CROWN SHYNESS Album From Francesca Gaza Out Now via New Amsterdam Records
The Kugelförmigkeit Ensemble unites baroque, Renaissance, and contemporary instruments across ten compositions.
Out today is Crown Shyness by Francesca Gaza, the composer, singer, pianist, and conductor. Performed by Francesca Gaza and her Kugelförmigkeit Ensemble, the group traces intimate soundscapes built from distinct architectural layers that never collapse into each other, but rather remain delicately interwoven: close, fragile, and alive with quirky tension and breath. The compositions, written specifically for the ensemble's rare cross-genre mix of early music, jazz, and contemporary instruments, create a genre-defiant, textured, and layered work. Much like the treetops, each instrument, timbre, and gesture holds its own space—intimately close, yet never collapsing into the other—while contributing to a larger organic structure. The result is a kind of musical ecology; a fragile, breathing system that maps presence and memory without overpowering it.
About The Kugelförmigkeit Ensemble
The Kugelförmigkeit Ensemble, founded and directed by Gaza in 2021, functions as a compositional laboratory, bringing historical and contemporary instruments into a shared sonic language. The album features performances by: Ana Čop and Francesca Gaza (voice), Eleonora Bišćević (baroque flute), Julija Vrabec (clarinet, bass clarinet), Adrian King (trombone), Martín Theurillat (electric guitar), Nacho Laguna (theorbo), Iannis Obiols (virginal & piano), Giulio Tanasini (viola da gamba), Nadav Erlich (double bass), and Mattia Galeotti (drums).
About Francesca Gaza
Francesca Gaza composes, sings, plays piano, and conducts. Her work inhabits the borders between new music, songwriting, jazz, and early music - shaped by literature, poetry, and a deep curiosity about how distant things can resonate. Her music is characterized by finely shaped textures, unexpected timbral combinations, and a sensitivity to space, memory, and sonic presence.
Her compositions have been commissioned by ensembles including Il Pomo d'Oro, Ensemble Proton Bern, and PourChoeur, and she leads her own projects across Europe as both composer and performer. Born in Germany to an Italian mother and Romanian father, she is based between Basel and Florence.
Crown Shyness, her American debut, is the second album by her Kugelförmigkeit Ensemble—a group she founded and directs, uniting baroque, Renaissance, and contemporary instruments into a shared sonic language.
About New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam is a Brooklyn-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit artist's service organization dedicated to supporting new music by composers and performers whose work transcends traditional and outdated genre distinctions. The label's artists have won numerous awards and accolades, including two Grammy Awards, seventeen Grammy nominations, and a Pulitzer Prize. New Amsterdam has also curated and presented more than 500 live concerts of groundbreaking new music. In recent years, the label embarked on a partnership with Nonesuch Records, seeing the release of approximately three albums per year to support contemporary American composers in realizing ambitious creative projects.
