the story

131 is a classical concept album featuring a curated trio of works: Enthusiasm Strategies by American composer Missy Mizzoli, 19|20 by Beo violist and composer Sean Neukom, and Beethoven’s celebrated Opus 131. Each work flourishes on its own, but the listener will hear a wondrous coalescence between each work when hearing the album in its entirety.

The celestial timbres and inherent optimism found in Enthusiasm Strategies create the perfect first-step to a journey at hand. The works’ sincerity finds 19|20’s otherwise cheerful, opening motive as biting and ironic. From there unfolds the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic through the eyes of a string quartet: the increased used of screens for entertainment; the assumed innocuousness of masks turned into a politicized topic; the sense of not knowing what is real as our daily human interactions are replaced with purely digital connections; and ultimately, and industry of art left in ashes.

What is the role of art in a post-Covid world? The answer comes from Op. 131. It starts at the depressive, ashen state of 19|20’s end, and ultimately arrives at the sincere optimism that started with Enthusiasm Strategies. The preternatural poetry found in Beethoven’s Opus 131 approaches the numinous. The divine musical qualities serve as a reminder: look what humans can achieve. We can overcome. We always have, and we will again.

Missy Mazzoli

Sean Neukom
19|20

Ludwig van Beethoven
String Quartet No. 14 in C♯ minor, Op. 131

Classical Concept Album

Many of our earliest musical memories are tied to unwrapping a new record, dimming the lights, and listening from “cover to cover”. It can be tempting to forgo this ritual in a time of streams and playlists. Our goal is to combine seemingly disparate works into a single listening experience, uncover and share a narrative that connects the works, and through this connection create a journey whose sum is greater than its parts.

Albums are not obsolete. But maybe it's incumbent upon an artist to help show the value of such a treasured medium. Thus, we present our Classical Concept Albums.

NeuKraft Records

Why aren't Radiohead, Emerson String Quartet, ‘Weird’ Al Yankovic, and Kronos Quartet on the same label? The answers—of which there are many—are self-evident. NeuKraft Records exists because of, perhaps, the most obvious reason: genres! More specifically, the desired absence of genres. The goal of NeuKraft Records is to curate a collection of releases that continually present chamber music re-imagined through the tools of today, while paying homage to the amazing breadth of the string quartet classics.