Catalog

This recording is a joint effort between American composers with ties to the Midwestern states and Russian performers associated with the Moscow Conservatory Studio for New Music, and as such represents a unique collaboration meant to deepen artistic and cultural bonds between the two nations in this early portion of the 21st century.

George Enescu was an extraordinary musician. One of the most acclaimed violinists of the last century, he was also an accomplished pianist, conductor, and composer. As a composer he is still too little known and his music too little analyzed outside his native Romania. His music exhibits a very personal blend of time-honored procedures, forward-thinking techniques, and ethnic intimations. The works on this recording belong to the last period of his career and show a rare maturity and depth that contribute to a unique and sometimes difficult to define language.

Viva Concertante! showcases works for chamber orchestra involving soloistic display, and features the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Conservatory Studio for New Music, as well as the University of Iowa's Center for New Music Ensemble. The compositions were either written or revised in the last dozen years. And just as old- and new-world connections are forged by means of the performing groups, a like situation extends to the ethnicity of the composers, with Italian, German, and English contributors as well as Chinese-, German-, Macedonian- and Welsh-Americans.

Peter Child is Professor of Music and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT. A graduate of Reed College and Brandeis University, Child has received fellowships and commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and the Harvard Musical Association, among others. His compositions have been awarded prizes from Tanglewood, East and West Artists, WGBH Radio, and New England Conservatory, to mention just a few. Child is presently composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic and his music was featured at the Lontano Festival of American Music in London in 2006 and 2008.

Gary Smart notes: The three duo sonatas on this recording are "hot" in that they flow out of the American jazz tradition, "sonatas" in that they utilize classical sonata form and its associated developmental techniques. Composer Gunther Schuller coined the term "third-stream music" to label the musical fusion of the jazz and classical musical traditions. I like his term. I think it suits these sonatas of mine better than most other labels."

Called a "composer to watch" by Opera News, Elena Ruehr's music has been performed by the Borremeo String Quartet, the Shanghai String Quartet, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (where she was composer in residence from 2000-2005), and the Cincinnati Symphony, among others. Dr. Ruehr was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute in 2009 and she teaches in the music department at MIT.

A singular figure in today's new music scene, Janet Maguire was the recipient of the 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship. Distinguished by her arrangement of the Finale of Giacomo Puccini's Turandot and by her own opera, Hérésie, Maguire has worked in a wide variety of genres. Maguire was music critic for the Paris Herald Tribune and founded a new music ensemble in Venice, Musica in Divenire.

This second recording on Albany Records of the music of the distinguished American-born Canadian composer Michael Horwood features his music for percussion. The inspiration for the series of Piece Percussioniques, as well as the impetus for composing for percussion ensemble, came from two influential sources for the teen-aged Horwood: the innovative programming of Lukas Foss during his tenure with the Buffalo Philharmonic and from Horwood's exposure to the music of Edgard Varèse. These works for percussion ensemble span Horwood's compositional career: Piece No. 1 was written when he was 17 and Piece No. 6 is his most recent and final composition.

For their fourth recording on Albany Records, the Rawlins Piano Trio has once again uncovered gems of the American repertoire including three world premiere recordings of the Grasse, Risher and Wilson and a commissioned work from the brilliant young composer Daniel Bernard Roumain. Founded in 1987 the Rawlins Piano Trio performs regularly throughout the United States and abroad. They have formed a reputation as a preeminent interpreter of 19th and early 20th century American music.

The Atlanta Chamber Winds led by Robert J. Ambrose, offer a sparkling concert of music for wind ensemble by composers who lived and worked in Paris. All but one (the Pierné) are world premiere recordings and offer a substantial addition to the wind ensemble discography. Perhaps most interesting is Francis Chagrin who was born in Bucharest as Alexander Paucker but moved to Paris in 1928 and changed his name. He was most famous for his film music but he also wrote chamber music, two symphonies and songs.

The music of the young Iraqi-American composer Karim Al-Zand has been called "strong and startlingly lovely" by the Boston Globe. His compositions are wide-ranging, from settings of classical Arabic poetry to scores for dance and pieces for young audiences. Many of his works explore connections between music and other arts. He holds degrees from Harvard and McGill Universities and is currently on the faculty of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. This recording, his first for Albany Records, shows his love for chamber music and small instrumental ensembles.

This disc marks the first commercial recording of the music of Donald Sur -- one that is long overdue. Donald Sur was born in Honolulu of Korean parentage. He studied at UCLA, Princeton and Harvard. He resided in the Boston area, teaching occasionally at Harvard, M.I.T. and Tufts. Among contemporary composers in New England, Donald Sur was one of the best known and best loved. His colleagues and friends have universally respected his eclectic style, which reflects a variety of interests but remains unmistakably personal. His music is permeated with a quiet, sometimes bemused expressivity, and simultaneously a structural firmness quite unlike anyone else's today.

Robert Xavier Rodríguez is one of the most significant and often-performed American composers of his generation. His music has been described as "Romantically dramatic" and "richly lyrical" by the press. He first gained international recognition in 1971 when he was awarded the Prix de Composition Musicale Prince Pierre de Monaco for his Trio I heard on this recording. A student of Nadia Boulanger, Rodríguez also studied composition with Jacob Druckman, Bruno Maderna and Elliott Carter. He holds the Endowed Chair of University Professor at The University of Texas at Dallas. His music has been performed all over the world by orchestras and at chamber music festivals. This recording offers a much-welcomed survey of his chamber music.

Highlighting this recording is the chamber opera, The Birth of Something on a libretto by Will Eno. Commissioned by Da Camera of Houston, The Birth of Something represents an important, elegant, and highly personal contribution to the genre. An associate professor of composition at Rice University, composer Anthony Brandt earned his degrees from the California Institute of the Arts and Harvard. Among his many honors and awards are a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New England Foundation for the Arts. He is co-founder and artistic director of the Houston-based contemporary music ensemble Musiqa.

Composer Mary Lee Taylor Kinosian is also the violinist for the Upton Trio. Her music draws on and celebrates the American experience. The Upton Trio was formed in 1989 to present chamber music concerts for schools in South Carolina. The Trio has performed at Weill Recital Hall in New York City, at the Kennedy Center, and has been featured on NBC Nightly News. The Trio maintains an active commissioning program and has recorded several compact discs. The Upton Trio is permanent artist-in-residence at the Nickelodeon Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina.

The four compositions here might seem very disparate: a string quartet; a piece for unaccompanied choir; a sextet with electronic ambience; and finally a trombone solo in which the electronic interventions come right into the foreground. On listening, however, the differences begin to dissolve, leaving behind them the outlines of a distinct creative personality. One feature they share is fearlessness; another is their rhythmic dynamism and another is the containment of rhythmic and harmonic tensions in small motifs. The composer, David Felder, has long been recognized as a leader in his generation of American composers. His works have been featured at many of the leading international festivals for new music and he earns continuing recognition through performance and commissioning programs.

Laderman comments, "This ninth cd with Albany Records brings me to the end of a musical exploration started October 1, 2000. This culminating cd, the final three string quartets I will ever compose represent the most recent evolution of my compositional esthetic...The excitement, the fun, the joy that composing has afforded me is due in no small measure to the unknown path traveled each morning as I sit before the blank sheet of music paper. It's a great way to spend a life. I recommend it without reservation."

William Kraft (b.1923) has had a long and active career as composer, conductor, timpanist/percussionist and teacher. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara and was a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 26 years, where he also served as composer-in-residence. His music has been performed by major orchestras throughout the United States and he has been commissioned by many distinguished ensembles. This is the sixth disc devoted to his music on Albany Records.

Donald Wheelock is the Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor of Music at Smith College, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1974. His works include five string quartets, several pieces for solo instruments, eleven song cycles, and many larger ensemble and orchestral works. Among his awards are a first prize in a competition sponsored by the Hartford Symphony, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the Guggenheim Foundation. This compact disc, a retrospective recording of Wheelock's music, offers a wide-ranging survey of his music for chamber ensembles.

Described by the Chicago Tribune as "an ensemble that invites you--ears, mind, and spirit--into its music," the Avalon String Quartet has established itself as one of the country's leading ensembles. Formed in 1995 at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Quartet came to the fore after participating in Isaac Stern's Chamber Music Workshop at Carnegie Hall in 1997. As a result, Mr. Stern invited the Avalon Quartet to perform in the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Encounters in Jerusalem and presented the ensemble's Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall. The quartet captured the top prize at the ARD Competition in Munich (2000) as well as the First Prize at Concert Artists Guild Competition in New York (1999). The quartet is in residence at Northern Illinois University. Their recording on Channel Classics won the Chamber Music America/WQXR Record Award in 2002.

Victoria Bond is the only woman composer/conductor to receive commissions from major organizations and also hold music director positions with leading ensembles. Her extensive catalog includes works written for the Houston, Shanghai, and Richmond Symphony Orchestras, the Saint Paul and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestras, American Ballet Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet and Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. This recording highlights some of her enchanting music, including Bridges, a work for two clarinets and two Chinese instruments, the Erhu and the Pipa.

Rarely has a composer exhibited such an extraordinarily heightened awareness of the very details of music-making, every physical, acoustic and emotional gesture of performance, painstakingly arrived at and indicated with astonishing clarity in the score. Nuance -- that is what Donald Martino wished to capture in his music and to pass on -- it's the demand he makes of the performer and it's the poignant, comprehensive, detailed world that draws the listener in. The ultimate result is a musical intimacy of great and intricate energy. Some of the best performers of 20th and 21st century music offer beautiful performances of this great composer's music.

Composer/pianist Ketty Nez joined the composition and theory department at the Boston University School of Music in the fall of 2005. Ms. Nez completed a residence of several months at the École Nationale de Musique in Montbéliard, France, prior to the premiere of her chamber opera An Opera in Devolution: Drama in 540 Seconds, at the 2003 Seventh Festival Avantgarde in Munich. She comments: "The five recent chamber works on this recording, Postcards from the 1930's, timed curves, between, before, and wind down ii, were written for myself to play, and were composed after moving to Boston in 2005 to start teaching at Boston University while the most recent work on this recording, and marking a departure of sorts, Postcards from the 1930's was the byproduct of my everlasting curiosity for the sounds and rhythms of my own ethnic backgrounds, a mixture of Slovenian and Slavic Macedonian.

Lawrence Dillon is best known for his chamber music, with commissions, performances and recordings by the American, Borromeo, Cassatt, Daedalus, Emerson and Mendelssohn String Quartets; this recording is the first to feature some of his many works combining words and music. Composer in Residence at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Dillon began composing at the age of seven, despite the complete loss of hearing in one of his ears due to a childhood illness. Appendage and Other Stories is a collection of Dillon's works that combine words and music. Entrance and Exit use spoken text, Still Point is sung and Appendage alternates between spoken and sung text.

Donald Reid Womack is the composer of more than 80 works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments and voice. He received a Fulbright Scholar Fellowship to live and work in Japan. His work with Japanese and other Asian instruments has placed him at the vanguard of East-West cross-cultural fertilization and has enabled him to make a significant contribution to the body of new literature for Asian instruments, both alone and in combination with Western instruments. His music combines a rich tonal language with an intricate use of color and texture and an exploration of multiple perceptions of rhythm.

The Ibis Camerata consists of four internationally acclaimed musicians of the new generation. Their unique ensemble of violin, cello, clarinet and piano enables them to command a much more varied repertoire than the traditional piano trio. Avid supporters of new music, the Ibis Camerata concentrates on Boston composers for their third recording on Albany Records. All of the composers have a relationship to the New England Conservatory, either as former students or as faculty and administrators.

This recording, a collection of performances by some of the most celebrated performers of our time that Leon Kirchner considered extraordinary, continues the series on Albany Records devoted to this distinguished composer's music. Leon Kirchner, who died in December of 2009, performed regularly both as a pianist and conductor, but was always first and foremost, a composer. He left a legacy of masterworks and made an indelible mark on the history of contemporary music.

Featuring performances by Grammy Award winners Gloria Cheng, Masumi Rostad (Pacifica Quartet) and Oto Carillo (Chicago Symphony), the four pieces on this recording are all inspired by our relation to the world, both natural and invented. The Machine Awakes is about technology and where it's leading our spirit. Seven Memorials is inspired by Maya Lin's elegy to our planet; Quark Shadows and Nebulae are about the world untouched by us. Stephen Andrew Taylor, born in 1965, teaches music at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The three concertos on this recording are representative of a contemporary renaissance in concerto writing. The challenge for composers is how to tackle the range of technical and expressive problems. Ross Bauer, Steven Burke and Martin Matalon have each responded to that question with music that is fresh, imaginative, technically brilliant and dramatically convincing. Though not one of the works actually bears the title, each is a true concerto, albeit in a recognizably contemporary way.

Most of the music on this recording honors artists whose works are going or have gone, and each work is either a song or composition in the lyrical mode. The compositions celebrate the work of departed masters--Yehuda Amichai, Gyögy Ligeti, Johannes Brahms and Willie Dixon (among others) and the title honors the last album recorded by Walter Becker and Donald Fagin of Steely Dan. The distinguished American composer Martin Bresnick's compositions are performed throughout the world and he is the recipient of many prizes and commissions including The Rome Prize, The Berlin Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among many others. Recognized as in influential composition teacher, Martin Bresnick is a member of the faculty at Yale University's School of Music.

The distinguished composer/conductor David Stock is Professor Emeritus of Music at Duquesne University, where he conducted the Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble. He has been Composer-in-Residence of the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Seattle Symphony, and is Conductor Laureate of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, which he founded in 1976. He retired as Music Director of PNME at the end of the 1998/99 season, after 23 years of dedication to new music and the living composer. His compositions have been performed throughout the world and he is the recipient of many awards, honors and commissions. This recording of his last three quartets includes one commissioned by the Cuarteto Latinoamericano (the Seventh), who have been an integral part of Stock's musical universe for the past two decades.

Mallarmé Chamber Players, the distinguished ensemble based in Durham, North Carolina presents a program of chamber music by African American composers. Spanning several generations of composers, the recording includes works by Undine Smith Moore (1904-1989); Thomas Jefferson Anderson (b. 1928); William Banfield (b. 1961) and Anthony Kelley (b. 1965). Six-time Grammy Award-nominee Nnenna Freelon joins Mallarmé to perform Soul Gone Home by William Banfield, which, along with Grist for the Mill by Anthony Kelley, was commissioned by the ensemble. You can go to this link to hear a fascinating interview done by WUNC Radio in Chapel Hill with Nnenna Freelon, William Banfield and representatives from the Mallarmé Chamber Players and Videmus Records, who produced the recording.