Visions and Variations

Dreams and Prayers featuring A Far Cry and David Krakauer is one of the all-time best-selling DSD albums at Native DSD Music. It also introduced our headphone listeners to the joys of Binaural DSD music and was one of our initial releases in DSD 128 Stereo.

Now the talented ensemble of 17 musicians of A Far Cry brings us their newest release Visions and Variations, an album nominated for 2 Grammy Awards (Best Engineered Album – Classical and Best Chamber Music – Small Ensemble Performance), that features the music of Benjamin Britten, Ethan Wood, and Sergei Prokofiev. The album was recorded at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, MA by Producer Jesse Lewis and Recording Engineer Tom Caulfield in DSD 256 Stereo, Surround Sound and Binaural. One listen to this album in DSD will quickly tell you why this is a multi-Grammy nominated performance!

This is a DSD Exclusive release, Not Available on SACD. You can get it at the NativeDSD Music store in Stereo, Surround Sound and Binaural DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64, and DXD.

The Criers say “Each of the three selections on this album offers a journey into one miniature world after another. Every one colorful, characterful, complete. Just as the Criers strive to honor each musician’s individual voice in the context of something larger, these works contextualize dozens of distinct visions, pulling them together into a wonderful form of unity. We hope you’ll be as inspired and captivated by these fleeting glimpses, and the stories they suggest, as we are.”

The Native DSD Blog notes “Visions and Variations is the double Grammy Award-nominated new album from Crier Records featuring A Far Cry, one of America’s premiere chamber orchestras. In works by Britten, Prokofiev, and a Mozart-inspired premiere from Ethan Wood, this album features some of the most characterful and beloved music ever written for strings.

Variations on a Theme – alchemical. A set of variations is a chance to bring small disparate units together to create a sum greater than the totality of its parts. Just like the Criers, each individual movement is a complete world, but the worlds combine and transform – they play with each other, they reference each other, and before you know it you’re standing in a world that is bigger and more beautiful than you ever imagined.

You know that you’re in for a journey, but it’s the type of journey that’s not about the destination – it’s a journey filled with beautiful sights along the way. It’s a kind of traveling that we don’t really do anymore – like walking rather than taking the subway, gives you an appreciation for the totality, the greater beauty.

Prokoviev’s a bunch of visions, but so is Wood and Britten. Ethan also had his own vision in re-imagining the Mozart. With this album, we invite the listener into the world of three of our favorite pieces. Perhaps in them, we see a reflection of ourselves – each individual movement a complete world but interacting, playing, referencing each other, they combine into something greater… We hope you’re inspired and distracted by these glimpses, these visions, and variations, as are we.

Glimpses, sketches – small parts that combine, like the Power Rangers. But when brought together, something newer and larger emerges. Perhaps that’s why we love these sets of variations – in them, we see a reflection of ourselves. Musicians coming together to create a VISION which honors each individual voice, but which transcends them All!”