Catalog

Love is what fascinates poets at all times and Broadway lyricists are often poets extra-ordinaire. Oscar Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter and so many others help us with our enjoyment of life and compel us to sing. The songs on this disc include ones we all know and some we may have heard and a few that are recent and obscure enough to be a pleasure to discover. But mostly, each of these songs is a work of art and beautifully sung by Jean Danton. Danton's artistry has led to acclaimed performances through the United States and Europe in opera, oratorio, recitals, and as a soloist with symphony orchestras. She is a favorite soloist for musical theatre and pops concerts appearing with the Boston Pops Orchestra and New England Light Opera among others and her versatility extends to jazz as well. She has several recordings on Albany Records and Newport Classics. Her television credits include documentaries for PBS and Lifetime. Collaborating with Ms. Danton are pianist Doug Hammer and drummer Steve Chaggaris.

Recorded at the premiere performance by the Center for Contemporary Opera in March, 2011, The Secret Agent, with libretto by J.D. McClatchy based on Joseph Conrad's story, has since been presented at the Armel Opera Festival in Hungary and the Opéra Théatre d'Avignon in France. Though the original story was written in 1907, it remains chillingly relevant today in our terror-haunted world. OnStage noted that " in the tradition of "Makropulos Affair," "From the House of the Dead," "Wozzeck" and "Pelléas et Mélisande"— its music is urgent, agitated and intense, with occasional lyrical interludes." This is composer Michael Dellaira's third opera and his first collaboration with the noted librettist J.D. McClatchy.

Born in Berkeley to a mother of Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Gabriela Lena Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Franks has traveled extensively throughout South American and her pieces reflect and refract her studies of Latin-American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology and native musical styles into a western classical framework. Winner of a Latin Grammy and nominated for Grammys as both composer and pianist, Ms. Frank holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship. This disc includes four works composed over a seven-year period and all feature the piano — one for solo piano; one for flute and piano; another for flute, clarinet and piano; and one for piano quintet, beautifully performed by Ensemble MEME and pianist Molly Morkoski.

Influenced by music he heard in the synagogue as a young child, composer Burton Beerman had never infused any of this influence into his compositions until he met Philip Markowicz, a living Holocaust survivor and Torah scholar. The fruit of this association is Tikvah, a chamber oratorio that sets Markowicz's life and philosophy as well as his Torah insights to music. Tikvah is the Hebrew word for hope and hope was key to Mr. Markowicz's survival. Performed by his granddaughter, Cantor Andrea Markowicz with the Red Clay Saxophone Quartet and the Uzee Brown Society of Choraliers, with Philip Markowicz as narrator, Tikvah is a powerful, emotional and timely work, touching on the big issues of life, love, death, survival, meaning, existence, faith, morality, happiness, and tragedy.

A major historical recording featuring George Walker as composer, with the 1977 recording of his Mass by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sergiu Comissiona and George Walker as pianist in a live concert from 1956 with the Eastman Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Howard Hanson. In addition there are two works for choir performed by the Morgan State College Choir conducted by Dr. Nathan Carter.

This recording of music for flute and piano contains three works by Canadian composers in addition to works by Liszt, Franck and Ibert, taking the program into new and interesting listening experiences. William David Smith is a Trappist monk, while Larysa Kuzmenko is a Juno-Awards nominated composer and composer-in-residence with the Toronto Symphony and Reeves Medaglia-Miller is on the faculty of George Brown College in Toronto. Pianist Yaroslav Senyshyn has an impressive career with his performances winning critical acclaim in the major concert halls of the U.S., Russia and Canada. His wife, flutist Susan O'Neill-Senyshyn, has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in England and Canada. Dr. O'Neill has a PhD. In Psychology and has held faculty positions at Simon Fraser University and the Don Wright Faculty of Music at the University of Western Ontario.

Originally written as a song cycle, Timothy Nelson re-composed Songs of the Fisherman for the forces seen on this video. Tenor Brian Arreola and choreographer Gretchen Alterowitz hoped to find a way to synthesize the lyrical power of operatic singing with the kinesthetic narrative potential of dance. The singer-dancer relationship is fluid throughout the work, with the dancer taking on shifting roles of lover, rival and society. A three-movement piece for solo violin, Jorge Grossmann’s La Ricerca della Spiritualità Transcendente deals with the subject of spirituality and even symbolizes an open-ended journey in search for inner growth. The work is performed by Wei-Wei Le, who has performed around the world and won numerous international violin competitions.

Yulan, an acrobatic, dance and visual extravaganza featuring the Dalian Acrobatic Troupe of China came about as a collaboration between dancer/choreographer Dennis Nahat, his Chinese colleagues, and composer Paul Chihara. Nahat, who was artistic director of the Ballet San Jose and founder of Theatre Ventures International School and Productions, was invited to China by Zhao Bin to create a work of international scope for the Dalian Acrobatic Troupe of China. Nahat enlisted Paul Chihara to compose music for the production and subsequently to conduct the orchestra for the performances and recording. The premiere took place November 28, 2012 in Dalian, China. Yulan means a magnolia flower and is one of the earliest flowers to bloom in the spring in Shanghai. Paul Chihara has composed scores for more than 100 motion pictures and television series. He was awarded the Composer-of-the-Year by the Classical Recording Foundation in 2008 and is on the faculty at UCLA.

Described as a pianist of "enormous power" by the Washington Post, Canadian Yaroslav Senyshyn is an exponent of the grand tradition of piano playing. In addition to his concert activities, he is a professor of aesthetic and moral philosophy at Simon Fraser University and publishes extensively on these topics. For this recording, Senyshyn couples well-known works by Rachmaninoff with two pieces by Atsushi Yoshinaka, who is a professor at Gakuin University and spent a year as a visiting professor at Simon Fraser University, where he and Senyshyn collaborated. His two works were inspired by a trip taken to the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia and are reminiscent of Rachmaninoff's homesickness and longing for his ancestral home.

This disc of chamber music by Lansing McLoskey includes works for large chamber ensemble as well as smaller ensembles and songs. Lansing McLoskey came to the world of composition via a somewhat unorthodox route. Instead of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, his three "B's" were the Beatles, Bauhaus and Black Flag. His first experiences in composition were writing for punk rock bands in San Francisco, which is where he developed his love for classical music. His music has an emotional intensity that appeals to audiences and defies traditional stylistic pigeonholes. His music has been performed across the U.S. and in 14 other countries on six continents. A graduate of Harvard, UC Santa Barbara and the USC Thornton School of Music, with additional studies at the Royal Danish Academy, McLoskey is on the faculty at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.

This is a recording of new American music for wind ensemble and brass expertly performed by the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble and Triton Brass. The oldest work on the program was written in 2004 by Nico Muhly. Lansing McLoskey's works were written in 2007 and 2011, as was Justin Barish's and the most recent work by Keith Kusterer was written in 2013. Indeed these are all extremely talented composers, whose careers span teaching at Miami Frost School of Music and winning the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (McLoskey); collaborating with singer Bjork on her DVD and writing an opera for the Metropolitan Opera (Muhly); winning the John Lennon Songwriting Competition and the 2012 Boston Conservatory Wind Competition (Kusterer); and being featured at the Focus Under 40 Boston Conservatory New Music Festival (Barish).

Weakness, an opera by Barbara White, is based on an old Celtic story known as "The Curse of Macha." White was inspired to use this story for an opera after spending time in a Chicago monastery, where she participated in a seminar taught by Tom Cowan on Druid Wisdom Tales. Cowan, an internationally respected teacher of shamanism and Celtic spirituality was in turn, inspired by White's opera, where the story of Macha came alive for him, to write his own tale, which is presented on this disc. Barbara White has become increasingly active in theatrical performance and as a videomaker and she remains an idiosyncratic and searching clarinetist. She is a professor of music at Princeton University and has received awards and honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Koussevitzky Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, among others.

The compositions on this recording of music for saxophone ensemble represent traditional Western classical music combined with such diverse styles as jazz, popular and folk music, Asian and African music and even show the influence of television. It also represents contemporary music of flexible instrumentation. The Alloy Saxophone Quartet was formed to explore contemporary music and includes Bill Perconti, Sean Fredenburg, Duke Sullivan and Erik Steighner -- all noted performers. Perconti, who performs the works for solo saxophone is a graduate of Bowling Green State University, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory and the University of Iowa. He has made 26 world premiere recordings of 15 composers on five record labels. He is on the faculty at Lewis-Clark State College in Idaho.

Gary Schocker is best known as the most published composer for the flute, but also is a world-renowned flutist. He has turned his attention to composing for solo harp, an instrument he is now playing. For this disc he has arranged 21 favorite Christmas carols for harp, performed by the ever-popular harpist Emily Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell's 30-year career includes numerous recordings, as well as performing and teaching around the world. In the words of the Washington Post, "Mitchell commands a vivid palette of colors and uses them with imagination."

The selected solo instrumental works on this recording by Boston composer Graham Gordon Ramsay span a 30 year time frame and are autobiographical, reflecting the influences and personal events that shaped the works. Ramsay is in demand as a creator of choral and instrumental works for a range of venues, including numerous church congregations in the United States and Europe. He studied at the Tanglewood Institute, Boston University and the Fontainebleau School in France with such masters as Theodore Antoniou, David Del Tredici, and Joyce McKeel. Known for his modern yet tuneful style, Ramsay writes predominantly for solo voice, chorus, solo instruments, and chamber ensemble. This recording, performed by some of the best-known Boston musicians, complements his first recording on Albany Records—a disc of his sacred music for chorus.

Faculty colleagues at Georgia State University, saxophonist Jan Berry Baker and clarinetist Kenneth Long perform a program of contemporary American compositions, the oldest of which by Lee Hyla was written in 1992. Works by Nickitas Demos, Lansing McLoskey and Perry Goldstein were all completed in 2011 and Gregory Wanamaker's Duo Sonata was written in 2002. Ms. Baker has won top prizes in numerous competitions including the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the North American Saxophone Alliance Concerto Competition and the Johann Strauss Society competition. She has been featured as a concerto soloist with several orchestras in Canada and the United States and with the National Symphony of the Ukraine. An advocate of new music, Baker is Co-Artistic Director and saxophonist with the Atlanta-based new music ensemble Bent Frequency. Clarinetist Kenneth Long enjoys a multifaceted performing career including orchestral, chamber music and solo engagements. He is a member of the clarinet section of the Utah Festival Opera Orchestra and has performed with many of the Southeast's preeminent ensembles including the Atlanta, Sarasota and Charleston symphonies. Principal clarinet of Bent Frequency, Long also is principal clarinetist of the Atlanta Chamber Winds.

This recording features the bird-like and zephyr quality of the flute in works of virtuosity and lyricism, but also highlights extended techniques, 21st century nuances, and contemporary lyrical styles, bringing to light the complete and modern capabilities of the instrument. Distinguished soloist, Dr. Tia Roper, was the grand prizewinner of the 2004-05 Artists International Debut Recital Award as well as a winner of the New York Flute Club Competition. She has served as principal flutist of the New York String Orchestra, the Boston Civic Symphony Orchestra and the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra and has performed as a soloist with the Queens Symphony Orchestra. She has given numerous concert performances in Russia, Switzerland, the Barbados, Japan, Venezuela and throughout the United States. She studied at the Manhattan School of Music and Boston University, and obtained her D.M.A. from Rutgers University. She serves on the faculty of the Bloomingdale School of Music and the Usdan Center for the Creative & Performing Arts. Her collaborator, pianist Mitchell Vines, enjoys an active performing career in Europe, South America, Asia and the United States. A graduate of Portland State University and Eastman, Vines is music and choir director of the Unitarian Church in Summit, New Jersey and Temple Israel in New York City.

Inspired by Virgil's Aeneid, the three works comprising Gates of Silence are connected but independent. Each is a passage that echoes with relevance today — our fallen cities, our physical passages and in our personal interactions with each other and our destinies. The third piece, Dido Refuses to Speak, sets poetry by National Book Award finalist, Linda Gregerson. As a composer and performer, Susan Botti's eclectic background and experiences are reflected in her music. Theatre and the visual arts play a formative role in the aesthetic of her work, which have encompassed traditional, improvisational and non-classical composition and singing styles. A recipient of numerous grants and awards, Botti specializes in the performance of contemporary music by composers of diverse styles, in addition to her own works. She studied at the Berklee School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, where she currently is on the composition faculty.

Award-winning soprano Marcía Porter offers a program of songs by contemporary American composers. An active recitalist, Ms. Porter made her Weill Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall) debut in 2005. She has performed in venues throughout the United States, Italy, Brazil and the Czech Republic. Porter has appeared at international festivals including the Prague Proms, the Ravinia Festival and Piccolo Spoleto Festival and sung with orchestras such as the Czech National Symphony and the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Porter was a 2011-12 Fulbright Scholar based in Brazil where she was a visiting artist and professor at the Universidade de Sâo Paulo. On the faculty at The Florida State University College of Music, she is a graduate of Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. Collaborating with Ms. Porter is acclaimed pianist and fellow faculty member Valerie M. Trujillo, whose experience in song literature and opera make her a much sought after accompanist, coach and teacher of masterclasses.

The works featured on this recording are not united by a single topic or style. What they share is that they are extraordinary, yet seldom heard examples of American music for two pianists. Performed by the husband-and-wife piano duo team of Stacy Rodgers and Diane Wang, the ensemble is a perennial favorite of audiences, with their programs offering an intriguing bland of standard four-hand and two-piano repertoire and daring new works by contemporary composers. Stacy Rodgers is on the faculty at the University of Mississippi and a graduate of Southern Methodist University and The University of Texas at Austin. Also on the faculty at the University of Mississippi, Diane Wang is a member of the faculty woodwind quintet and performs both as a pianist and flutist. She holds degrees from Indiana University and The University of Texas at Austin.

The music by David Felder and Andrew Rindfleisch on this disc couldn't be more different in concept or atmosphere. What these artful composers share is an abiding curiosity for aural imagery—how color both of instrumental and electronic persuasion melds with programmatic ideas to produce compelling, challenging and forceful narratives. Felder and Rindfleisch have spent their careers delving into the unknown while retaining connections with the near and distant pasts. The influences in the scores performed here are numerous, with nods to jazz and myriad 20th-century techniques. But most important is the way each piece inhabits a distinctive sonic world through novel performing forces that open up the expressive potential of the topics at hand. In revealing the salient qualities in each score, the music making of the Slee Sinfonietta tells us much about the complementary creativity of Felder and Rindfleisch even as it renders the pairing of these composers something on the order of ideal.

Glory Denied, the new opera by Tom Cipullo, is the saga of Col. Jim Thompson, the longest-held American POW in U.S. history. Cipullo’s dramatic chamber opera based on the 2001 oral history by Tom Philpott, was recorded live with cast and ensemble of the 2013 Fort Worth Opera Festival. Glory Denied is a distinctly American story encapsulating something of the moral essence of the Vietnam War and the bitterness of the war’s legacy. Tom Cipullo’s score is beautiful and chilling and returns us to a transformative era in our nation’s history.

This compact disc shares art songs of four living American women composers never previously recorded by mezzo-soprano. With these particular songs, Juliana Hall, Lori Laitman, Judith Cloud, and Libby Larsen have chosen poetic settings that reflect women's personalities, tastes, and life experiences from the 1920s to the present time. Sung by mezzo-soprano Katherine Eberle, the experience of hearing this music created by women composers offers understanding, meaning, enjoyment and enrichment for the listener. Eberle, a member of the faculty at the University of Iowa has presented more than 100 solo recitals in her 25-year career. Performing around the United States, Canada, the U.K. and Russia, Eberle specializes in oratorio, chamber music, art song and opera. Her colleague, pianist Ksenia Nosikova, also on the faculty at the University of Iowa is a graduate of Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the University of Colorado. A Steinway Artist, Nosikova has performed and taught in China, Italy and Hong Kong as well as on guest artist series at more than 80 American universities.

Born in 1922, George Walker is an acknowledged American master whose orchestral works have been played by every major American orchestra. He is the recipient of seven honorary doctorate degrees and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for Lilacs, which is one of the works on this compact disc. Two works, Sinfonia No. 4 and Movements for Cello and Orchestra are world premiere recordings. Ian Hobson, a champion of Walker's music is the conductor for this recording.

As the performers note, everyone who loves Chopin understands that his Polish roots fired his artistic inspiration. In this recording of three of Chopin's works involving cello and piano, the cellists he met, the music he heard, the pianos he played, and above all, that mythic love for his homeland are acknowledged. All of these works benefit from the special qualities of the Pleyel piano used for this recording, as well as the gut strings and 19th-century techniques of cello playing used by cellist Brent Wissick. Wissick, noted for his work on period instruments has given concerts on baroque cello and viola da gamba around the world. He is on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His colleague, pianist Andrew Willis, has spent several decades exploring the historical development of keyboard instruments and their performance practice. Willis serves on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

David Walther, the violist of The Debussy Trio, is an active commercial studio musician who has performed on more than 400 motion pictures, television shows, jingles and records. He is a self-taught composer whose influences range from the great past and present masters of classical music to the modern sounds of rock, pop and jazz. This recording offers a sample of this extremely talented musician's work, with the viola as one of the common threads of the compositions. The recording includes a trio for flute, viola and harp; a work viola and piano; one for solo viola; and ends with a trio for violin, cello and piano. Walther is the violist for the recording that features performances by The Debussy Trio and The Capital Trio.

The Esterhazy Quartet commissioned Samuel Adler's String Quartet No. 9 on the occasion of their 40th anniversary in 2010. Accompanying this string quartet are two other works – a piano quintet written in 2000-2001 and Adler's String Quartet No. 8, which was composed in 1988. Born in 1928, Samuel Adler's has had a long and distinguished career as a composer. He is the composer of more than 400 works; his music has been performed around the world; he is the author of three books; the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including the Aaron Copland Lifetime Achievement in Music Award; and a professor emeritus at Eastman and on the faculty at Juilliard. The Esterhazy Quartet has performed on three continents and garnered international accolades from critics. They are the ensemble-in-residence at the University of Missouri, and are widely recognized for their commitment to performing the music of our time. They are joined by virtuoso pianist Jerome Lowenthal, who, while born in 1932, continues to fascinate audiences.

Four of the five works on this compact disc of new works for voice, viola and piano performed by the Chiaroscuro Trio are world premiere recordings. The only professional chamber ensemble dedicated to this instrumentation, the Chiaroscuro Trio has appeared as guest ensemble at various festivals and concert venues in the United States and will make their European debut in the summer of 2013. The Trio has selected contemporary American works that vary greatly, whether in personal styles of the composers, their background, the texts or the contradictory yet congruent aspects of life that they evoke. What makes these works American, is the sense that unity comes from diversity and plurality and that embracing and encouraging a melting pot of disparate voices and cultures, leads to a healthy and cohesive society and art. These five works are mindful of the past, reflective of our epoch, and relevant to the future.

Born in 1959, composer Mark Gustavson studied at Northern Illinois University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Columbia University, Conservatory of Amsterdam, Tanglewood and the Banff Centre. He is on the faculty at Adelphi University and Nassau Community College. He has received numerous honors, including a composer award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Fulbright Fellowship. His music has been commissioned and performed by notable chamber ensembles including Speculum Musicae, Parnassus, The Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra and the New Music Consort, among many others. The five pieces on this recording, covering a period of 13 years, are representative of Gustavson's primary interests, which is composing instrumental music from works for solo instruments or orchestral music. His unique voice, influenced by approaches to music from around the world, often sounds spontaneous or improvised, although it is strictly notated.

The distinguished violinist David C. Neely offers a program of two Boston composers who contributed significantly not only to the musical life of Boston, but also to American music. Harry Newton Redman (1869-1958) was hired by George W. Chadwick to teach at the New England Conservatory, which he did until his retirement in 1939. His musical output consists of five string quartets, two violin and piano sonatas, several piano sonatas and songs. He was also known as an avid painter. Clara Kathleen Rogers (1844-1931) studied piano, violin, cello and voice in Germany but could not study composition as no women were allowed in the composition classes at the Leipzig Conservatory. She had a successful career as an opera singer until she retired upon her marriage. She then turned her efforts to composition. Her catalog includes more than 100 songs, two string quartets, piano works, a cello sonata and the sonata for violin and piano heard on this recording. How fortunate that we now have recordings of these works from two American composers of an earlier generation.

A native of Washington, DC, composer and pianist Jessica Krash was awarded a Wammie (Washington Area Music Association's Grammy) in 2010. Her work has been presented in both traditional and experimental settings in New York, Germany, Austria and all the major performance venues and museums in Washington, DC. She lectures on topics of music and the brain, music history and the insights we get from dangerous, banned and provocative music. She is on the faculty at George Washington University and has previously been a faculty member at George Mason University and the Levine School of Music. Se is a graduate of Harvard, Juilliard and the University of Maryland, where she earned her doctorate in composition. The major work on this recording, Be Seeing You, for string quartet and piano, was commissioned by the National Gallery of Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts and is inspired by 14 depictions of women found in these two museums.

Enterprising collaborators Benjamin Sung and Jihye Chang offer a program of new American music for violin and piano. The earliest work on the recording, Derek Johnson's fragments was written in 2002 and revised between 2003 and 2005, while the most recent work, Christian A. Genry's Flux Flummoxed was written in 2009 as a commission for Sung and Chng. Sean Shepherd's Dust is dedicated to the performers who gave the world premiere performance. Benjamin Sung is on the faculty at Florida State University and the Brevard Music Center. A graduate of Eastman and Indiana University, he is the recipient of numerous awards and performs as a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician across the U.S., in Korea and in Brazil. A graduate of Indiana University, Jihye Chang enjoys an active performing and teaching career, appearing in venues in the U.S., Canada, Central America, Korea and France. She was the first winner of the Mikhashoff International Competition for Pianist-Composer Collaboration in 2008.