Catalog

For its second recording on Albany Records, the famed TCU Percussion Orchestra performs seven works written by composers from Texas, the Midwest and Oregon in world premiere recordings. Under the direction of Brian A. West, the ensemble has commissioned and premiered more than 20 works. The TCU Percussion Orchestra has been showcased at the Percussive Arts Society's International Conventions in 2005, 2008 and 2011. Dr. West, an active clinician, composer/arranger, and adjudicator for a variety of percussive events, is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Texas. He is the Percussion Artistic Director for the International Festival of Winds and Percussion.

Born in Mexico in 1987, Juan Pablo Contreras has been called one of the most prominent young composers of Latin America. His music has been heard throughout the U.S., Europe and Latin America and performed by major orchestras in Mexico. The winner of numerous awards and grants, he has served as composer-in-residence at the Turtle Bay Music School and the Concerts on the Slope chamber music series. He is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and the California Institute of the Arts. Contreras' music has been largely focused on exploring what it means to be a Mexican classical music composer in the 21st century. His music shows a synthesis of classical contemporary music and Mexican popular and folk music, addressing issues that are sensitive in Mexico but also speak about themes of universal interest, aspiring to communicate deeply with listeners worldwide. You can watch a video of the recording on youtube at this link: http://youtu.be/66nNZYj3aDc

All of the works on this recording may be labeled character pieces, a catchall term that covers compositions that are not sonatas, variations, dances, toccatas, fantasies or fugal works. The term originated in the late 1820s and referred almost exclusively to solo piano pieces. Pianist Richard Zimdars performs 20th and 21st century compositions written by composers from Russia, the U.S., Australia, Korea, and Israel. Zimdars, recently retired from a 40-year teaching and performing career, performed and lectured in Europe, Brazil, Canada and the U.S. His extensive discography includes the complete piano music of Roy Harris (on Albany Records) as well as Charles Ives' four violin sonatas and numerous recordings of works by contemporary composers. He was artistic director of the 2011 American Liszt Society Festival and organizer of the American Liszt Society Bicentennial Composition Competition.

This collection of music for oboe offers six examples of the instrument's singular affinity to express grief and suffering. Each piece is concerned primarily with tragedy and loss in various forms, and in each case the composer has gravitated toward the voice of the oboe to portray the emotional dissonances and psychological complexities of the material at hand. Yet within these diverse works we find anger, defiance, resignation, nostalgia, hope and transcendence in addition to sadness and mourning. Oboist Mark Hill's versatile career has spanned a broad range of orchestral, chamber, and solo performing while maintaining a consistent commitment to teaching. He is currently principal oboe of the National Philharmonic and a member of the Left Bank Concert Society. A graduate of the State University of New York-Stony Brook, he is professor of oboe and chamber music at the University of Maryland School of Music in College Park. This is his second recording for Albany Records.

This recording of new works for shakuhachi and classical guitar has brought composer and shakuhachi master Jeffrey Lependorf to new places both in terms of incorporating improvisation into composed scores and in terms of composing for himself to perform with other instruments. Challenged to incorporate guitarist Scott Field's deep roots in avant-jazz performance with his formal classical training in traditional Buddhist meditation music, Lependorf was presented with an opportunity to create composed works that invite varying levels of improvisation. A graduate in music composition of Columbia and Oberlin, Jeffrey Lependorf also is a certified master of the shakuhachi. His colleague, guitarist Scott Fields, studied at the University of Wisconsin. As a leader of his own groups and a sideman in other groups, Fields has toured throughout North America, Europe and Asia and appears on more than 30 recordings.

The music of Frank Stemper has been performed in the United States and abroad in more than 22 countries. Through his multiple artist and teaching residencies as well as guest composer appearances at international festivals, his music has maintained a presence on the world new music scene. An eclectic blending of serial and jazz influences from the middle 50 years of the 20th century, his music demands virtuosity as well as sensitive interpretation. Korean pianist Junghwa Lee is the winner of many competitions and appears regular in solo recitals, chamber concerts, and lecture recitals as well as in concerto performances. A graduate of Seoul National University and Eastman, she is currently on the faculty of Southern Illinois University Carbondale and an active member of the Altgeld Chamber Players. She is the perfect interpreter for this recording of Stemper's complete music for piano.

Two colleagues from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, oboist John Dee and bassoonist Timothy McGovern, join pianist Cara Chowning in a program of music for winds and piano. The composers hail from the U.K., Germany, Italy, Canada and the U.S. The program includes two trios for oboe, bassoon and piano; two works for oboe and piano and two works for bassoon and piano. All three performers have enjoyed active performing and academic careers. Dee served as principal oboe of the Florida Philharmonic and Florida Opera and McGovern is principal bassoon of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra as well as the bassoonist for the Prairie Winds Woodwind Quintet. In addition to her performance schedule, Chowning was music director of Opera Cleveland's Great Works Outreach Department.

Thomas Sleeper's Einstein's Inconsistency is a series of eight operas, the longest being about 20 minutes with the shortest just under a minute. On the surface, the operas seem unrelated, but each acts as a sort of mosaic tile to create a treatise on the very nature of existence. What all the characters have in common (a king, a bureaucrat, a critic, a grieving man, a heretic, a priest, a paranoid woman, and finally God) is that they are all at the brink of discovering what it means to exist. When taken as a whole, Einstein's Inconsistency takes the listener into a sort of sonic funhouse. One cannot experience this work and remain unaltered by it. It is clearly a deeply personal piece for the composer and contains some of his most inventive and powerful music to date.

Peteris Plakidis is one of the Latvian composers who from his very first compositions successfully created lyrical vocal works based on the intellectual poetry of the day. His compositions for voice and piano or other instruments do not seem to warrant the description of solo songs in the traditional meaning of the word. They could more accurately be described as "musical poems" and certainly deserve this title. Now a professor at the Latvian State Conservatory, Plakidis' music is performed extensively in Latvia and to some extent in Europe and the U.S. Plakidis was a visiting professor at Southern Illinois University in the early 1990s, founding a chamber ensemble called The Transatlantic Trio that combined musicians from both sides of the Atlantic. The soloist on this recording, Maija Krigena, who is married to Plakidis, appears with the Latvian State Opera.

The theme that ties this album together, Pieces and Passages, is a self-circling paradox. A piece of music as a complete, worked-out thought or fragments -- perhaps something broken or incomplete. Passages are the kind sought by travelers and in the case of the music on this recording, wends through America, Peru, Ireland, and China. These dual metaphors guided violinist Scott Conklin's approach to this repertoire as he combined seemingly disparate styles and sentiments into an eclectic but cohesive artistic statement. Conklin regularly appears as a recitalist, soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player and teaching clinician throughout the U.S. and abroad. He is on the faculty of the University of Iowa and a violin teacher at the Preucil School of Music. Pianists Alan Huckleberry and Jason Sifford are his collaborators.

The distinguished American composer Thomas Pasatieri is well known for his operas, having composed 22, as well as for his hundreds of songs and other vocal works. In fact, his first symphony, written at age 63 came about because of his association with the University of Kentucky and their production of his opera, The Hotel Casablanca. His Symphony No. 2 was written for conductor John Nardolillo and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra as well, while Symphony No. 3 was commissioned and premiered by the Northwest Sinfonietta. These are world premiere recordings of these works.

"27" An Opera in Five Acts, owes its origins to the friendship between soprano Stephanie Blythe and the artistic director of the Opera Theater of Saint Louis, James Robinson. They decided to commission one of Blythe's favorite composers, Ricky Ian Gordon, to create a new work for her. Gordon presented his idea of a fantasy on Gertrude Stein as a potential subject and "27" was born. 27 refers to the address of Stein's salon in Paris, 27 rue de Fleurus. Virgil Thomas said of that address that, "Every story that ever came into the house eventually got told in Alice's way, and [that became] its definitive version." Ricky Ian Gordon, long interested and perhaps obsessed with Gertrude Stein, had always wanted to write an opera about Stein and Alice Toklas. He found the perfect librettist in Royce Vavrek, a Brooklyn-based writer of opera, musical theater, and concert works. This recording was made at the world premiere performances of the work in Saint Louis.

Composer by character and performer by temperament, James Scott Balentine brings a complex mix of multicultural and eclectic experiences to his music. Professor of Music at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Balentine has received awards, grants and commissions from the Barlow Endowment, the Opera Guild of San Antonio, and many chamber ensembles and soloists. For this recording, clarinetist Robert Walzel has assembled works for clarinet and piano; clarinet and bassoon; and clarinet ensemble. Most of these works have received performances at the annual ClarinetFest conferences that take place around the world. Performer Robert Walzel has been featured at music festivals and other venues around the world for more than 25 years and was principal clarinet of the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra before becoming Dean of the School of Music at the University of Kansas.

The young piano virtuoso Christopher Janwong McKiggan commissioned seven composers from many different cultural backgrounds (American, Canadian, Thai, Chinese, Korean and Middle Eastern) to write a work for piano based on Paganini's 24th Caprice for solo violin. The variety of the compositions that resulted is fascinating and links multiple national traditions around a central theme, while maintaining uniqueness. Born in England, McKiggan grew up in Thailand. He has studied at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Rice University, where he is now pursuing a DMA in piano performance. A recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Gold Medal in the Seattle International Piano Competition, McKiggan is committed to contemporary music and has performed numerous world premieres, including the Asian premiere of Robert Beaser's Piano Concerto at the 2012 Beijing Modern Music Festival.

During the past several years, the Corona Guitar Kvartet (Per Dybro Sorensen, Volkmar Zimmermann, Kristian Gantriis and Mikkel Andersen) has specialized in forging personal relationships with composers of varying styles, and of performing their works. The selections on this, their sixth CD, reflect the diversity of contemporary music styles performed by the Kvartet and most of it was written especially for them by composers taken with the the Kvartet's openness to differing musical visions, its willingness to play composers whose music its members admire, and its dedication to understanding each work on its own terms. The composers include Charles Norman Mason and Dorothy Hindman, faculty members at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music; Edward Green, a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music; Franco Sbacco, a faculty member at the State Conservatory of Music Santa Cecilia of Rome; and Fred Frith, a faculty member at Mills College.

A stellar lineup of new music ensembles and performers, including the Brentano and Manhattan String Quartets and the percussion ensemble Talujon, are featured on this new disc of chamber works by noted composer Eric Moe. Called "music of winning exuberance," by the New York Times, this disc includes works for string quartet; for percussion ensemble; solo percussion; soprano and string quartet; and a work for viola and cello. Moe, a graduate of Princeton and the University of California at Berkeley, is the recipient of numerous awards and commissions, including the Lakond Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Recordings of his music appear on the Naxos, Koch, New World and Albany Records labels. He is currently on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh.

Composer Paul Salerni is on the faculty at Lehigh University where he teaches composition and directs the new music ensemble. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard and is a leading expert on the music of Earl Kim as well as being a dedicated educator. His music, described by the New York Times as "impressive" and "playful," has been performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and China. He is the recipient of numerous awards and commissions: his opera Tony Caruso's Final Broadcast won the National Opera Association's Chamber Opera competition and was premiered in 2008. This recording, which contains his chamber music written over the past ten years, reflects his belief that "music should make you want to dance, sing, cry, laugh. It should move you physically and emotionally." Through chamber ensembles, Salerni has taken advantage of the possibilities for music to touch and be touched.

Rarely, if ever, has a successful Broadway show received such unanimously rave reviews, yet disappeared so quickly as Victor Herbert's 1906 Dream City & The Magic Knight. The show traces its genesis to attempts by the celebrated vaudeville team of Lew Fields and Joe Weber to interest Victor Herbert in writing music for one of their shows. Herbert had no interest in writing for vaudeville, but when Weber went out on his own as a producer, he contracted with Herbert for a comic opera. Billed as a "Dramatic Pipe in Two Puffs," the show's zany first act was in the musical comedy style; in the middle of the second act as an operatic burlesque, spoofing the conventions of grand opera, particularly Wagner's Lohengrin. The Ohio Light Opera offers a new performance edition, with complete music and dialogue recorded live at the 2014 Summer Festival.

This recording was conceived by pianist Matthew McCright by pairing music from two periods of Olivier Messiaen's compositional life that are linked by the pianist Yvonne Loriod. Messiaen heard Loriod perform the Préludes, and she became his muse for countless compositions, including Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jésus, which was dedicated to her, and later, his second wife. McCright has performed extensively throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia and the South Pacific as a piano soloist and chamber musician. A member of the piano faculty of Carleton College, McCright has premiered numerous new pieces, many written for him, and has collaborated with such composers as Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Augusta Read Thomas, and Paul Dresher, among many others. He studied at Westminster College, the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Minnesota.

Russian-born pianist Rose Shlyam Grace has collaborated with flutist Katherine Fink, euphonium player Ed Morse, and pianist Kristie Born to record six works by contemporary American composers — all of which have been written since 2000. The works include two solo piano pieces by Gregory Fritze and M. Shawn Hundley; two works for euphonium and piano by Gregory Fritze; a sonata for flute and piano by Philip Wharton; and a piece for two pianos by Zack Browning. Ms. Grace has concertized throughout the U.S. as a soloist and chamber music recitalist. She is a graduate of Oberlin, the University of Chicago and Eastman and is on the faculty at Bethune-Cookman University as well as teaching at Daytona State College.

This recording explores societal attitudes and misconceptions about life in Eastern cultures through Western classical and popular music of the 19th and 20th centuries. Fascinated by the East, Western composers of opera, operetta, musical theater, art song and popular dance-inspired tunes were influenced by a trend now known as Orientalism; the construction of a mythic Eastern stereotype through music, visual art, poetry, and other cultural texts. Soprano Carole FitzPatrick, baritone Robert Barefield and pianist Russell Ryan have collaborated in discovering, performing and now recording these songs that reflect Western society's fascination, ambivalence and misconceptions of the East.

This recording presents four works composer Mathew Fuerst has written for violinist Jasper Wood and pianist David Riley, along with a solo piano piece. The compositions span a time period of 12 years and show Fuerst's development as a composer. Fuerst, a prize-winner at the 2nd Annual Antonin Dvorak Composition Competition, is a graduate of Eastman and Juilliard, where he worked with Robert Beaser and John Corigliano. His music has been performed in numerous venues around the U.S. as well as in Paris, Budapest, Scotland and Hong Kong. He is on the faculty at Hillsdale College. Violinist Jasper Wood has performed with many of North America's finest orchestras as well as pursuing an active career as a recitalist and chamber musician. He is affiliated with the University of British Columbia where he teaches violin and chamber music. Pianist David Riley, on the faculty at the University of Oregon, has received rave reviews throughout the U.S. and Canada, performing as a recitalist at major venues.

Percussionist and baritone vocalist Lee Hinkle, whose percussion playing has been called "rock-steady" by the Washington Post, is the principal percussionist with the 21st Century Consort and a faculty member at the University of Maryland in College Park. An active recitalist and soloist, Hinkle has performed at universities and festivals across the U.S., and with the National Symphony Orchestra and Taipei Philharmonic. His recordings can be heard on six labels. For this recording, Hinkle explores the boundaries between contemporary music and theatre, performing compositions by Greek composer Georges Aperghis and American composers Daniel Adams and Stuart Saunders Smith as well as one of Hinkle's own compositions. These works include The Authors, a marimba opera, is made up of 11 movements with spoken and sung texts excerpted from various authors' novels, poems and sonnets. The performer is tasked with speaking, singing, whistling, and acting while playing the marimba.

Entering its 30th season, the American Horn Quartet continues to be unique in the field of brass chamber music. Their exuberant performances have brought audiences all over the world to their feet. The individual members of the AHQ are all very successful soloists in their own right — four Americans who work and reside in Europe. The AHQ has more than 500 concerts and masterclasses to its credit and has produced 10 compact discs. This disc, a collection of gems that the AHQ has performed over the years, is appropriately titled En-Cor!

Victor Herbert and Fred de Gresac’s wonderful 1922 score, Orange Blossoms, is the story of an hilarious culture clash between Americans and Parisians in the Roaring Twenties in the French capital and on the Riviera. Orange Blossoms, written late in Herbert’s career, reflected the public’s new interest in the jazz age and musical comedy. Director Michael Phillips liberally adapted the original three-act musical into a streamlined two-act version accentuating the most unique and innovative aspects of the script and lyrics. The Light Opera of New York was founded in 2006 as a professional company devoted to the performance of staged operettas and operetta concerts.

A native of New Zealand, cellist Miranda Wilson has performed on five continents as a soloist and chamber musician. Educated in New Zealand, England and the U.S., she is on the faculty of the University of Idaho and is artistic co-director of the Idaho Bach Festival. Wilson has chosen to combine Ernest Bloch's three suites for solo cello with two new works by Daniel Bukvich. One of the connecting features between these two composers is their association with the Pacific Northwest. Bloch spent his last years in Oregon, while Bukvich has spent his career on the faculty at the University of Idaho. Bukvich studied Bloch's manuscripts as a student and names Bloch as one of his influences.

Over four decades, composer Robert Sirota has developed a distinctive voice, clearly discernible in all of his work — whether symphonic, choral, stage, or chamber music. His music has been performed by leading ensembles in the United States and abroad and featured at the Tanglewood, Aspen, Yellow Barn, and Cooperstown festivals. A graduate of Oberlin and Harvard, Sirota served as director of the Peabody Institute, and as president of Manhattan School of Music. This, the second recording of his music on Albany Records, features his compositions for violin and piano. The two sonatas are recent works, having been written in 2012 and 2013, while Summermusic dates from 2000.

Composer/pianist James Adler has been hailed as a composer who “writes for both chorus and orchestra with uncommon imagination.” His extensive list of compositions is highlighted by Memento mori: An AIDS Requiem, which has been performed around the world and is available on Albany Records. As a pianist, he has performed throughout the U.S. and Europe, making his performing debut at 16 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and serves on the faculty at Saint Peter’s University. In 2017 he was the recipient of the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, an honor reserved for Marquis Biographees who have achieved career longevity and demonstrated unwavering excellence in their chosen fields. For this, his third recording on Albany Records, Adler’s music and performing virtuosity are showcased. Titled Introspections, James Adler used the definition (self-examination, soul-searching, to look within) as a framework for his choice of works for the disc.

Like volume one of East Meets West, this recording is a collection of new music for clarinet by Chinese composers who have lived, studied, and worked overseas. The compositions combine Chinese cultural elements with Western art music to create a unique intersection of cultures through the use of tone colors produced by the combination of clarinet with Chinese instruments, sound effects created with the use of both Chinese and Western musical forms and harmonic language, and a blend of classical and contemporary musical idioms. All the music on this recording was written or arranged for clarinetist Jun Qian. On the music faculty at Baylor University, Jun Qian is principal clarinetist of the Waco Symphony. Previously he was principal clarinetist of the Shanghai Philharmonic and studied at the Shanghai Conservatory and Eastman. He has concertized throughout China, and has performed and taught in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Canada.

Soprano Mary Elizabeth Southworth, flutist Danielle Hundley, clarinetist Marianne Breneman, and pianist Philip Amalong, formed the ensemble Conundrum in 2005. The group's name suggests both their unusual ensemble and also their openness and need to experiment with adventurous programming. After more than a decade of delighting audiences with their discoveries of repertoire for this ensemble and an active commissioning program, they have gathered the best of this music together for this their first recording. The result is From the Diamond Grid: first recordings of seven new works written or re-scored for the ensemble, plus one old favorite of theirs, which was modified for their instrumentation.

At first thought, the scope of a solo saxophone CD seems a bit narrow, but this recording includes the mainstream family of saxophones—soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass saxophones—in a wide variety of classical styles, ranging from tradition tonal music to 12-tone abstraction. As a soloist and founding performer of such ensembles as the Alloy Saxophone Quartet, Bill Perconti's exploration and expansion of the classical saxophone repertoire includes 12 CDs on five record labels. He has commissioned and premiered music by composers Lera Auerbach, Henry Cowell, Alan Hovhaness, Libby Larsen and Frederick Rzewski, among many others. A graduate of Bowling Green State University, Baldwin Wallace conservatory and the University of Iowa, he served on the faculty at Lewis-Clark State College until his recent retirement.

This recording of works for cello is special because all of the compositions were written for Eric Bartlett. Music by one of America's most distinguished composers, Hugo Weisgall; two young composers, David Sanford and Peter Susser; as well as the gifted composer Paul Suits, is offered in stunning performances. Each of these composers has, in his own way, found the essence of cello. Eric Bartlett, a member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, has also served as principal cellist of Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival for 14 years. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts and the Juilliard School, he is the recipient of a Solo Recitalist's Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.