Eighteen minutes of Bach’s Chaconne, played on wood. That is how Crossing the Bar, marimbist Mika Stoltzman’s album on Avie Records, begins. It was released on 23 January 2026, and the technical reality is that a violin showpiece has been rebuilt for an instrument that cannot sustain a note the way a bow can.
She has done this before. Stoltzman had already recorded the Chaconne, the closing movement of Bach’s Partita No. 2 for solo violin, arranged for marimba alone. Here she and Steven Lipsitt arranged it for marimba and strings, with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project behind her. Japanese critic Masamichi Okazaki, writing for Audio Note, found that the gentle tempo lets “graceful lyricism blossom.” The Absolute Sound’s reviewer heard something more severe, calling her reading “somber yet tragically exultant” as it builds in intensity.
Zorn, Debussy and a concerto
Track two is John Zorn’s Breathturn: Part 1, a piece dated 2025 and running 4 minutes 38 seconds. Her husband, the clarinettist Richard Stoltzman, joins her, with Fred Sherry on cello. Zorn is a frequent collaborator of hers.
Then comes Debussy’s Rêverie, arranged for marimba and strings by Takeshi Fuse. “Appropriately dreamlike,” according to The Absolute Sound. Avie calls the arrangement enchanting.
The finale is the real novelty. Miho Hazama’s Marimba Concerto No. 1, from 2021, appears here as a world-premiere recording, and it runs 19 minutes 42 seconds. Hazama conducts. Richard Stoltzman is on clarinet, with jazz bassist Eddie Gómez and drummer Steve Gadd completing the group. Okazaki says it was written with care for Mika Stoltzman. Steph Power in BBC Music magazine called it a highlight, ranging “entertainingly from jazz-funk to contemporary big band.” The Absolute Sound, a little wryly, described the rhythm section as “vastly over-qualified.”
A jazz record too
The disc is the second in a quick pair. Okazaki notes she released a jazz album, Memories of Tomorrow, late in 2025, and he reads the near-simultaneous classical release as proof that she moves freely between the two worlds. He also praises the recording itself, which captures the marimba’s sound and makes the most of the wood’s texture.
The program is thin on filler: four works by four composers across roughly three centuries, all of it billed as world-premiere recordings. Mark Estren of Infodad.com called the playing top-notch and the disc “certainly engaging.”
Sources
- Crossing the Bar (Hazama • Bach • Zorn • Debussy) | Avie Records
- No.97 Contemporary Music Traversing Ridgeline between Classical and Jazz
