Catalog

Craig Walsh, born in New Jersey in 1971, is a composer on the rise, widely performed across North America and Europe. He is also a composer plugged into new media while simultaneously writing music for traditional acoustic instruments. He is associate professor at the University of Arizona and has received numerous awards and fellowships. The works on this recording represent more than a decade of Walsh's acoustic chamber music. This is bold, compelling music with a distinctive voice that draws the listener in. Walsh has a knack for instrumental combinations that pack a great deal of information into textures that are spare yet timbrally rich. His music is well conceived while pushing the boundaries of performance techniques.

The works on this recording span 25 years -- from the Sonata for Cello (1982) to unaccompanied minor (2007). Joel Hoffman comments that, "Like so many composers of my generation, I have worked, over these years, with a number of stylistic dialects -- from a hybrid serialism to a tonal/pan-tonal mix to a folk-inspired modal work to a post-minimalist framework. While I'm arguably the least qualified to describe the threads of continuity...I do observe two persistent qualities...a pervading lyricism and a rhythmic vitality." Hoffman is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, where he is also Artistic Director of its annual new music festival, MusicX.

The works from On Course represent a broad cross section of sonic and stylistic moments created over an almost 24 year period by composer Laurie Altman. The generative links between all the pieces seem to be an overarching lyrical sentiment coupled with the interplay of animation, dance and drama. Laurie Altman attended Mannes, studying with Lester Trimble and William Sydeman. Influences abound with Altman: The Village Vanguard (Bill Evans), the Five Spot (Monk and Trane); the Chicago Symphony, jazz performances at The Blue Note and Soundscape -- a joining of classical and jazz.

Lansing McLoskey (b.1964) came to the world of composition via a somewhat unorthodox route. The proverbial "Three B's" for him were The Beatles, Bauhaus and Black Flag. His first experiences in composition were as a guitarist and songwriter for punk rock bands in the Bay Area in the early 1980s. It was through these years in the visceral world of punk that he first developed a love for classical music. Hailed as "one of the best composers of (his) generation," McLoskey has had his music performed to critical acclaim across the U.S. and in 12 other countries on five continents. His music has an emotional intensity that appeals to academic and amateur alike, defying traditional stylistic pigeonholes.

Edmund Campion completed his doctoral work at Columbia University with Mario Davidovsky before attending the Paris Conservatory to study composition with Gérard Grissey. He has explained his approach to composition in an interview with the Computer Music Journal: "Emerging technologies have been the generative source for most of my musical explorations...There is nothing new here. For Chopin, it was the modern piano, and for Schaeffer, it was the tape recorder. Finally, there is no distinction between acoustic sound, natural sound, or electronic sound. Everything is integrated with the full spectrum of all possibly sounds...I hope I am coming full circle, back to the essential musical material, it music that is made just for hearing."

The exceptional clarinetist Sean Osborn gives magnificent performances of these staples of the chamber music repertoire. Sean Osborn has traveled Europe and the US as a soloist and chamber musician, and traveled the world during his 11 years with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He has also performed as guest principal clarinet with the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and the American Symphony Orchestra. Recently appointed Clarinet Teacher at the University of Washington, Sean is currently based in Seattle, composing, teaching, and touring.

The moods of the works on this survey of Eleanor Cory's chamber music range from serious introspection (Three Songs) to playful exuberance (Chasing Time). Beginning to be recognized as a major force in contemporary music, Ms. Cory has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund and the Fromm Foundation, among many others. Her music is performed by orchestras and ensembles ranging from the Gregg Smith Singers to the New Jersey Symphony to Earplay. Ms. Cory is on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music Prep Division and Kingsborough Community College.

Since its inception the Mirror Visions Ensemble has explored song repertoire from a number of angles. The initial interest was the back-to-back performance of multiple settings of a single text, leading to programs built around favorite portraits. This has been followed by musical travelogues and concerts at museums that feature music with a connection to the exhibit or museum. During the last decade, the ensemble has commissioned 69 new works, two of which are presented on this recording. Berg's Lincoln Letters is set to texts more personal than political, while Hagen's Songs from Dear Youth are set to letters from the Civil War. Platt's From Noon To Starry Night is a cantata based on a selection of Walt Whitman's poems, including the roughneck Whitman, the democratic Whitman, the transcendentalist Whitman, Whitman the "lover of comrades," and Whitman the bard of war.

Leon Kirchner's life has been liberally peppered with moments of recognition for his powerful and innovative music. Both the first and second quartets heard on this recording received the Critics Circle Prize; the third received the Pulitzer. While still an undergraduate, he was accepted into Arnold Schoenberg's graduate composition seminar at UCLA. He has received many honors and prizes, including membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was a professor at Harvard University for 25 years. This recording includes his fourth string quartet, written in 2007 when Kirchner was 87, for the Orion String Quartet, who are able champions of his music.

The Palisades Virtuosi was established in 2003 to promote and enrich the repertoire for flute, clarinet and piano. Their programs combine standard repertoire with works that are a product of its aggressive and zealous commissioning program. More than 20 composers have received commissions and this recording, their second on Albany Records, highlights five of these. From the oldest composer, Frank Levy, born in 1930, to Carlos Franzetti and Allen Shawn, both born in 1948, to Caroline Newman and Gary Eskow, sharing 1951 as their birth years, this recording give us a range of styles and generations, all exquisitely performed by the ensemble.

Formed in 2004 the trio Neoteric, made up of faculty members at Southern Illinois University, began their relationship with Bernard Hoffer through a request for works in the American Music Center newsletter. After writing two works for their ensemble, Hoffer suggested the idea of more substantial works, hence the Concerto di Camera and Divertimento included on this recording. Born in Switzerland, Hoffer is a graduate of Eastman where he studied composition with Bernard Rogers and Wayne Barlow. He has written extensively for films, television, and commercials for which he has won several Emmy nominations and Clio Awards. He scored the hit children's cartoon series Thundercats and Silverhawks.

Jay Reise composes in all genres, and his teachers included musicians with a wide variety of stylistic approaches: George Crumb, jazz player Jimmy Guiffre, Carnatic (South Indian) violinist Adrian L'Armand, and Richard Wernick. As critic Peter Rabinowitz has written, "His work is firmly in the Western tradition. But because of the fresh perspectives offered by his study of Indian music, he has been able to rethink some specific problems facing contemporary Western art music..." Many disparate elements of classical musical technique are employed in the three works on this recording, including rhythms based on concepts freely derived from the study of Carnatic music and the juxtaposing of chromatically-treated modes (folk-derived and symmetrical) with quasi-functional tonal music.

In the nearly 30 years that Hi Kyung Kim has been living, studying and composing in the Western World, her music has established itself as Asian-American in voice and spirit. But for all the recognizably Korean musical ideas, rhythmic and sonic, in her music these seem to occur not as flags or labels but appear integrally in the music's fabric. And in the hearing of it, a personality emerges that is individual and not specifically or necessarily identifiable as Korean-American. As she has admitted, these Korean elements come into her music unbidden, unselfconsciously, and cites a conversation she had with the late Korean-born composer Isang Yun, in which he said "That he did not have to think about his musical elements intentionally utilizing Korean music, since (these were) already imbedded in him."

Born in Chicago, William Kraft has had a long and active career as a composer, conductor, timpanist/percussionist and teacher. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he served for 11 years (1991-2002) as Chairman of the Composition Department and Corwin Professor of Music Composition. He is of that generation of American composers who came to prominence starting in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s whose music is characterized by a distinct brashness, tinged with the energy of jazz and a definite sense of the dramatic. As an avid percussionist, many of the works which first brought him fame spotlight that part of the orchestra, and as director of the Los Angeles Percussion Ensemble, he premiered many now important works. This diverse collection, ranging from solo to orchestral works, exemplifies the wonderful range of this dynamic American composer.

To bring together two pieces by Charles Wuorinen with seminal works of Arnold Schoenberg is, in part, to underline a continuity. Wuorinen, exceptionally among his generation, has developed implications of Schoenberg's 12-tone method to his own musical ends with a strong awareness of the works of others of his predecessors, including Stravinsky, Webern, and Milton Babbitt. Wuorinen's two pieces date from the mid 1970s, a period during which Wuorinen was reconciling serialism with tonally-centered music. Schoenberg's work is represented by his pupil Webern's 1912 two-piano arrangement of the Five Pieces for Orchestra and Wuorinen's arrangement of the Variations. In these arrangements, the important details of pitch, rhythm and motivic relationships stand out in relief.

Born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, Ileana Perez Velázquez earned her degrees from the Higher Institute of Arts, Havana, in 1987. When she moved to the United States in 1993, she was already receiving acclaim as one of the bright lights of Cuban composition, having won several awards. She would later continue her studies at Dartmouth College and Indiana University, where her teachers included John Appleton, Charles Dodge, Claude Baker and Eugene O'Brien. She writes music that, while challenging for both performer and listener alike, is deeply expressive and accessible; her music may be uncompromising in its demands, but it also remains intensely dramatic and poignantly evocative. What's more, her rich harmonic language and rhythmically intricate, multi-layered textures reveal a true debt to her Cuban heritage.

Joshua Rosenblum has composed extensively for both the concert hall and the theater. In addition to the works on this CD, he has written pieces on commission for trumpeter Philip Smith of the New York Philharmonic, flutist Kathleen Nester of the New Jersey Symphony and for French hornist Eric Ruske, one of Albany's premiere artists. For the theater, Rosenblum wrote the score for the acclaimed cult hit Off-Broadway musical, Fermat's Last Tango. He has also conducted the orchestras for such Broadway shows as Miss Saigon, Wonderful Town and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The works on this disc are a melding of both classical and popular idioms, with many inspired by or commissioned from several of the musicians involved.

Recognized as a "major talent" by the Chicago Tribune, Larry Bell has been awarded the Rome Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and the Charles Ives Award. A student of Vincent Persichetti and Roger Sessions, his music has been widely performed in the United States and abroad, and as a pianist he has championed the works of American composers.

Eric Ewazen writes, "In the Spring of 2006, I was delighted to find out that the extraordinary chamber ensemble, Ibis Camerata, was interested in recording a CD of my music (from the mid-80's through the mid-90's)...they chose works of mine which showcase the melodic, rhythmic and harmonic language I was focusing on at that time...The Ensemble has brought my music to life beautifully and I am very grateful to them for introducing this collection of pieces to you."

Brian Fennelly was a pupil of Mel Powell, Donald Martino, Gunther Schuller and George Perle. The music on this disc grows out of strong European and American traditions: it echoes the highly charged chamber music of early 20th century Austria; it recalls the visceral excitement and structural integrity of Sessions and Carter as well as the rhythms and harmonic richness of sophisticated jazz and swing. It is music for listeners with open minds and receptive ears.

The music of Milos Raickovich is political, or, more precisely, it carries an antiwar message. He writes moving music, at times purposely naive, at times horrifying. The pieces range from the meditative and minimalist (Little Peaceful Music) to spiritual (Parastos--an Eastern Orthodox Requiem); from dramatic (B-A-G-D-A-D) to documentary (United States, Stop the War!); from ritualistic (Litany of Iraq) to symbolic (Alarm). The CD is titled after a piece, B-A-G-D-A-D, Music on a six-note theme. The composer explains, "This work is a musical dedication to the ancient city, Baghdad. The name of this capital (spelled the European way, without the letter H) is used as a musical theme made of six notes: B-flat, A, G, D, A, D." Milos Raickovich has lived and worked in Belgrade, Paris, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Hiroshima and New York. He studied composition with Olivier Messiaen and David Del Tredici, and has taught at several universities in the U.S. and Japan. The Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed describes Raickovich's music as "a unique postmodern response to both minimalism and multiculturalism."

Chris Gekker is Professor of Trumpet at the University of Maryland. For 18 years he was a member of the American Brass Quintet, as well as being Principal Trumpet of the Orchestra of St. Luke's and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist, he has specialized in new American music for his instrument. This release is a companion to his earlier Albany disc, Winter (TROY670).

Born in Buenos Aires, Jorge Liderman has studied under Mark Kopitman, Ralph Shapey and Shulamit Ran. He writes: "This album is a collection of solos, duos and trios I wrote during the last 20 years. They are all inspired by, based on, quote, or make reference to pre-existing musical sources...in this disc the sources range from tango to William Byrd, and from Guillaume de Machault to Andean folklore."

William Bolcom, one of America's most innovative and original composers had an interest in the violin from a young age. This complete collection spans his entire career. We hear his early experimental works through the chromaticism of the 1970's up to the neo-Classical leanings of the 1990s. This music is perhaps the most important contribution by an American composer to the violin and piano repertoire.

This CD celebrates both the 1966 founding of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa, and the many accomplishments made over four decades. The composers have all been affiliated with the School of Music in one capacity or another, and each presents a unique voice to this collection. This is now the oldest and most successful among such collegiate ventures in the United States.

Cindy Cox's music emerges from a century whose loyalty oscillates between its concern for pure sound and pure form. But her deep attention to the sound world is held, shaped, and engaged through its purposeful structure, a synthesis that provides a third way. What Cox offers is more than a mere rapprochement one side with its other  but a deep conjunction between them. Cox studied with, among others, Donald Erb, John Eaton, Bernard Rands and John Harbison. Cox's own music is experimental yet has a "grounding" in traditional means of expression, dealing with issues of timbre and musical resonance. She is also an excellent pianist and interpreter, having studied with the famed Lili Kraus.

Daniel McCarthy is a composer whose music defies categorization in the usual sense. With his background in opera, chamber music, rock and jazz, his music is full of rhythmic energy and excitement, with a fresh appeal for today's audiences. As USA Today's David Patrick Stearns has written, "(his works) have the vigor of pop music and the spontaneity of jazz." This recording is a hybrid surround sound recording and can be played on all cds players as well as super audio equipment.

Eric Ewazen's music is influenced by a variety of styles and eras, including the motoric rhythms of the Baroque, the formal clarity of the Classical period, and a harmonic language that uses diatonic and even modal voicings. This disc displays his exceptional talent for brass writing, and makes a perfect companion for the Stentorian Ensemble CD (TROY948) that features his Myths and Legends.

Richard Wilson was born in Cleveland. At Harvard he studied composition with Robert Moevs. Today he holds the Mary Conover Mellon Chair in Music at Vassar College and since 1992 has been the Composer-in-Residence with the American Symphony Orchestra for which he gives pre-concert talks. He is also active as a concert pianist. His music is also available on two previously issued Albany CDs: TROY074, which contains Persuasions, for soprano and instruments, Lord Chesterfield to his Son for solo cello, Fixations for solo piano, and the Sonata for Viola and Piano; and TROY 333, Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom, that features ten choral works.

This debut recording of the Stentorian Quartet reveals how popular the trombone has become as an ensemble instrument. Their exceptional playing of works by some of America's most important composers (including three Pulitzer Prize winners) has created an indispensable disc for fans and performers of brass music. Members of the Stentorian Consort include David Begnoche, Barney McCollum, Brent Phillips, and Jonathan Whitaker.

Founded in 1998, the Equinox Chamber Players Ensemble is one of St. Louis' most dynamic musical groups. They celebrate community life by performing commissioned works inspired by environmental surroundings, historical and present day culture, and everyday heroes. They have appeared on PBS and NPR and have performed for thousands of adults and students. Members of Equinox include Paula Kasica, flute; Jeanine York-Garesch, clarinet; Ann Homann, oboe; Donia Bauer, bassoon; and Carole Lemire, horn.

Award-winning flutist Jan Vinci presents a wonderfully diverse program of works from around the world, in all styles and moods. As she writes, "My hope is that this eclectic program of rare gems and premieres will exude passion, create intrigue and fascinate both audiences and performers." First Prizewinner of England's International Performance Competition, Jan Vinci has performed at Alice Tully, Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall and Symphony Space, to mention only a few of the worldwide venues where she has given concerts. With a chamber music career spanning more than 20 years, Ms. Vinci performs with Iridescence (flute and harp duo) and Tritonis (flute, guitar and cello). She has commissioned over 15 works and appears on Five Premieres: Chamber Works with Guitar (Albany Records). Dr. Vinci is Senior Artist-in-Residence at Skidmore College. She holds a D.M.A. from The Juilliard School, an M.M. from Cleveland Institute of Music, and a B.M. from Bowling Green State University.