The Opperman Award for Musical Excellence

Established in 2023 on my 45th birthday, this annual award recognizes a single album of exceptional musical interest and deep originality: a work that transcends boundaries of genre and style. I created the award simply because the albums I loved weren’t winning enough recognition elsewhere, so I decided to fix that the only way I could: by starting my own award, serving as its sole judge, and giving a small present (this award) to artists I love on my birthday.

Only full albums of newly released material from November 20th - November 19th of the following year will be considered.

2025 Honorable Mentions:

LUX by Rosalía (released November 7th, 2025)

Violin Sonatas Nos. 1-3, Scenes from Paradise Lost, 4 Postres by Edgar F. Girtain, IV (released August 1st, 2025)

~ 2025 Winner: 25 x 25 by Sō Percussion ~

(released September 26th, 2025)

I typically roll my eyes and die a little inside when artists (especially me) say things (even just to themselves) like, “[we] decided for our 25th Anniversary to set out to accomplish something truly historic.” In this specific case, however, they totally did. I thought it would be a few years before we heard from them again after their lovely 2024 album with Caroline Shaw, Rectangles and Circumstance, but here they come roaring in with an 8-CD box set of 25 new compositions commissioned by other composers and two bonus albums of their own music.

The box set is organized into subsections: Disc 1 is quartet music, defined by them as follows: A percussion quartet is an assortment of sounds distributed among four players. Disc 2 features keyboard music with a note that the keyboard is a pattern, not an instrument. Disc 3 features electronics with a reminder that all musical instruments are a form of technology. Disc 4 features collaborations with string quartets since Sō Percussion learned how to play chamber music together by watching great string quartets. Discs 5-6 features collaborations with composer-performers. I say things like “the music business is a friendship business” ad nauseam in my classes, and So puts it a little less bluntly by stating that percussion training cultivates the skills for collaboration. The last two discs that round out the set have their own music with a note that says Writing music makes us better performers. I mean, please say it much louder for every single student trying to hide in the back of a freshman music seminar.

Similar to the Kronos Quartet’s Kronos Fifty for the Future project, you could easily spend an entire semester dissecting and discussing the works on just this project, although, unlike the Kronos project, the scores aren’t freely available. This project actually almost single-handedly makes me miss the 21st century music theory course I used to teach, because I would love to spend a week with it and an enthusiastic group of graduate students. So many of my favorite “new music” composers are represented strongly here because of both the quality of the material and the quality of the performances and I felt so inspired listening to all of this music in a way that I haven’t recently.

My favorite work in the set is Nathalie Joachim’s Note to Self. It’s contradictory in ways that I very much enjoy. It’s serious and introspective and intense for one movement and then becomes playful and joyful and a little whimsical in the next. The serious parts, though, really hit me in my heart, and spoke to me in a way that felt very direct. The last time I really felt that way about a piece was when I heard Donnacha Dennehy’s “Reservoir” (performed by pianist Lisa Moore) for the first time. His nine-movement work on this album, Broken Unison, is great fun and makes me ponder the processes by which he makes his compositional choices. Other obvious standouts include Eric-Cha Beach’s “Four + Nine,” Oliver Tapaga’s Fēfē, Caroline Shaw’s Narrow Sea (which really surprised me and not just because of Alicia Olatuja’s glorious singing), and Jason Treuting’s Amid the Noise which was recorded with participants from their wonderful summer SoSi Institute program.

I’m going to spend a long time thinking about this project and exploring all the works on the album. I loved it immensely. I would also be remiss not to mention how beautifully everything was recorded and mixed from an audio perspective. Wonderful.

~ 2024 ~

Winner

The Collective by Kim Gordon

(released March 8th, 2024)

2024 Honorable Mentions:

Lives Outgrown by Beth Gibbons (released May 17th, 2024)

Shorthand by Anna Clyne (released August 23rd, 2024)

~ 2023 ~

Winner

Celebrants by Nickel Creek

(released March 24th, 2023)

Honorable Mentions

Don’t say a word by Annika Socolofsky and Latitude 49 (released June 23rd, 2023)

New Blue Sun by André 3000 (released November 17th, 2023)

“Love at First Listen” would be an adequate way to describe my feelings for this album. It’s always been incredible how much sound Nickel Creek is able to output with such a small ensemble. Sara Watkins, her brother Sean Watkins, and Chris Thile are veteran, expert performers, who were joined this time by Mike Elizondo on bass, who is more well-known for his work on classic rap albums. All of the songwriting credits on the album are shared by the four of them, although (similar to The Beatles), you can tell that certain members took lead on certain songs. The album was produced by veteran producer Eric Valentine, who did a great job of capturing their ideas sonically.

Celebrants begins with the title track, “Celebrants,” which has a complex structure. The rhythmic interplay between the stomped/clapped beat (the way Valentine produced this sound goes great with the cathedral imagery of the lyrics: a big sound brought by the people) is very compelling, and Chris Thile’s mandolin passages are thrilling harmonically and top-notch, as always.

Probably my favorite track is “The Meadow,” which still blows my mind dozens of listens later. It showcases all three of the principals fairly equally and there is fantastic interplay between them. I used to daydream about Sara Watkins playing these kinds of violin melodies. The vocal performances are show-stopping. The control they have over their vocal slides are incredible. Three and a half minutes of pure bliss.

“Holding Pattern” makes me wish I could have been a fly on the wall when it was written. I always love a good rhythmically-interlocking ostinato and I wish I could have seen how they put this together. I also love the production choices on this one, which are more akin to a 21st century pop album (which is how I think all albums should be produced regardless of genre or style: why would you choose to not take advantage of all the great technology available to you?).

The urgency in Sara’s voice on “Where the Long Line Leads” recalls the early-00’s recordings by The White Stripes in all the best ways. It’s a barn-burner for sure. “Stone’s Throw” features Sean Watkins at his very best.

The predominantly insrtrumental works “Going Out…” and “…Despite the Weather” are an aural delight for the ears. Other standout tracks include “Strangers,” “Hollywood Ending,” and “Failure Isn’t Forever,” which is a great message for everyone whether you’re thirteen or fifty-three.

Celebrants by Nickel Creek is definitely and inarguably one of the best and most interesting albums of the 2020’s so far. It’s a natural growth of the sound that they have been developing over the last twenty plus years. I also love how it sounds like a Nickel Creek album, and not like a combination of their other great projects like The Watkins Family Hour or The Punch Brothers. I am very much looking forward to hearing what they do next.

— Dr. Chris Opperman, November 19th, 2023