Brahms Works For Cello And Piano

It's the first time the cellist has paired on record with pianist and longtime friend Awadagin Pratt. The two have been performing live together since 1998, although they first met over a ping-pong table as students a dozen years before that.

Bailey says, "Of all the records I've made, this is the one I'm most proud of. It was a great experience working in the studio with one of my oldest friends, and I feel like Awadagin and I really caught the comet's tail on this one - it was intense, that's for sure. We worked incredibly hard, and we recorded about 80 minutes of music, trying to encompass everything Brahms does, from the boldly passionate to the beautifully lyrical."

Along with Johannes Brahms' Cello Sonata in E Minor (1865) and the Cello Sonata in F Major (1886), the album includes the composer's "Sonatensatz" (transcribed for the cello from the violin original) as well as transcriptions for cello and piano of seven of his songs (including the world-famous "Wiegenlied," or "Brahms' Lullaby"). The disc, produced by Grammy Award-winners Elaine Martone and Robert Woods, was the first recording made in the Oberlin Conservatory of Music's new state-of-the-art studio facility.

"The music of Brahms feels perfect for the cello," Bailey says. "It's so from the earth that there is something almost molten about it. And the engineers were able to deliver a bloom to the sound for this record that was ideal - it just glows, with the piano like a magic carpet. The Oberlin studio is the quietest I've ever been in, with zero extraneous noises; it was wonderfully freeing for us."