Gramophone said the album makes โ€œa forceful social statement โ€ฆ that comes through with bold and sensitive resolveโ€ while Remy Franckโ€™s Luxembourg-based online classical music blog Pizzicato called it โ€œevocative, effective and musically brilliant, and truly exciting in this magnificent performance.โ€

โ€œA Dream So Brightโ€ is anchored by the True Concord-commission โ€œEarth Symphony,โ€ which explores the human cost of climate change. It opens with Runestadโ€™s โ€œDreams of the Fallen,โ€ commissioned by Biegel with text by American veteran-turned-poet Brian Turner that explores the harsh realism of battle.

โ€œI think the themes of the music probably resonated with members of the (Recording) Academy,โ€ Holtan said of the organization that presents the Grammys. โ€œCertainly the beauty and compelling nature of Jakeโ€™s writing and the poetry; the libretto that we commissioned of Todd Boss for โ€˜Earth Symphony,โ€™ to me, is itself worthy of recognition.โ€

True Concord Voices & Orchestra recorded โ€œA Dream So Brightโ€ in Phoenix in May 2023. The album was nominated Friday for a Grammy.

True Concord recorded the album in May 2023 at Paradise Valleyโ€™s Camelback Bible Church with producer Peter Rutenberg, who also produced โ€œFar In the Heavens.โ€

Holtan said the Grammy nomination โ€œis a very strong affirmation of the artistic quality of our organization,โ€ adding that he wished Runestad had been nominated for โ€œEarth Symphonyโ€ or โ€œDreams of the Fallen.โ€ โ€œEarth Symphonyโ€ did win an Emmy Award in 2022 and โ€œDreamsโ€ took home the prestigious Morton Gould Young Composer Award from the ASCAP Foundation in 2013.

True Concord finished its next recording โ€œHear I Am: Music of Jocelyn Hagenโ€ in May; it is expected to be released next year.

The Grammys will be awarded Feb. 2, 2025, in Los Angeles.


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Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com. On Twitter @Starburch