Released on Platoon, on February 20, Willows is the new album from violinist, conductor and composer Pekka Kuusisto and Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. The centerpiece of the recording is a quietly radical re-imagining of The Lark Ascending — stripping away a century of accumulated sentiment to reveal the quiet subversion at the heart of Vaughan Williams’s score. Recorded during a period marked by profound personal loss, Kuusisto’s performance is a searching response to music long weighed down by its own mythology. Alongside The Lark Ascending is Ellen Reid’s Desiderium for solo violin, Caroline Shaw’s crystalline Plan & Elevation, arranged for chamber orchestra. The album also stars American folk singer Sam Amidon, whose songs have been arranged for ensemble by Nico Muhly.

Named for a tree whose light is never still, Willows is an album about remembrance, and the power of music to hold space for the past while pointing us toward the present.