Nancy Braithwaite, clarinetist
Review in the New York Music Daily by delarue
A Brilliant New Album of Haunting Works by Obscure Composer Edith Hemenway
"Clarinetist Nancy Braithwaite‘s new quintet album To Paradise For Onions: Songs and Chamber Works of Edith Hemenway (streaming at Spotify) isn’t just darkly delightful obscurities. It’s a major achievement, the first-ever recording of Hemenway’s compositions. What an incredible find. While there are echoes as diverse as the French early modernists, Messiaen, Berg and Bernard Herrmann in her work, her sound is unmistakably her own. The thirty picturesque pieces on this deceptively epic album, many of them miniatures, pack a great deal into a little space. They’re accessible but acerbic, often troubled and melancholy, sometimes macabre. To call much of this material Lynchian is an understatement. It is astonishing that such impactful music has been overlooked for so long – and kudos to Braithwaite for having the vision to release it."
Review by Raul de Gama in World Music Report
"This is music of ravishing beauty, played with aristocratic grace and masterful psychological ambiguity. It is also music performed with insolently effortless and debonair virtuosity, and with appropriate deference evoking the language of the requisite poetry as few could even hope to try."
Review from A tumblelog by C. Michael Bailey
"Hemenway’s music is art music that stands side-by-side with Charles Ives, Edward McDowall, and Walter Piston. This recital tests the miscibility of the human voice with instrumental music. Braithwaite is impressive throughout; her labor of love fully realized and presented."
Review in All About Jazz By HRAYR ATTARIAN
"Edith Hemenway wrote some of the most sublimely impressionistic music of the 20th century. Yet, outside of a small circle of aficionados and admirers, she remains virtually unknown. Unfortunately, despite her long career, To Paradise with Onions is the first time her work has been released on disc. Produced by longtime collaborator, clarinetist Nancy Brathwaite, this exquisite album consists of six of Hemenway's literature-inspired suites."
The American Prize
We entered this CD in The American Prize competition in 2021.
Edith Hemenway won Honorable Mention for the composition of Vocal Chamber Music for her work" A Child's Garden of Verses" for soprano, clarinet and piano.
In addition Claron McFadden, soprano; Roberta Alexander, soprano and Vaughan Schlepp, piano won 3rd prize for their performance of "Four Poems of Langston Hughes.
The ensemble also reached the semi-finals of the competition for their performances of "Questions of Travel", "Asian Figures" and "A Child's Garden".
Review by John Hammel on Home Grown Radio October 2025
Nancy Braithwaite – Wonderings and other Revelations – Etcetera Records
Nancy Braithwaite – clarinet - Claron McFadden, soprano; Ernst Munneke, piano; Matthias Naegele, cello; Vaughan Schlepp, piano; Michael Stirling, cello; Bas Verheijden, piano; Amarins Wierdsma, violin; Joost Willemze, harp; and Richard Wolfe, viola. - Vibrant new classical works performed with elegance, passion & aplomb by featured clarinetist Nancy Braithwaite. The opening piece Fünf Kommentare zu ‘Ich ruf zu dir…” by composer Carlos Michans is an elegant conversation for clarinet & harpsichord. It is usually translated as I call to you and the intimacy of that statement is captured fully by the two featured musicians. We next hear Edith Hemenway’s - The Voyage of the Owl and Pussy-Cat Trio for clarinet, cello and piano – a musical interpretation of the famous Edward Lear poem that is magnificently told by the three soloists. Wonderful sound painting & execution. Hemenway’s contemplative Wonderings is next up to bat. Featuring Michael Stirling cello - Vaughan Schlepp piano. Hemenway continues with a setting of Maya Angelous’ poem shortened in title to Caged Bird featuring soprano, piano & clarinet. Soprano Clare McFadden renders the text with commitment & clear diction. Hemenway finally presents us with six songs for soprano & piano. Ms. McFadden is accompanied by Vaughan Schlepp in these charming & evocative works. Thomas Oboe Lee’s “Yo Picasso” features five short movements representing some of the late masters most famous creations. Composed for clarinet, viola (Richard Wolfe), cello (Matthias Naegele) & piano (Ernst Munneke). These pieces are colorful evocations (pun intended) and gorgeously performed by the four instrumentalists. Oane Wierdsma’s Sonata for clarinet solo Op. 12 (1985) is what I was waiting for. A true test of the instrumentalist’s skill and artistry, this is a solo feature in four parts for clarinetist Nancy Braithwaite and does she ever rise to the occasion! Beautifully articulated and passionately performed. A bittersweetness hovers over this piece, perhaps due to the fact that Braithwaite & Wierdsma were partners until the composer passed away after a battle with cancer in 2008. Willem Wander van Nieuwkerk - Come, Shepherds, Deck Your Heads for violin, clarinet and piano (2004) concludes our new music journey with an expanded composition on a traditional tune that incorporates both modernity & tradition a la Bartok. A wonderful piece featuring both Braithwaite and her daughter Amarins Wierdsma on violin, as well as Bas Verheijden on piano. I love new and newish music and this album fulfills on every level. Excellent music and world class musicianship. – JH
Review by Thierry De Clemensat in PARIS-MOVE, September 19th 2025
"Wonderings and Other Revelations" received his highest rating: INDISPENSABLE!
It is not often that I turn to classical music in these pages. To warrant attention, a recording must bring forward an idea of unusual clarity, performed at a level where craft and imagination converge, a high bar in a field where excellence is both elusive and essential. The clarinetist Nancy Braithwaite’s latest project clears that bar with ease. A program that links composers from the Netherlands and the United States, it frames their music as a cultural bridge, at once intimate in conception and ambitious in scope.
Braithwaite is no newcomer to this terrain. Based in the Netherlands, she has long cultivated collaborations with contemporary composers on both sides of the Atlantic. That history bears fruit here: with the exception of a work by Carlos Micháns, every clarinet piece in this program was written specifically for her and her ensemble. As she puts it, “This CD reflects my deep commitment to the music of contemporary composers and my personal connection with five extraordinary figures from the United States and the Netherlands, my two homelands.” That statement reads less as promotional rhetoric than as a mission: a reminder that contemporary music, often perceived as remote or forbidding, can thrive when framed through relationships of trust and long-term dialogue.
The roster of composers will be new to many listeners: Micháns, Edith Hemenway, Thomas Oboe Lee, Oane Wiersma and Willem Wander van Nieuwkerk. Their works, while stylistically distinct, share a refusal of the superficial. Hemenway’s The Voyage of the Owl and the Pussycat takes its cue from Edward Lear’s nonsense poem, crafting music of wit and gentle surrealism. Lee’s Yo Picasso spans five movements inspired by canvases of the Spanish painter, inviting comparison with Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition but updating the conceit with an ear for sharper harmonic edges and shifting textures. Wiersma and van Nieuwkerk contribute works of contrasting elegance and austerity, while Braithwaite herself emerges as both performer and interlocutor, her playing marked by a combination of technical command and interpretive restraint.
The album’s centerpiece, Wonderings and Other Revelations, written for Braithwaite, reveals the breadth of her artistry: she moves seamlessly from passages of dazzling virtuosity to lines of sober lyricism, giving the impression of an artist as much concerned with substance as with display. That duality, mastery paired with modesty, is part of what makes her performance persuasive.
Contemporary classical music remains, for many audiences, a difficult proposition. Yet this album lowers the barriers without diluting the rigor. The works are accessible not because they pander but because they invite the ear into narratives that feel familiar: voyages, portraits, revelations. In that sense, the project situates itself within a lineage of “program music,” a genre that has long offered listeners a point of entry into unfamiliar terrain.
What emerges is not just a collection of pieces but a statement about transatlantic collaboration. These works belong to no single school or aesthetic camp. Instead, they point to a shared commitment to clarity, discipline and expressive honesty. That commitment, coupled with Braithwaite’s authority on the instrument, makes Wonderings and Other Revelations less a niche project than a persuasive argument for the vitality of contemporary chamber music.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, September 19th 2025
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