Congratulations to John Adams and Davóne Tines, who have been nominated for BBC Music Magazine Awards—"celebrating the best new classical music recordings"—Adams for the Opera Award for his Girls of the Golden West (on which Tines performs) and Tines for the Vocal Award for his solo recording debut, ROBESON. Winners will be chosen by public vote, which begins today and closes at midnight on Friday, February 28, and announced at an awards ceremony at Kings Place in London on April 23. To have your say, visit classical-music.com/awards and vote for your favorites now.

The first recording of John Adams’ 2017 opera, Girls of the Golden West, which is also nominated for two GRAMMY Awards, Best Opera Recording and Best Engineered Album, Classical, is his eighth music theater work to be released by Nonesuch. It tells the story of the California Gold Rush not through familiar time-worn myth, but in the words and deeds of real people. Longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars drew from original sources from the era—letters, journals, newspaper articles, and familiar song lyrics—to create the libretto. The composer leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in this recording made in Disney Hall, with the Los Angeles Master Chorale led by Grant Gershon and a cast featuring Davóne Tines, Julia Bullock, Paul Appleby, Hye Jung Lee, Elliot Madore, Daniela Mack, and Ryan McKinny.

On DAVÓNE TINES & THE TRUTH’s ROBESON, Tines’ solo recording debut, the musician grapples with the legacy of a hero. Exploding the musical repertoire of Paul Robeson, Tines and his band the Truth—pianist John Bitoy and sound artist Khari Lucas—take listeners on a trip from the stage of Carnegie Hall to the floor of a Moscow hotel room in an attempt to understand an icon not through aspiring to his monumentality, but through connecting to his vulnerability. “Like his predecessor [Paul Robeson], Mr. Tines has always been more than just a performer," says the Wall Street Journal, "using his richly expressive, wide-ranging instrument and theatrical skill to excavate his own stories, dark side and all.”