Spoleto Festival USA Releases Live Chamber Music Album 'Vivaldi Meets Vahdat'
The Phenotypic Recordings release is part of an exclusive multi-project partnership with Apple Music Classical
Spoleto Festival USA and Phenotypic Recordings has unveiled Live from Spoleto 2025: Chamber Music, Vol. 2 “Vivaldi Meets Vahdat,” the second installment in a two-album collection capturing performances from the Festival's Bank of America Chamber Music series.
The series is presented as part of its exclusive multi-project partnership with Apple Music Classical.
“Spoleto is about adventure and excitement—about how different art forms can collide with each other to create something new,” said Spoleto Festival USA General Director and CEO Dr. Mena Mark Hanna. “Chamber music is one of the Festival's core artistic pillars, and these recordings reflect the same spirit of curiosity, daring, and immediacy that defines Spoleto Festival USA as a whole.”
Recorded live during Spoleto Festival USA's concentrated 17-day run in Charleston, South Carolina, Live from Spoleto 2025: Chamber Music, Vol. 2 “Vivaldi Meets Vahdat” brings listeners inside the historic Dock Street Theatre, capturing performances as they happen in real time, shaped by proximity, trust, and musicians listening closely to one another. The album expands the sense of dialogue across time and culture, interweaving songs by Iranian vocalist and 2025 Spoleto Festival USA, Suzan D. Boyd Composer-in-Residence Mahsa Vahdat with movements from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. The result is a single, continuous arc rather than a set of contrasts, in which Persian song and Baroque concerto speak directly to one another, reframing both traditions through sustained listening and shared space.
The album's first single, Mahsa Vahdat's “Dialogue With the Beloved,” landed in April exclusively via Apple Music Classical. Structured as an intimate exchange between voice and instruments, “Dialogue With the Beloved” emphasizes clarity of text and sustained melodic phrasing. The ensemble provides a supportive, transparent framework that underscores the song's contemplative character. The track is performed by Mahsa Vahdat (voice), Daniel Chong (violin), Daniel Phillips (violin), Geneva Lewis (violin), Livia Sohn (violin), Jessica Bodner (viola), Ayane Kozasa (viola), Raman Ramakrishnan (cello), Paul Wiancko (cello), Anthony Manzo (bass) and Pedja Mužijević (piano).
The new album follows the release of Live from Spoleto 2025: Chamber Music, Vol. 1, which set the stage for this second installment with a program that moves fluidly across styles and traditions. The first volume opens with Dinuk Wijeratne's Love Triangle, a volatile, open-ended work in which jazz impulses and South Asian inflections push against classical form. Elsewhere, familiar works are reshaped by the conditions of live performance: Borodin's Nocturne from his String Quartet No. 2 in D major unfolds as a shared moment of repose, while Pedro Iturralde's Pequeña Czarda brings an earthy, improvisatory edge through Steven Banks' saxophone.
Curated by Paul Wiancko, the Charles E. and Andrea L. Volpe Director of Chamber Music, the two albums are guided by an interest in music that feels alive in performance. “I look for the energy of improvisation in everything,” said Wiancko. “Music played with such deep understanding that it feels newly invented each time.”
Taken together, the two Live from Spoleto 2025: Chamber Music albums offer a vivid portrait of the Festival's chamber music series in full flight, capturing not only performances, but the spirit of a festival where music is made in the moment: alive, unfiltered, and shared.=
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