Catalog

The di.vi.sion piano trio (Kurt Briggs, violin; Matt Goeke, cello; Renée Cometa Brigg, piano) was formed in 2001. Its repertoire ranges from Haydn and De Fesch to Shostakovich and Ravel. The ensemble regularly programs and commissions new works that incorporate the musical structure of division. This recording of Merrill Clark's music includes Prime Divisions, which interweaves the compositional techniques of division with the composer's own system. The other work on the recording, Eighth Avenue Tango, was written as a birthday gift for violinist Kurt Briggs. Merrill Clark (b. 1951) has written many works in a wide variety of genres, from unaccompanied solo works to large-scale orchestral works. Clark finds writing for virtuoso musicians, whose playing one admires and who are also good friends, as the most gratifying creative event possible. The performances on this recording reflect the strong connection between the composer and performers.

This disc of American duos for violin and piano represents many years of collaboration between the performers Jennifer Frautschi (violin) and John Blacklow (piano) and their composer-colleagues. Frautschi and Blacklow have always given serious attention to composers of their generation in their concerts and are particularly enthusiastic about fearless composers with undeniably individualistic voices. All five composers represented on this disc have written extensively for chamber music ensembles, but their compositions for violin and piano have not been performed nearly often enough and deserve to be heard more widely. Jennifer Frautschi and John Blacklow, both having achieved distinction in their careers, have been performing together since 1996 when they made their New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall. They have performed in Europe's most celebrated concert venues as well as in major cities around the United States. This is their second recording for Albany Records, the first being a recording of the three Schumann Sonatas for Violin and Piano.

This debut recording of the Momenta Quartet (Emilie-Anne Gendron & Adda Kridler, violins; Stephanie Griffin, viola; Michael Haas, cello) offers three works by Philip Glass, Arthur Kampela, and Claude Debussy. On the surface, they may appear to have nothing in common, but hearing them in succession reveals unexpected connections. All three pieces are daring, energetic, and uncompromising. They generate unique, magical worlds from minimal materials. All three composers are innovators, making bold statements for their times that continue to affect the course of music today. The Momenta Quartet is celebrated for its innovative programming, juxtaposing contemporary works from widely divergent aesthetics with great music from the past. Momenta has premiered more than 100 works and collaborated with more than 120 living composers while maintaining a deep commitment to the classical canon. They have appeared at prestigious venues throughout the United States and performed in international festivals around the world. Their recordings appear on the Centaur, Furious Artisans

Composer Richard Felciano's music has always embraced the challenge of new possibilities -- new technology, but also an embracing of the function of sound in architecture and in the physical world. His attempts in his music to express humane sentiments while coping overtly with the problems inherent in the physical nature of the materials are a singular characteristic of this work. This compilation of his vocal music includes a work for sopranos and flutes; one for baritone voice, percussion, organ and electronic sounds; a work for voice and interactive electronics; one that is an environment for four performers that combines performer choice with live digital spatial processing; a work for women's voices, five harps and bell percussion; and a set of four unaccompanied choral songs.

Villa Diodati, composed by Mira J. Spektor with libretto by Colette Inez, features the poetry of notorious Romantic poets Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth. The plot revolves around the fateful events of Summer, 1816, when Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley penned Frankenstein while staying at the Villa Diodati in Geneva with her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. A contemporary American couple on a Swiss train find themselves thrown into the past and into the villa on the dreary summer day when Mrs. Shelley is creating her monster. Later that night, Mary will be haunted by her creation and also by the ghost of her Mother, the British feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. The famous couples fantasize of ghosts and monsters while privately facing their inner demons. Today the haunted Villa Diodati still stands as a landmark, overlooking Lake Geneva. The piece was filmed live at the York Theatre at Saint Peter's Church in New York City, produced by Bank Street Films, starring the beautiful young singers Rachel Arky, Angela Leson, Mike Longo, Jeremy Moore, Hillary Schranze and Rachel Zadkoff. The New York Times (Allan Kozinn) wrote that the vocal setting "recalled some of the more graceful music in Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti" and characterized as particularly appealing a duet between Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, "There is no heaven but my love." Reviewing the opera during the New York Musical Theater Festival in 2008, Talkin' Broadway wrote, "Mira J. Spektor (music) and Colette Inez (lyrics) have imbued their show with all the classic elements of success — luxurious love, vibrant-voiced performers, lush poetry, and a visionary director...The unabashedly operatic music wraps you in the warm embrace of the writings timeless romanticism. You'll probably hear no better musical all this year than Villa Diodati."

Victor Herbert's three-act 1914 score (Henry Blossom's song lyrics) -- the clash between a young female composer and an egotistical Broadway librettist based on a play by Frank Mandel, is offered in a new performance edition by Michael Phillips. His revision resulted in a reworking of the lengthy Mandel-Blossom dialog, entailed some minor repositioning of several musical numbers, but left Herbert's score and Blossom's actual song lyrics intact. All music is presented on this recording with a truncated version of Phillips' snappy book. The score is charming with the solo cello prominent and the lead soprano getting the best song, explained by Victor Herbert's own distinguished career as a cellist and his wife's position with the Met Opera.

This recording continues the tradition of the New York Latvian Concert Choir soon after its founding in 1975 of commissioning cantatas for their annual holiday concerts. The music presented on this CD, all new works by Latvian composers, is written in a great variety of styles, uniting the worlds of Latvian folklore and Christianity--that of Valdis Zilveris is written in a romantic tradition with simple, memorable melodies; while Ingmars Zemzaris has used a neo-baroque style; Ilona Rupaines' is much more complicated, intertwining folkloric and Christian worlds; and Larkis Lacis employs jazz harmonies but not jazz rhythms. This is the third recording of Latvian music for the Christmas season by the New York Latvian Concert Choir.

Albany Records celebrates composer Joseph Fennimore's 75th anniversary with the release of this two-cd set of his 24 Romances and other select works. Born in 1940, Fennimore is known not only for his compositions, but also as an extraordinary pianist and teacher. He is best known for his works for piano and chamber ensembles. The Romances were not written as a set, but rather composed over a span of 30 years, from age 43 to 73, amidst a prolific, hugely creative career. The Romances grew from ideas that periodically arose, took hold, took shape, and suited the general idea of a Romance: a short, imaginative piano work. Also included on this 2-CD set are his Fifth Sonata for Piano; Passacalle; Sonatinella; and Three Pieces for Piano. Jeffrey Middleton, long a champion of Fennimore's piano music, graduated from Juilliard and received his doctorate from Yale. His career has included chamber music, vocal coaching and accompanying, solo performances, and teaching. Middleton is on the faculty of the School of American Ballet, and was the 2010 recipient of the Mae Wien Award for distinguished faculty service.

Composer Eric Nathan, a 2013 Rome Prize Fellow and 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, has garnered acclaim internationally through performances at the New York Philharmonic's 2014 Biennial, Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, Aspen Music Festival, Aldeburgh Music Festival, and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, to name but a few. He was composer-in-residence at the 2013 Chelsea Music Festival and Chamber Music Campania. A graduate of Yale and Indiana University, he received his doctorate at Cornell. He is assistant professor of music at Brown University. Nathan's music conveys a compelling and infectious energy--virtuosity in the service of defining musical drama and character. In the seven works in this collection--three solo and four small-ensemble pieces--there's often a thrilling hint of vicarious danger. Performed by some of the most noted performers of contemporary music, including the Momenta Quartet, this recording serves as a fitting introduction to this brilliant young composer's music.

All of the music presented here, beautiful in its own right, is suitable for intermediate-level flutists to play. None have been widely recorded, so this recording offers performance models for younger students. These are lovely concert pieces by French composers written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Flutist Leonard Garrison teaches at the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho and is principal flute of the Walla Walla Symphony. He has been flutist in the Chicago Symphony and Tulsa Philharmonic as well as president of the National Flute Association. His other recordings on Albany Records include works for flute and piano by American composers and two recordings of the Scott/Garrison Duo performing American works for clarinet and flute. His colleague at the University of Idaho, Roger McVey is the pianist on this recording.

Following the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra's rousingly successful premiere of Lucas Richman's piano concerto in 2013, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where Richman was resident conductor and a frequent guest conductor, was approached about a recording of the piano concerto; a concerto for oboe and orchestra, commissioned and premiered by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; and his Three Pieces for Cello and Orchestra. With world-class soloists, the famed Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and Lucas Richman conducting, the recordings are brilliant and authoritative. Lucas Richman is music director of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and was music director of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra for 12 years. His music has been performed by more than 200 orchestras across the United States. Pianist Jeffrey Biegel, principal oboe of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida and Israeli-American cellist Inbal Segev are the soloists.

The Balaton Chamber Brass (Amy Cherry, trumpet; Dan Cherry, trombone) is a duo created with the intent of furthering the art of brass chamber music, performing educational outreach concerts, and adding new works to the brass repertoire. They have presented recitals at the International Women's Brass Conference; at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory, Morehead State University, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and Western Carolina University. They have served on the faculties of Western Carolina University, Morehead State University, East Tennessee State University, and Wright State University and are now teaching at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. For this recording they give expressive and informed performances of new works by Michael Kallstrom, Michael Sitton, Elizabeth Raum, Bruce Frazier and Wayne Lu.

The Museaux Trio (Sydney Carlson, flute; Denise Fujikawa, harp; Brian Quincey, viola) is an outgrowth of Debussy's creation of a work for flute, viola, and harp, which has inspired composers ever since. Debussy was captivated by Japanese culture and incorporated Asian influences into his music. Toru Takemitsu credited the music of Debussy as his most important western influence. Embracing the juxtaposition of these two composers, the Museaux Trio takes it's name from a 12th century Zen Monk, Muso Soseki, who designed the legendary moss garden of Kyoto. The name Muso means Dream Window in Japanese. For their debut recording, the Museaux Trio performs Debussy's classic work for this ensemble; Toru Takemitsu's work, And Then I Knew 'Twas Wind, which pays homage to Debussy's Sonate; and finally, a commissioned work by Karim Al-Zand, inspired by the captivating illustrations of biologist and naturalist Ernst Haeckel.

Pianist Nanette Kaplan Solomon, Professor Emerita of Music at Slippery Rock University has long been involved with the work of women composers. With this recording, she performs the music of the legendary Mana-Zucca in the first recording devoted to her music. Born in 1885, Gussie Zuccamanov (Zuckermann) had nearly a century long career as a child prodigy pianist, musical comedy star, prolific composer, and patron of the arts. She reinvented herself via her multiple talents as the winds of change and tides of time dictated. Even her name is an invention -- switching the syllables of her last name to create the artful, but gender mysterious Mana-Zucca. The piano pieces on this disc, written at various periods in the composer's life (from youth to age 90), represent excellent craftsmanship in the handling of small and large forms, and contain lush, chromatic harmonies. Because of her prolific output, vivacious personality, ingratiating melodies, and her impact on her life and times, Mana-Zucca was often called the "Chaminade of America." Like Chaminade and other women musicians, however, her importance to the musical world during her lifetime has been somewhat eclipsed. Recordings such as this one offer the opportunity to reassess her remarkable achievements.

Conductor Stephen K. Steele comments that David Maslanka's A Child's Garden of Dreams provided bookends for his tenure as conductor of the Illinois State University Wind Ensemble — it was both the first work he conducted by Maslanka performed there in 1989 and the last before his retirement in 2012. Steele's championing of Maslanka's music for wind ensemble is truly impressive. He and the Illinois State University Wind Ensemble commissioned four symphonies and have made more than a dozen recordings for Albany Records that feature his music. They have made an unequaled contribution to the body of music for wind ensemble through their commissioning, performing and recording of this extraordinary composer's work. Coupled with the much-loved work, A Child's Garden of Dreams is a concerto for two horns and wind ensemble -- Sea Dreams, a work inspired by Maslanka's interest with Moby Dick, his boyhood in New Bedford, Massachusetts and his on meditations on the sea.

Mezzo-soprano Sharon Mabry has championed the music of contemporary composers throughout her distinguished career. She has premiered works by more than 30 composers and has made eight recordings showcasing music by women and contemporary composers. In addition to her extensive concert career, Mabry is professor of music at Austin Peay State University, where she received the Distinguished Professor Award. She was a featured writer for the NATS Journal of Singing from 1985 through 2009. For this recording, she and collaborative artist, pianist Patsy Wade, perform song cycles by George Mabry (b. 1945) whose Songs of Reflection use texts by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Edna St. Vincent Millay as well as Dorothy Parker's poetry in Three Cabaret Songs; Kenton Coe (b. 1930) is represented with his work, A Family Gathering, setting poetry by Georgianna Orsini; Brian H. Peterson (b. 1953) whose Moon Songs are set to poetry by E.E. Cummings; and Persis Vehar (b. 1937) who used texts by May Swenson, Anne Waldman, and Barbara Greenberg for her cycle titled Women, Women.

American Masterpieces for Solo Percussion Volume II continues the exploration by percussionist Tom Kolor of seminal works for percussion written in the 20th century by American composers. This disc contains works by some of the world's most noted composers including Charles Wuorinen, Morton Feldman, Ralph Shapey and Christian Wolf. A graduate of Juilliard, Tom Kolor is one of New York's most in demand chamber musicians. He regularly performs with the New York New Music Ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players, Ensemble 21, and the Group for Contemporary Music, to name only a few. He has been a member of Talujon Percussion since 1995, presenting hundreds of concerts throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia with this ensemble. A faculty member at the University of Buffalo SUNY, Kolor oversees the percussion department and directs the UB Percussion Ensemble and UB Contemporary Ensemble. He appears on more than 50 commercial recordings.

The Nature Project, begun in 2005, was inspired by cellist Madeleine Shapiro's love of outdoor activities and concern with the environment. Ms. Shapiro has commissioned and performed more than 20 works specifically for this project, and it continues her career-long interest in electronics and multi-media. This recording features five of these works by pioneering composers. Called a "cello innovator" by Time Out New York, Madeleine Shapiro has long been a recognized figure in the field of contemporary music. She performs extensively as a solo recitalist throughout the U.S., Europe and Latin America with a focus on recent works by living composers. In addition to her recordings for Albany Records, Ms. Shapiro appears on the Naxos, New World, Stradivarius, CRI, Mode and HarvestWorks labels.

Matthew Quayle's varied and eclectic compositional output ranges from concert orchestral works to cabaret songs. His music has been performed by the Albany Symphony Orchestra, Avalon String Quartet, Arditti String Quartet and eighth blackbird, among many other distinguished new music ensembles. Quayle is on the faculty at NYU Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. He is a graduate of Oberlin, the University of Cincinnati and the New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science. The 21 short pieces in this collection were written in a span of just over a decade, from 2002 to 2013. Together they amount to an homage to the joys of the piano miniature: the type of unassuming little piece that one can play through countless times, until it feels like an old friend.

Horn player Laura Klock, after a 40 year career as a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and principal horn of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, decided it was about time to record her own disc featuring some of the composers who have energized and inspired her over the years. Written by and recorded with her friends, this disc indeed spreads the word about these exciting new works for horn by Emanuel Rubin, Frederick Tillis, Jeff Myers, Robert Stern, Hsueh-Yung Shen, and Salvatore Macchia. Ms. Klock, a graduate of the University of Michigan, was a founding member of the Massachusetts Brass Quintet and a member of the Brass Ring Quintet. Throughout her career, Ms. Klock has enjoyed teaching and playing both the modern horn and its ancestor, the natural horn. This disc reflects those interests with the inclusion of an energetic contemporary work for natural horn and alto saxophone. She has commissioned and recorded numerous new works for horn and her recordings appear on the Open Loop, Crystal, Gasparo, and Albany Records label.

Chinese-American pianist Clara Yang offers a recording of works for solo piano for her second disc on Albany Records. Folding time explores the connection between the past and the present. American composers Robert Muczynski, Timo Andres, and Phil Young have distinct compositional styles, yet their works contain elements that convey a sense of nostalgia for past musical eras — particularly the Romantic. The three modern pieces are interspersed with two major 19th century Romantic works by Chopin and Schumann. Anachronistic forays are often part of the compositional landscape today. We look back to the past, but the past is also alive in our present day. Praised for her "effortless and smooth" technique and her "devastatingly limpid and pliable" tone, Ms. Yang has performed in notable venues and series around the world. She has appeared as a soloist with orchestras including the Eastman Philharmonia, the Longview Symphony and the North Carolina Symphony; has presented solo recitals in numerous major conservatories, universities, and music festivals internationally and has appeared as a collaborative artist with many noted performers. She will give the world premiere performance of a new concerto by Chen Yi with the China Philharmonic Orchestra during the 2016-17 season. A graduate of Eastman, Yale, and the University of Southern California, Ms. Yang is on the faculty of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Professor of Composition and Chair of the Composition Department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, David Conte serves on the faculty of the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, the board of the American Composers Forum and as Composer in Residence with Cappella SF as well. A graduate of Bowling Green State University and Cornell, Conte studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, where he was one of her last students. He has composed more than 80 works, including six operas and has received commissions and performances of his music from many noted performing ensembles in the United States. In recent years, he has turned his attention to instrumental music and this recording of three of these represent his longest and most ambitious essays in this form. The performances by distinguished new music performers in San Francisco reveal dramatic and lyrical melodies.

Argentinian pianist Rosa Antonelli is one of today's leading performers and a champion of Latin-American and Spanish music. She has toured extensively, with more than 1,000 concerts in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America and she is dedicated to performing and recording the works of these composers for audiences all over the world. This recording is a rich and varied sampling of this music, bringing together standard repertoire works with a few less familiar gems. While composers from Brazil, Spain, Mexico and Cuba are represented, Ms. Antonelli focuses in particular on the music from her homeland with a rich array of compositions by Astor Piazzolla, Luis Gianneo and Alberto Williams.

Three string quartets by the distinguished American composer Steven R. Gerber as well as a Fantasy, Fugue, and Chaconne are performed by the Amernet String Quartet. Praised for their "intelligence" and "immensely satisfying" playing by the New York Times, the Amernet has garnered recognition as one of today's exceptional string quartets. They are Ensemble-in-Residence at Florida International University in Miami. Gerber's String Quartet #4 was written in 1972 for the Fine Arts Quartet; #5 in 1995 for the Carpe Diem Quartet; and #6 in 2011 for the Amernet String Quartet. The Fantasy, Fugue, and Chaconne was written in 2007. In addition to this recording, Albany Records has released a recording of Gerber's piano music. Other recordings of his music appear on the Naxos, Arabesque, Chandos, and Koch International record labels.

Composer Stephen Shewan (b. 1962) is a graduate of Roberts Wesleyan College and Ithaca College, and received his DMA from the Eastman School of Music. Now the director of bands at Williamsville East High School, he is active as a guest conductor, pianist, and clinician. Winner of the 2011 Choral Composition Festival at Ithaca College and recipient of the 2011 Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts from the College Board, Shewan has had performances of his music from orchestras and ensembles across the United States and Europe. His music has been called imaginative and infectious by critics. This disc offers a collection of his compositions for orchestra, wind ensemble, brass quintet and wind instruments, featuring sonatas for horn, trumpet, and clarinet. This is the third recording on Albany Records devoted exclusively to his music.

This recording of transcriptions for tuba and euphonium, arranged and performed by Chris Dickey also includes a work for tuba and piano by American composer James Grant. Covering a variety of style periods and musical language, these works should be welcome additions to the tuba and euphonium literature. Chris Dickey is on the faculty of Washington State University, the University of Idaho and the Red Lodge Music Festival. Active in the tuba-euphonium community, he serves on the board of directors for the International Tuba-Euphonium Association. He has been a featured artist at brass festivals in Argentina and Uruguay and maintains an active performance schedule with orchestras, brass bands, and universities throughout the U.S. He is joined for this recording by pianist Karen Savage, associate professor of piano at Washington State University.

Composer Kamran Ince's father was Turkish and his mother is American. He grew up partly in each country and now splits time between Memphis, Tennessee where he is on the faculty at the University of Memphis and Istanbul, where he teaches at Istanbul Technical University. Ince is first and foremost a composer in the Western classical tradition, but he is not bound by that tradition. He is also well versed in Ottoman classical music and grounded in Turkish culture. In ways sometimes explicit and sometimes subtle, his music reflects that dual heritage. The many musicians Ince gathered to record the varied chamber pieces on this recording have in common not only the big technique his music requires, but also the wildness and intensity it demands. They are Ince's triumphant champions, and he is their inspiration.

All of the works on this recording evidence the hallmarks of Martin Amlin's style: a facile flow of elaborate rhythms; a harmonic language rich with the notes that comprise seventh chords; a non-strict usage of tone rows; an honoring of the past through recognizable formal structure and thematic evolution; and a French sensibility that might be described as neo-impressionistic. A student of Nadia Boulanger, Martin Amlin received masters and doctoral degrees from the Eastman School of Music. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards and has been a resident at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. A member of the faculty at Boston University, he is also director of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Composition Program. A noted pianist as well, he performs the works on this CD with noted artists Leone Buyse and Michael Webster, who have long been advocates of his music.

British composer Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012) was a Harkness Fellow at Princeton and Professor of Music at Stanford University in addition to his positions at Sussex Un9versity. An invitation from Pierre Boulez to work at IRCAM in the early 1980s set the composer on a path that has characterized his whole career, and which has resulted in eight realizations at the Institute and two for the Ensemble Intercontemporain. His music has been showcased at all the major new music centers and festivals. The works on this recording, all performed by the illustrious New York New Music Ensemble, include a work for solo clarinet; one for clarinet and piano; a trio for violin, cello, and piano; one for flute, clarinet, and piano; and one for flute, clarinet, cello, piano, and percussion.

The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra celebrates its history, growth, and development with this recording of four new works. A fitting tribute to longtime music director Kirk Trevor who retires in 2015 after a 27-year tenure, the four works by James Aikman (commissioned by the ICO), Christopher Theofanidis, Derek Bermal and Michael-Thomas Foumai (winner of the 2014 ICO Contemporary Music Competition) were all recorded live in concert. The ICO is to be commended for its efforts to add to the body of music literature in the 21st century. Founded in 1984, the ICO is comprised of 34 professional musicians who perform an annual concert series, and sponsor a composition competition, collaborating with the Indiana State University Contemporary Music Festival.

The opera Judgment of Midas was commissioned by Crawford Greenewalt, Jr. to mark the 50th anniversary of the Sardis excavations in Turkey. Composer Kamran Ince took two stories, inspired by a tale from Ovid's Metamorphoses, as the basis for the opera. The stories interweave around the ancient city of Sardis and a mythic music contest said to have happened there. Turkish/American composer Kamran Ince's music bridges Anatolia and the Balkans to the West. The energy and rawness of Turkish and Balkan folk music, the spirituality of Byzantium and Ottoman court music, the tradition of European art music and the extrovert and popular qualities in the American psyche are the base of his sound world. Acknowledged as one of America's best composers, Ince is Professor of Composition at the University of Memphis and at MIAM Center for Advanced Research in Music in Istanbul. His numerous prizes include the Rome Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Boulanger Prize and the Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His extensive discography appears on Warner Classics, Naxos, Innova, Argo/Decca, and Albany Records.

Benjamin Sabey is a composer of chamber, live computer interactive and orchestral music, which has been performed by distinguished ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the New York New Music Ensemble and Red Fish Blue Fish, among many others. He is the recipient of two Barlow Endowment Commissions and the Royaumont Prize of Domaine Forget. A graduate of the University of California, San Diego, Sabey has taught composition, theory and electronic music at San Francisco State University, the University of San Diego and San Diego City College. Hearing Sabey's music, one senses that he is, to use Toru Takemitsu's lovely phrase, "confronting silence." Confrontations take many forms: encounter, challenge, transaction, even embrace. The mystery of Sabey's music is in not knowing which form the confrontation will take. This recording of his music, performed by some of America's best musicians, offers insight into Sabey's distinctive compositional voice.