Singer Susan Narucki

2020 Grammy Award nominee

Susan Narucki easily stood out among the 2020 Grammy Awards nominees. The acclaimed contemporary classical and chamber opera maverick was nominated in the Best Classical Solo Vocal Album category for “The Edge of Silence — Works For Voice By György Kurtág,” an album on which she sings entirely in Hungarian, Russian and German.

Even if it was performed solely in one language, the music by storied Hungarian composer Kurtág is deviously challenging. So are the lyrics, which are set to poems by Dezso Tandori, Kobayashi Issa, Rimma Dalos, Amy Karolyi and Pal Gulyas.

The album was a labor of love for Narucki, a UC San Diego music professor who has three previous Grammy nominations to her credit. She has commissioned and performed several edgy chamber operas that cover such sobering issues as gun violence and human trafficking. The pieces she performs on the Kurtág album are musical miniatures that require exceptional precision and emotional intensity.

“One of the things I learned working directly with Kurtág, which I have done on a number of occasions, is that music is a living thing,” Narucki told the Union-tribune in January, shortly before attending the 62nd annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.

She did not win, alas. But Narucki already had a Grammy victory to her credit. In 2000, she was the featured vocal soloist on composer George Crumb’s “Star-child,” which won in the Best Classical Contemporary Composition category.

U-T FILE