Catalog

George Walker began his concert career as a pianist with a "notable debut" recital in Town Hall, New York, in 1945 - a recital sponsored by Mr. and Mrs. Efrem Zimbalist. Two weeks later, he performed the Third Piano Concerto of Rachmaninoff with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting. He was immediately hailed as one of the most brilliant pianists of his generation. In 1950, he became the first black instrumentalist to be signed by a major concert management, National Concert Artists. In 1953, he made an unprecedented tour of seven European countries - Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and England with phenomenal success. Today, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. And by the way, as a composer, in 1996, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra, which was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Seiji Ozawa conducting.

Currently a faculty member of the Washington Conservatory, Haskell Small received his musical training at the San Francisco Conservatory and Carnegie-Mellon University. He has studied piano with Leon Fleisher, William Masselos and Robert Sheldon and composition with Vincent Persichetti. His musical output is difficult to categorize. Nevertheless, it is clear that he is a throwback to the great composer/pianist tradition of the past four centuries. For almost three decades he has been performing internationally as a soloist. Throughout his teen years, he was adept at playing various jazz and rock styles by ear, but he did not acquire fluent musical literacy until he was 18. Although his compositions include works for cello, voice and various chamber and orchestral groupings, solo piano music remains the main thrust of his work. The program of solo piano music found on this disc was conceived, and is presented, with the intense concentration, wit, and quirky juxtapositions that Small's concert audiences have learned to expect.

Here we have four premiere recordings by 19th and 20th century women composers. Here are some facts about these relatively unknown composers. Grandval studied music with Friedrich Flotow, composition with Saint-Saens and piano with Chopin. Not bad! She was a prolific composer and many of her works were published, performed and favorably reviewed during her lifetime. Johanna Senfter was from Oppenheim, Germany. She studied in Frankfurt and then in Leipzig with Max Reger. She composed more than 180 works including nine symphonies, concertos for piano, violin, and cello, five string quartets, a piano quintet, a clarinet quintet and numerous vocal works. Serra Miyeun Hwang was born and raised in Seoul, Korea. She moved to the United States at the age of 18, later receiving a BA in composition for the University of California. The German composer Barbara Heller is best known as the editor of a collection of the piano music of Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel. Clarke and Bacewicz need no introduction.

James Yannatos was born and educated in New York City. His teachers were Boulanger, Dallapiccola, Milhaud and Hindemith in composition and William Steinberg and Leonard Bernstein for conducting. He has been Music Director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra since 1964. A word now about the soloists who appear on this recording. Martha Babcock is the principal cellist of the Boston Symphony, Edwin Barker the principal doublebass with the Boston Symphony and for many years Doriot Anthony Dwyer was the principal flute for the same Orchestra. Eric Ruske was named Associate Principal Horn of the Cleveland Orchestra when he was only 20.

There is nothing quite like the British composer Peter Dickinson's witty musical parody, with its humor at various levels. Who else would make a rag and a set of blues out of hymn tunes? Or turn the main themes of his Piano Concerto (TROY160) into a rag, which is actually played during the course of that work on an upright piano at the back of the orchestra? Or make a blues setting of Byron's "So we'll go no more a-roving" using a chord progression from Ravel and turn the whole thing into an Organ Concerto (TROY160)? Or have an offstage pianist piecing together fragments of a piano rag during his String Quartet No. 2 ? Or make a blues version of Edward MacDowell's salon classic, To a Wild Rose, calling it Blue Rose and consequently climaxing on Scriabin's mystic chord? And following this with a Wild Rose Rag? This CD is a collection to be enjoyed: five piano rags, five blues, three reworkings of Satie, two blues songs and two sets of songs, all presented as a complete program in the immediately attractive manner of all Dickinson's recitals, broadcasts and other recordings.

Steve Witser has served as assistant principal trombone of the Cleveland Orchestra since 1989, and is a member of the highly acclaimed Center City Brass Quintet. He was educated at Eastman and since 1993 has been a faculty member of the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has also been principal trombone of the Honolulu Symphony, Santa Fe Opera Orchestra and the Phoenix Symphony. He has also taught at Oberlin and the Eastman School. Kathryn Brown performs regularly as a solo pianist, chamber musician and singer. She is currently on the piano faculty and is a vocal coach at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

By the latter part of the forties, Norman Dello Joio was considered one of America's leading composers, and by the fifties he had gained international recognition. In 1948 and again in 1962 he won the New York Music Critic's Circle Award and in 1957 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Meditations on Ecclesiastes for string orchestra. The same year he also won an Emmy Award for his score to the television special Scenes from the Louvre. Debra Torok first spoke with Norman Dello Joio about this recording project in the beginning of May, 1997. Their initial meeting had been anticipated by the artist who, through research and performance, saw a need to make the public aware of these wonderful piano pieces. They began working together on interpretation and to correct the scores. This two volume set of the solo piano music is the first recording of the complete piano works of Dello Joio; a composer whose life achievements and compositions have enriched the landscape of American music. (Volume One is TROY344.)

Throughout their musical careers Ramon Ricker and Bill Dobbins have championed a less compartmentalized approach to music; an approach which is obvious on this new Eastman disc. They began their musical association in 1973 as faculty members at the Eastman School where Dr. Ricker is presently Professor of Saxophone. Mr. Dobbins left his professorship in Jazz Studies in September of 1994 to assume the position of music director of the West German Radio Big Band in Cologne, Germany. Both musicians have extensive professional experience in jazz and classical music. Dr. Ricker plays in the clarinet section of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, has recorded and toured with such jazz artists as Buddy Rich and Chuck Mangione, and is active as a studio musician, composer-arranger, producer and contractor. Mr. Dobbins has performed as soloist with symphony orchestras under Pierre Boulez and Louis Lane, and has worked with jazz artists Phil Woods and Red Mitchell, The National Jazz Ensemble and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra.

Debra Torok is the recognized authority on Dello Joio's piano music. She has talked extensively with the composer on how his music should be performed and is currently compiling and editing Dello Joio's complete piano music. Dello Joio's distinguished musical career began at the age of fourteen when he became a church Organist and choir director of the Star of the Sea Church on City Island, New York. A descendant of Italian church Organists, he was born on January 24, 1913 in New York. His father was an Organist, pianist, singer and vocal coach. Dello Joio recalls that his father was working with singers from the Metropolitan Opera who used to arrive in their Rolls Royces, and that his childhood was surrounded with musicians and music in his home. In 1939, he was accepted as a scholarship student at Juilliard, where he studied with Bernard Wagenaar. In 1941, he went to study with Paul Hindemith who told him that "your music is lyrical by nature, don't ever forget that." In the latter part of the forties, Dello Joio was considered one of America's leading composers and by the fifties had gained international recognition. He won the Pulitzer in 1957 for his Meditations on Ecclesiastes and an Emmy Award for his music for the television special Scenes from the Louvre. He taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Mannes College of Music, and was Professor of Music and Dean of the Fine and Applied Arts School of Boston University. From 1959 to 1973, he directed the Ford Foundation's Contemporary Music Project. In 1999, at the age of 86, he continues to compose with no signs of retiring. He is frequently being commissioned, as his music remains in constant demand. There is some wonderful music on this disc.

What a pleasure it is for Albany to be able to bring these wonderful pieces to the musical public. Bolcom tells this story: “One day in the fall of 1967 I had lunch with Norman Lloyd, then head of the music division for the Rockefeller Foundation, who mentioned having heard of a ragtime opera by Scott Joplin. Who is that? I asked – few people in 1967 knew the name Scott Joplin – and Norman told me Joplin was the composer of the “Maple Leaf Rag’ but that his opera existed only in legend. For some reason I immediately went on the trail of Treemonisha, only to find that no one even at the Library of Congress, Lincoln Center, or the Schomburg Collection had it. That is, until I asked my colleague Rudi Blesh at Queens College; we had barely ever said hello before as we rushed in and out of the same office on the way to teaching, but one week I asked him if he knew where I could find a copy of the opera, as all the usual suspects had nothing. When he said, “I have a copy of the vocal score. Shall I bring it next week?” I almost fell off my chair. From this happy event came an exploration of Joplin’s rags (courtesy of Rudi’s friend Max Morath) as well as the whole field of turn-of-the last-century piano ragtime. Soon after, Joshua Rifkin recorded the Joplin rags and Gunther Schuller laid the period instrumentations of Joplin onto disc; Joplin’s obscurity would be no more. What may be less well known is that from about 1968 on a whole group of young American composers, Peter Winkler, William Albright and several others, joined me in writing new traditional style rags. Bill Albright and I would send each other rags by mail like chess problems. It was all delightful for us (playing these new-old pieces in concert elicited warm responses from audiences), but I think we all felt the real impetus from our picking up a dropped thread of our emerging American tradition. Few of us would continue to write rags after about 1975, but the Ragtime Revival was certainly the beginning of American composers’ serious absorption of our own popular sources into our music in an unself-conscious way.” This wonderful two CD set should find a large audience.

After decades of relative obscurity, a number of gifted American composers who flourished around the turn of the 20th century are being discovered by music lovers. After their deaths composers such as Horatio Parker and a number of others were dismissed as derivative and minor figures, writers of pale imitations of European art music. But, as their works begin to reenter the repertoire with greater frequency, listeners at the turn of the 21st century are discovering music of great charm, impeccable craftsmanship and sincere expression. In fact, in their day many of these composers were greatly admired. Parker, for example, as professor of composition and Dean of the School of Music at Yale, enjoyed a reputation as a master of compositional craft, and taught a number of important younger composers, including Charles Ives. The reality was that Ives helped take music in a new direction, but now from the distance of a century or more, the fact that Parker's music was not ground breaking seems somehow less important and we as listeners are free to admire the craftsmanship and respond to the sincerity of this wonderful music.

Composing two generations later, Daron Hagen follows a path similar to Samuel Barber. Like Barber, Hagen is a product of the Curtis Institute and revels in the world of vocal writing. As Hagen is himself a pianist, Qualities of Light is a uniquely personal and demanding work. In writing for the instrument that has always been his musical voice, Hagen employs a generous array of pianistic gestures and styles for this nocturnal journey. As its title suggests, Qualities of Light has a strong sense of tonality. In this case, however, the tonality has more overtly painterly connotations. The hues and casts of ever-changing shadows and darkness through the course of the night provided Hagen with the impetus for this piece, as they occur during hours with which the insomniac composer is well acquainted.

Allen Shawn grew up in New York City and started composing music at the age of ten. He received his B.A. from Harvard where he studied with Leon Kirchner and Earl Kim, spent two years in Paris where he studied with Nadia Boulanger, and received his M.A. in music from Columbia University where he studied with Jack Beeson. Until 1985, he lived in New York City where he taught at the Mannes School and the Elizabeth Seeger School. He also worked as a pianist in pit orchestras on Broadway and at the New York Shakespeare Festival. Since 1985, he has lived in Vermont where he is on the faculty of Bennington College where he teaches composition. The bulk of his output is Chamber and piano music. He has also composed orchestral works, two operas with libretti by his brother, playwright Wallace Shawn, much incidental music for the theater and music for the film "My Dinner with Andre."

The wonderful draw of this album, besides the music of Samuel Adler is the great artistry of the various musicians involved in this project. What talent lies in American Orchestras! This disc proves it beyond question. Samuel Adler was born in Mannheim, Germany in 1928 and came to the United States in 1939. He holds a B.M. from Boston University and an M.A. from Harvard University. During his tenure in the U.S. Army, he founded and conducted the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra and because of the Orchestra's great psychological and musical impact on the European cultural scene, he was awarded the Army's Medal of Honor. His catalogue includes more than 400 published works in all media. He has also published three books. From 1966 to 1994 he was professor of composition at the Eastman School. He was the chairman of the department since 1974. He is currently on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music. The pieces on this disc were all composed at the request of and for all the friends Dr. Adler has made in America's Orchestras over the years.

This disc contains three wonderful American works for piano, two of which, the Converse and the Oldberg, are receiving their world premiere performances here. The least known figure on the disc has to be Arne Oldberg. Who was he? He was the teacher of Howard Hanson for starters. He was born and lived in the Chicago area. His father, Oscar Oldberg, founded in 1886 and was the first Dean of the School of Pharmacy at Northwestern University. His son, Dr. Eric Oldberg, became President of both of the Chicago Board of Health and the Orchestral Association, the governing body of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Arne was appointed Professor of Music at Northwestern University in 1899, and later Dean of the graduate school, a position he held until he retired in 1941. Mary Louise Boehm writes: "I met Mr. Oldberg after he had retired. I premiered his Third Piano Concerto with the Chicago Civic Orchestra. Oldberg himself played for me his Piano Sonata which is recorded here. He also coached me, explaining his ideas about the piece to me." Frederick Shepherd Converse never had to worry about money as he was born into a prominent Boston family. He studied with John Knowles Paine at Harvard and also George Whitefield Chadwick. In 1896, he went to Munich where he studied with Joseph Rheinberger. For awhile, he taught at the New England Conservatory and Harvard, but he soon retired to his estate in Westwood, Massachusetts, near Boston, where he lived the rest of his life. Nothing much needs to be said as way of introduction for Amy Beach except to say that Mary Louise Boehm is an expert in the performance of her music. Her recording of the Beach Piano Concerto is still considered definitive.

The Argentine pianist Mirian Conti enjoys a growing reputation as a musician. Stylistically assured in a wide range of repertoire, Ms. Conti is considered a leading exponent of Spanish music; and her rare ability to communicate passion and excitement when playing contemporary scores has won the admiration of many leading American and Argentine composers, including those included on this disc. She began her musical education in Buenos Aires and completed it at Juilliard in New York. Morton Gould's Pieces of China could best be described as an American's impressions of China. They were first performed in Madison Square Garden for an international event. Volumes 1 and 2 of Persichetti's Poems for Piano were composed in 1947 and the third volume in 1981. The titles of each of the sixteen character pieces are drawn from single lines of various poems, each piece reflects the single line of poetry rather than the poem as a whole. These lines are printed in the booklet. It is most interesting to note that David Diamond was so impressed with Mirian Conti's playing when he heard her at Juilliard that he dedicated his Sonatina No. 2 to her. His earlier Sonatina No. 1 was dedicated to the poet Alfred Kreymborg. Poems of the Sea is one of Ernst Bloch's most often performed piano pieces. A very impressionistic piece, the three movements are: "Waves," "Chanty," and "At Sea."

Pantcho Vladigerov has justifiably earned the symbolic title of Grand Master of the Bulgarian school of composing. It fell upon Vladigerov to become the first recognized representative and brilliant herald of the young Bulgarian art of composing that was trying to find its own place in the world of music after 500 years of being yoked by the Ottoman Empire. His enormous gift and the wide spectrum of his creations gave Bulgarian music what the other great musical nations took pride in long before his star began to rise. Vladigerov, known in the West as the teacher of Alexis Weissenberg, was a composer-pianist with electrifying technique, dazzling energy, and driving spirit. Pantcho Vladigerov's mother was a medical doctor and was related to Boris Pasternak and his father was a lawyer. In 1912, he was sent, with his brother to Berlin where he studied with Paul Juon. He also studied piano with Heinrich Bart who was a pupil of Franz Liszt. At fifteen Pantcho entered the School of Music. In 1918, he composed his first piano concerto for the Russian pianist Leonid Kreutzer. The performance of this work brought him recognition. In 1932 he returned to Bulgaria where he became Professor of Piano, Chamber Music and Composition at the Academy of Music in Sofia. For the next forty years he concertized, composed and made recordings. He died in 1978 at the age of 79. Alexander Vladigerov studied composition and piano with his father as well as conducting with Nathan Rachlin in Kiev. He was ferociously promoting George Gershwin and American jazz in Bulgaria at a time when such artists were persecuted by the Communists for similar activities.

Sigurd Rascher's influence on the development of a body of music suitable for performance by saxophonists is truly international. He is a man with a mission. For nearly fifty years he traveled the globe as a concert artist appearing as soloist with both major and provincial Orchestras, and as a recitalist in concert venues large and small. During his years as a frequent traveler, he was constantly on the lookout for promising young composers whom he encouraged to create fresh new works for the saxophone. These efforts have resulted in a large percentage of the best music yet composed for the instrument. In addition to encouraging the creation of original music for the saxophone, Rascher transcribed a number of preexisting compositions, both classical and traditional, so that they could be performed and enjoyed by saxophonists and their audiences. He did so much to establish the saxophone as a viable medium for serious artistic expression, and through his example and teaching encouraged numerous other saxophonists to continue on the same path he blazed. All of the music recorded on this disc has some association with the great man himself. Lawrence Gwozdz, a former student of Rascher, is Professor of Saxophone at the University of Southern Mississippi. He concertizes extensively throughout the United States and Europe.

This compact disc presents keyboard masterpieces by five of our century's most acclaimed Jewish composers. The sampling of the rich and varied traditions of Jewish music seems especially appropriate as this is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. A somewhat mischievous note of caution creeps in, however, when one attempts to define precisely what "Jewish music" is. Apart from that which can be heard as either liturgical or folk, one faces an enormous gray area of diverse styles (often in the same work), national influences and musical personalities. All of which is to say that "Jewish music" is much more similar to than distinct from other music. This is especially true in America today as younger composers have shed much of their teacher's and their teacher's heritage. Jewish composers exhibit all the strengths and all the weaknesses found among all musicians as of all humanity. When describing great works of art of all styles or origins, massive or minuscule in scope, one is speaking in part of the "vision" of its creator. This is not a mystical term; rather it describes an overreaching personal statement which envelopes the work and, when combined with formal coherence, creates a sense of artistic truth. While this "vision" is common to all great art, the creator can cast his gaze in many different directions: upward towards the heavens; inward towards the mysteries of the self; outward towards the sights and sounds of the world; backward to the past or forward to the future. This sense of "Jewish music" is perhaps to be found here; while all art contains a vision, the Jewish vision is distinct in just what the artist, in this case the composer, sees and feels.

The nine sonatas for solo piano by Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko (composed between 1957 and 1992) have attracted particular praise. "In the sonata genre, it may be that Tishchenko is well on his way to composing the most important body of works in Russia since Prokofiev," wrote Maurice Hinson in his Guide to the Pianist's Repertoire. He completed his Ninth Piano Sonata in 1992. The sonata exhibits the complexity characteristic of the last years of the 20th century. Internal links between the three movements, rather than any observance of Classical sonata form, bind the three movements together. Sergei Mikhailovich Slonimsky is the nephew of the famous Russian-American composer and lexicographer, Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1994). For the entry on his nephew Sergei in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Nicholas Slonimsky wrote: "(Sergei Slonimsky's) style of composition is in the tradition of Soviet modernism, evolving towards considerable complexity of texture and boldness of idiom."

This program features some of Haydn's earliest compositions, works that survive (in Christa Landon's words) only through "happy accident." Haydn himself felt no compunction to preserve his earliest efforts. When, in the last years of the 18th century, Breitkopf set about an authorized edition of Haydn's complete keyboard works (published 1800-1806), the composer, with a view towards posterity, expunged not only spurious works that had been published in his name, but also, as the preface explained, "those works of my early youth, which are not worth preserving." Those works that do survive from the 1750s and early 1760s are thus of particular interest, not simply as a measure of Haydn's subsequent development but also, as Landon remarks in the preface of her own complete edition of the composer's keyboard sonatas, because they possess "moments of such beauty that they should be kept alive by performance and not be allowed to fall into oblivion." Here on this new disc in Albany's continuing series devoted to the piano works of Haydn, you have the opportunity of hearing these early works for yourself and judging their value.

The significance of this four-volume recording project is its celebration of 20th century compositions for piano and some Chamber works written by Americans of African descent that have never been recorded or have had limited recorded performance. The contributions of the American composer of African descent to classical music is rarely addressed, and as a result, this music remains virtually unknown. Of the estimated 300 American composers of African descent listed in Readings in Black American Music: A Biographical Dictionary, few are known by most musicians, and little of their music is heard in concerts or on radio today. Furthermore, recordings of their classical music are difficult to locate because so very little of the music is available on compact disc. This compilation of works will be vital in addressing this problem. The works presented on this disc include a unique historical content and a variety of styles both quoted and extracted from the various traditional idioms of the composer’s heritage. The selected works presented in this first volume are representative of many 20th century styles and compositional ideas; the 12-tone serial techniques of Hale Smith, the multimetric and asymmetrical writings of Adolphus Hailstork, the Neo-Classic style of Roger Dickerson, the polymetric writings of Jeffrey Mumford, and the Cuban-African traditions of Tania Leon.

The great American composer George Walker, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1996 with his composition, Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra began his musical career as a pianist. He was born in Washington, DC in 1922. He began to take piano lessons when he was five years old. He graduated from Oberlin at 18 and went on to Curtis where he studied piano with Rudolf Serkin and composition with Rosario Scalero. In 1945 he made his acclaimed New York debut in Town Hall in a concert that was sponsored by Mr. And Mrs. Efrem Zimbalist. Two weeks later, he appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra as soloist in the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 under Eugene Ormandy. Subsequently he appeared with many major Orchestras performing the core of the romantic repertoire. In 1950, he became the first black instrumentalist to obtain major concert management. In 1953, he became the first black artist to make a major concert tour of Europe, where he played to resounding acclaim in seven countries. Here we have the composer as performer in works that have long had special meaning for him. This is a unique, warm, lovely disc. Please note that it is HDCD encoded for your customers who are looking for the latest in digital technology.

Here is an imaginative offering that should have wide appeal. John Bullard has attracted international attention for his work in developing and transcribing the classical repertoire for the five-string banjo. A highly regarded bluegrass artist as well, John began playing the banjo as a child and was strongly influenced by the legendary Earl Scruggs. He was on the 1992 faculty of the world-renowned Tennessee Banjo Institute, along with Pete Seeger and Bela Fleck. It has been said about him: "what Segovia did for the guitar, John Bullard may well do for the five-string banjo; elevate it to a respected classical instrument." Bullard himself writes: "I love the five-string banjo. Penetrating and soulful, its personality is bewitching. I encountered "Scruggs Style" picking as a youth and was hooked. I have the same visceral reaction when I hear lutes and harpsichords. They posses that raw, plucked sound so characteristic of the banjo. In fact, when I listen to Renaissance and Baroque music, I hear banjos. The same earthy texture found in Appalachian music attracts me to the Early Music of Europe and Britain. While it is fascinating to realize the ties between Appalachia and its musical ancestors, my transcribing of "Classical" works for banjo simply indulges my passions. While drawn to the music of Bach, his contemporaries, and their Renaissance forebearsI love the five-string banjo."

While the music on this recording is not Scott Joplin, it most certainly does capture the flavor of old time rags. Sydney Hodkinson, the producer for this series of Eastman recordings says: "From roughly the late 1930s through the early sixties, most serious American composers worked within one of two basic musical encampments, continuing and expanding upon traditions established by the 20th century giants Schoenberg and Stravinsky. In striking contrast to this earlier era, today's younger generation of composer benefits from exposure to what has been called a +veritable salad bowl of styles,' marked by an extremely wide range of character, aesthetics and musical cross-currents. The works represented in this Eastman American Music Series of new music recordings bear eloquent testimony to the effect this healthy and diverse musical diet has had on the work of American composers. Various auditory repasts offer composers a choice of forms and influences from such divergent sources as jazz, non-Western music, romanticism, dodecaphony, minimalism, pop and rock, asceticism, cross-over, and spiritualism and all on the same menu! This variety serves both as a high-calorie, vibrant sign of our own creative times, and as a demanding burden placed upon American composers seeking, indeed groping for, their own unique voices: +Red or green peppers? Radish? How much onion? What kind of lettuce? How do I choose my OWN language that will allow me to speak what I need to say?' The works recorded on this disc present the distinct and often unusual offerings of a few leading, contemporary American +workers' in this sonic kitchen." The pianist for this disc, Tony Caramia, is associate professor of piano at the Eastman School of Music, where he is director of piano pedagogy studies and coordinator of the class piano program.

Twentieth century Latin American composers of various generations and aesthetic persuasions have contributed substantially to a piano literature that remains undiscovered by most music lovers. In the last few years, the Cuban born pianist, Martha Marchena, has endeavored to reveal the many wonderful facets of this repertoire and appears now to be one of the foremost Latin American-Caribbean pianists specializing in this very rich area. She has also been very interested in making known the music of women composers from this part of the world. This compact disc includes pieces by older composers like Castro, Aretz, Terzian and Peixe, as well as a generous sampling of composers from younger generations. There are extensive notes about the composers and their music included with this CD. IT is a pleasure to have Ms. Marchena, a specialist in this repertoire, performing on this most unusual album.

Paul Ramsier was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and showed promise as a pianist at the age of five and began composing at the age of nine. At 16 he entered the University of Louisville School of Music and then went to Juilliard where he studied piano with Beveridge Webster. At Florida State University he studied composition with Ernst von Dohnanyi. In his early career in New York City, he was a staff pianist with the New York City Ballet where he was influenced by Balanchine and Stravinsky. During this period he studied composition with Alexei Haieff. He is a composer of Orchestral, opera and choral works, but his chief contribution to 20th century music is a body of work for the double bass. On this disc we have his four major works for this instrument gathered on one CD, including one of the most requested works from the back Louisville catalog, The Road to Hamelin, a most popular work for children, which, with more exposure will become as popular as Peter and The Wolf. Please note that two of the compositions are performed by the great double bassist, Gary Karr.

Martin Herman composed his Arena in 1990-91. Herman has worked at IRCAM with Pierre Boulez and in Iannis Xenakis' studio. He is currently on the faculty of California State University, Long Beach, where he teaches music composition and theory and directs the Computer and Electronic Music Studio. Augusta Read Thomas' coolly austere Whites resulted from the composer's desire to make a sonic equivalent of a visual exploration of white. Stephen Jaffe composed his Impromptu in 1987. It is a short set of variations based on a bluesy pavanne and was composed for a 70th birthday concert in honor of George Rochberg. Jaffe is currently on the faculty of Duke University where he directs the concert series "encounters with the Music of Our Time." According to the composer Randall Woolf, the hard-driving Nobody Move "tries to find the common ground between the menace of the hard-core Hollywood villain and the fearless bravado of the virtuoso pianist, with the audience as helpless victim, too frightened to bat an eye." John Harbison won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1987. His Four Occasional Pieces were written over a ten year period between larger, more serious works. Today he holds an endowed professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Robert Kyr's White Tigers is based on a legend found in Maxine Hong Kingston's novel "The Woman Warrior" in which a young girl learns the ways of a woman warrior in part by emulating a white tiger - the wildest, most mysterious beast in the jungle - and goes on to liberate her people from oppression.

Leo Sowerby's piano compositions span the composer's entire creative life. His very first composition, written in 1905 at the early age of ten, was a piece now lost entitled The Dawn of Day. His last important piece with piano is the Dialog for Organ and Piano, written within a year of the composer's death in 1968. Sowerby was a born pianist and in his early years he frequently performed his own music and the works of other composers as well. As he grew older, he appeared less frequently in public as a pianist and finally gave it up all together. The Organ became his primary instrument and he divided his time between composing, teaching and his work as a church musician. Dating from 1916 to 1929, the selections on this compact disc are products of the composer's youthful maturity. All these works were composed when Sowerby was in his twenties, except for the Florida Suite, which he composed when he was 34.

A proponent of American music, pianist Justin Kolb frequently performs the music of Joan Tower, Tania Leon, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber and Peter Schickele. He has performed premieres of music by Robert Starer, Paul Alan Levi and Jan Bach. His program of Starer's solo piano music in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall was hailed by the New York Times as a "Piano Recital Program with a difference." Kolb also performs much of the standard keyboard literature with an emphasis on Beethoven, Liszt and Alkan. The notes for this disc are written by the composer who has had a life-long love affair with the piano. Contemporary music lovers will find this program most appealing and refreshing.

There is a fact in American music that can no longer be overlooked. There are a great number of composers over 65 who are very important and who are routinely overlooked by the major labels. This is shameful. In the fifties the music of Benjamin Lees, relatively speaking, was everywhere; the concert hall, RCA Victor, Turnabout, Louisville. So, when you have a magnificent pianist, Ian Hobson, performing the music of an equally magnificent composer, Benjamin Lees, you have an important disc. The Piano Sonata No. 4 was commissioned by the Ford Foundation for Gary Graffman and given its world premiere in Norfolk, Virginia. The Fantasy Variations are dedicated to Emanuel Ax who gave them their world premiere on February 1, 1984 at the Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York City. Mirrors, in six sections was composed for Ian Hobson. The first four sections were premiered by Mr. Hobson in Orchestra Hall in Chicago. Since that premiere in 1992, Mr. Lees has added two more sections. Since the work is open ended, there is no telling how many sections it will ultimately have. Here we have a disc that will really appeal to all lovers of contemporary American piano music: no - in fact, contemporary music in general.