By Marke B.
Oh, MTT. You and your Grammy noms and your Nehru collars.
“I dare you to sit through San Francisco Symphony’s exhilarating new CD of Symphony No. 8, the so-called ‘Symphony of a Thousand,’ and not leave your body a few times,” some scallywag wrote in the Guardian a couple months ago. And the Grammy committee must have been lifted off its tippy-toes as well, because it just nominated the SFS — thrice! — for its absolutely heavenly recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8.
Behind the Mahler 8 scenes
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Best Classical Album, Best Choral Performance, and Best Engineered Classical Album are the relevant cats. The recording utilized an array of groundbreaking techniques that give it an almost 3-D sound, which is pretty awesome when you’re working with a huge orchestra and chorus of almost literally a thousand. If you pick up one classic classical release this year, this one should be it. (And if you pick up one avant-classical release, try this.) Also nominated for a bunch of stuff: some Green Day people or whoever.
PS: The Bay’s own jazzy Latinist, John Santos, who also scored a Grammy nom nod in the World Music category, will be performing at the SFS’s uniquely nightlife-oriented Davies After Hours shindig on January 15.