Kevin Puts, TF3 Among Classical Music Winners At 2023 Grammy Awards

Composer Kevin Puts and the genre-surfing classically-trained string trip and vocalists Time For Three (TF3) were among the winners in the classical music, opera, music theatre, jazz and visual media/film categories at the 65th Grammy Awards ceremony at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.

Deutsche Grammophon album Letters for the Future won not one but two Grammys. Letters for the Future comprises the world premiere recordings of two concertos by Pulitzer Prize-winning composers Kevin Puts and Jennifer Higdon. Both works were specially commissioned for genre-surfing classically trained string trio and vocalists Time for Three (TF3), who recorded them for their debut DG album, in company with The Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Xian Zhang.

Kevin Puts also won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for Contact. His musically rich and technically demanding concerto grew out of experimentation with the ideas of unexplored frontiers and the greater beyond, and was also influenced by the isolation imposed by the pandemic.

The musicians of TF3 – violinists Nicolas (Nick) Kendall and Charles Yang, and bassist Ranaan Meyer – were presented with the award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo, a category in which Deutsche Grammophon with albums by Hilary Hahn and Daniil Trifonov had garnered three out of five nominations.

“I send my heartfelt congratulations to Time for Three and Kevin Puts, as well as to everyone else involved in making the outstanding Letters for the Future album,” says Dr Clemens Trautmann, President Deutsche Grammophon.

“The album underlines the desire for brand-new credible music and fresh constellations in classical music. Deutsche Grammophon remains committed to contemporary projects, as illustrated by this year’s nominations for Hilary Hahn and Andris Nelsons with premiere recordings of works by Michael Abels and Sofia Gubaidulina. It is hugely encouraging to see our efforts honored once again by the Recording Academy.”

Also, at this year’s awards, one of the great conductors of the 20th century has been knocked off his perch as all-time Grammy Award winner.

Beyoncé has overtaken Georg Solti to become the most decorated Grammy artist of all time. She made history at the Los Angeles ceremony overnight as she won best dance/electronic album for Renaissance. The win brings her career Grammy total to 32 awards.

The 41-year-old singer also won for best R&B song, best dance/electronic recording and best traditional R&B performance.

British-Hungarian conductor Solti collected a total of 31 Grammys over his career: an achievement which stood for over 20 years. He had been nominated 74 times. The maestro was music director of the Royal Opera House from 1961–1971. In a glittering career he conducted the world’s greatest orchestras, with particular acclaim for his performances of Wagner and Mahler. The maestro won his final Grammy, his release of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The winners in the classical music, opera, music theatre, jazz and visual media/film categories at the 2023 Grammy Awards are as follows:

Best Opera Recording: The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and The Metropolitan Opera Chorus (for Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones)
Best Classical Instrumental Solo: Letters for the Future
Best Classical Solo Vocal Album – Voice Of Nature – The Anthropocene
(Renée Fleming, soloist; Yannick Nézet-Séguin, pianist)
Best Contemporary Classical Composition: Kevin Puts – Contact
(Kevin Puts, composer (Xian Zhang, Time for Three & The Philadelphia Orchestra))
Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance: Attacca Quartet (for Caroline Shaw’s Evergreen)
Best Orchestral Performance: New York Youth Symphony (for works by Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery and Valerie Coleman)
Classical Producer of the Year: Judith Sherman
Best Engineered Album (Classical): Edwin Outwater and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for composer/DJ Mason Bates’ Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra.
Best Classical Compendium: Kitt Wakeley for An Adoption Story.
Best Film Music: Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story soundtrack
Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media: Germaine Franco for animated feature film Encanto
Large Jazz Ensemble Album: Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra
Best Musical Theatre Album: The 2022 Broadway Cast Recording of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods
Best Jazz Instrumental Album: New Standards Vol. 1 (featuring Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, Linda May Han Oh, Nicholas Payton and Matthew Stevens)
Best Jazz Vocal album: Samara Joy for Linger Awhile.
Best Improvised Jazz Solo: Wayne Shorter and Leo Genovese.