ARTISTS: Carl DuPont and Chiarina Chamber Players
COMPOSER: Carlos Simon
LABEL: Azica
RELEASE DATE: August 22, 2025
CATALOG NO.: ACD-71380
GRAMMY® CATEGORY SUBMISSION:
Best Classical Compendium
Best Contemporary Classical Composition
This album portrait of Carlos Simon grew out of a commission, The Best Cuisine, which was funded by a grant from Chamber Music America and composed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The artists on this album presented the work’s premiere in Washington, DC in 2022.
At its core is a spirit of collaboration — a coming together of art song and culinary flair, musical styles, and friendships — during a time that was otherwise quite solitary. Its text, written by baritone Carl DuPont, celebrates the craft of cooking that both he and Simon honed during the pandemic.
With newfound inspiration drawn from the multifacetedness of Simon’s compositional voice, DuPont and violinist Domenic Salerni, cellist Carrie Bean Stute, and pianist Efi Hackmey returned to Chiarina’s longtime venue, the historic St. Mark’s Church in Capitol Hill, to record The Best Cuisine and additional works for combinations of violin, cello, piano, and baritone. While Simon has more recently become known for his large-scale works, this album highlights Simon’s versatility and expressive range in works for more intimate performing forces.
Click here to read commentary from Carlos about the works featured on the album.
Click here for texts to vocal works
Carlos Simon’s music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism. Simon is the Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the inaugural Boston Symphony Orchestra Composer Chair, and Associate Professor at Georgetown University. Simon earned his doctorate at the University of Michigan and also received degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College.
He has written commissions for the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera, Sphinx Organization, Glimmerglass Festival, and others. Simon has released three albums on Decca — Together; brea(d)th; and Requiem for the Enslaved, which earned a 2023 Grammy nomination — as well as the NSO’s 2024 album Four Symphonic Works.
Simon’s work spans genres, taking great inspiration from liturgical texts and writers such as Terrance Hayes, Colson Whitehead, Lynn Nottage, Emma Lazarus, Isabel Wilkerson, Ruby Aiyo Gerber, and Courtney Ware Lett, as well as the art of Romare Bearden.
A modern major composer: an artist whose windows are thrown wide open to the world, and whose musical scope of late lands like a grand panorama of American life.
– The Washington Post
Founded in 2015 by pianist Efi Hackmey and cellist Carrie Bean Stute, Chiarina — a hybrid of chamber music series and performer collective — brings distinctive chamber music performances and innovative programming to an intimate setting in Washington, DC’s historic Capitol Hill neighborhood. Recognized in the Washington Post as “relentlessly compelling” and an ensemble of “formidable talents,” Chiarina is the recipient of grants from Chamber Music America, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the Capitol Hill Community Foundation. Featured regularly on Classical WETA’s Front Row Washington, Chiarina’s collaborative and diverse roster includes Grammy award-winning ensembles, trailblazing composers, and leading performers in the field of chamber music. Chiarina believes that chamber music is a living art form and that its collaborative synergy represents the potential for unity and teamwork in a community — and in the world at large.
Led by artistic directors Efi Hackmey and cellist Carrie Bean Stute, the buzzy Chiarina Chamber Players put on some of the most compelling chamber programs in town.
– The Washington Post
Carl DuPont is an artist, innovator, and educator dedicated to Transformational Inclusion and Care of the Professional Voice. His “rich, nuanced baritone” (Columbus Underground) has held center stage in performances at the New York City Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Maryland Opera, Leipzig Opera, Opera Carolina, Opera Columbus, Annapolis Opera Company, First Coast Opera, Toledo Opera, Opera Saratoga, Sarasota Opera, Cedar Rapids Opera, El Palacio de Bellas Artes, Opera Company of Brooklyn, and The IN Series. Recent roles include Colline in La Bohème, Hawkins Fuller in Fellow Travelers, Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville, Leporello in Don Giovanni, and the title role in Mendelssohn’s Elijah. DuPont can be heard on the world premiere recordings of the Caldara Mass in A Major, The Death of Webern, and his solo album, The Reaction. He currently serves as an associate professor of vocal studies at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.
Carl DuPont is firm of conviction and sings with a lyricism that underpins every statement.
– Fanfare Magazine
“[Simon’s] scores often sound as if they believe, sincerely yet humbly, in their own power to make a difference.”
– New York Times“Lickety Split, from Kennedy Center composer-in-residence Carlos Simon, brought together a riot of effects in the cello with elements of jazz and blues in a quick-witted miniature.”
– Washington Classical ReviewChiarina’s world premiere performance of The Best Cuisine was selected as one of the Top Ten Performances of 2022.
– Washington Classical Review“‘Roux’ was a swiftly swirling waltz, perhaps recalling Ravel’s La Valse or a tarantella, that spun wildly as DuPont spoke, sang…”
– Washington Classical Review