Big Crass Monster is a CD recording project that includes four world premiere recordings, features four living American women composers, and showcases two commissions and a dedicated work.

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The album title, Big Crass Monster, and cover art is inspired by both musical text and art. The opening track (Movement 1: Beethoven of Jennifer Stevenson's Musical Invective), sets text by a music critic who wrote of Beethoven during his time, "Beethoven's Second Symphony's a big crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon, that refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect."

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The cover art pays homage to the iconic Hahn/Cock sculpture, perched atop the roof of the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., by German artist Katharina Fritsch. Fritsch said of the work, “It is a feminist sculpture, since it is I who am doing something active here – I, a woman, am depicting something male. Historically it has always been the other way around. Now we are changing the roles” (Charlotte Huggins, The Guardian, 2013).

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Available October 2025 for CD orders and for download and streaming on digital platforms.​

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COMPOSERS AND WORKS

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Jenni Brandon: Multitudinous Stars and Spring Waters

Melissa Dunphy: Chants

Cherise D. Leiter: Dear Old Year (the memories of a matriarch)

Jennifer Stevenson: Musical Invective**

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*denotes a commission

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PARTNERS AND COLLABORATORS

Robert Armstrong

Jonathan Galle

Navona Records

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SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS

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This album is made possible in part by the generous support of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Department of Music, Queens University of Charlotte Noble Fellowship, and the N.C. Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural & Cultural Resources, the Blumenthal Endowment and Mecklenburg Arts and Science Council.