
When Grammy nominees gather to find who gets the music recording industry’s top prizes Monday, Nashville will be well represented — and not just in the genres Music City is known for.
From Nashville Symphony’s 2015 album of music by Joan Tower, which was partially funded through Kickstarter, the track “Stroke” is up for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.
Two other nominees in that category will sound familiar to local audiences: There’s a piece by Julia Wolfe, who appeared at Intersection’s fall concert to play one of her compositions with them, and another nod in the composition category goes to a work by Stephen Paulus, who was the subject of an entire album by the Nashville Symphony.
In fact, that album — the symphony’s recording of Paulus’s Three Places of Enlightenment, Veil of Tears and Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra — is nominated for Best Classical Compendium. The CD was released in October 2014 (the start of this year’s Grammy eligibility period); the composer died in the same month. In all, three different recordings of his work are nominated in three different categories this time.
Of course, the symphony’s nominations are also accolades for its recording label, Franklin-based Naxos of America. The company is also represented in the Orchestral Performance and Classical Solo Vocal categories, plus more than thirty nominations for labels that Naxos distributes.
Both producing categories in the Grammys include nominations with Nashville ties. On the classical side, Blanton Alspaugh is up for his work on a handful of recordings, including the Nashville Symphony’s Joan Tower album. Music Row’s Dave Cobb is in the running in the Producer, Non-Classical category.
Meanwhile, Jack White’s SoBro rock and indie label Third Man Records is nominated for its inventive packaging, both for The Rise & Fall of Paramount Records, Vol. 2 and for its re-release of the early Elvis recording “My Happiness.”
And once again, music from the Glen Campbell documentary “I’ll Be Me” is nominated in a soundtrack category. The film premiered at the Nashville Film Festival nearly two years ago, and both the film and its music were honored at last year’s Oscars and Grammys. But the full soundtrack wasn’t released until February of 2015, which makes the music eligible again for this cycle of awards.
But don’t look for any of these awards to be given out during the Grammy telecast. Only eight prizes are given away during that show, while nearly 80 others are handed out at a ceremony earlier in the day.
