Catalog

The program for Close to Home began when clarinetist Michael Rowlett met two composers whose music intrigued him — Valerie Coleman and Eric Mandat. He gathered works by other American composers, finding similarities among the diverse pieces with inspiration for the compositions coming from a particular place, a moment or a memory. Michael Rowlett is on the faculty at the University of Mississippi and was a semi-finalist in the ICA's 1998 Young Artist competition. He has appeared as a concerto soloist with orchestras in Tennessee, North Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi and at the conventions of the International Clarinet Association. He studied at Florida State University where he received his D.M, the University of Iowa and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His collaborator on this recording, pianist Stacy Rodgers is on the faculty at the University of Mississippi.

The Golden Ticket, a comic opera based on Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was commissioned by American Lyric Theater and Felicity Dahl from American composer Peter Ash and British librettist Donald Sturrock. Dahl's fantastic imagination is vividly brought to life in the witty libretto, and the completely original score ingeniously parodies many traditional operatic conventions to help portray the bigger than life characters that inhabit Wonka's world. The opera premiered in 2010 at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, in partnership with Ireland's Wexford Festival Opera and New York's American Lyric Theater, where it was embraced by audiences and critics alike: "Donald Sturrock's libretto captures the wit, wizardry and wonder of Dahl's story about five children who gain access to the legendary Willy Wonka's confectionery establishment in a contest by finding golden tickets in their chocolates. The largely expository first act introduces the lucky children, who instantly become media darlings, but the fun really begins – and the dramatic tempo accelerates – in Act 2 when they go through trials not unlike reality television or perhaps – as children in the audience may someday recognize – The Magic Flute, overseen by Wonka with Sarastro-like benevolence and fearsomeness . Though not widely known, the American composer Ash has produced a fun-filled score with a zippy, contemporary ambience that makes room for a tune or two you can remember and deft allusions to past operas " (London Financial Times) This recording is taken from a live performance of The Golden Ticket at The Atlanta Opera in March 2012, conducted by composer Peter Ash, with a stellar cast including Daniel Okulitch in the role of Willy Wonka and Benjamin P. Wenzelberg as Charlie. The Atlanta Journal Constitution declared, "There may come a day when music teachers everywhere will use characters from The Golden Ticket to teach lessons about voices in opera For parents and teachers who want to introduce young people to the opera, The Golden Ticket is a good start." But, The Golden Ticket is not just for children – it's an opera for everyone who is still young at heart!

Texas Christian University's Trio Con Brio performs two new works for clarinet, viola and piano. The first, by Russian-born composer Elena Sokolovski has an intriguing title--Venice Suite, Concerto Grosso for 3 Soloists & 9 Instruments. Indeed, each musician plays several instruments including glasses filled with wine. Eric Ewazen's Trio was commissioned by the Texas Christian University School of Music for Trio Con Brio and was premiered in March 2005. The three members of Trio Con Brio all serve on the faculty at Texas Christian University. Clarinetist Gary Whitman received the Chancellor's Distinguished Achievement Award as a Creative Teacher and Scholar and is a member of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Violist Misha Galaganov has performed as a soloist and given master classes in Russia, china, Italy, Israel, Czech Republic, Mexico, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria and the United States. Pianist John Owings has appeared as soloist with orchestras and given solo recitals throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe and the Far East. He was gold medalist of the first Robert Casadesus International Piano Competition.

Meisha Adderley and Stacey Holliday present a program of music for piano duo by black composers. Spanning a time frame of music written in 1935 by William Grant Still, to works by Dolores White and Hale Smith that date from the late 1960's to the most recent work by Cedric Adderley written in 2010, this recording offers a survey not only of unique compositional voices across 75+ years, but also intriguing repertoire for this ensemble. Meisha Adderley received her D.M.A. from the University of South Carolina and also studied at the University of Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Indiana State University. She serves on the faculty of Capital University Conservatory of Music. Her colleague, Stacey Holliday, also studied at the University of South Carolina as well as Furman University. Formerly on the faculty at Furman University, Ms. Holliday now maintains a large piano studio and is active as a collaborative and solo artist.

It is a mistake to generalize about the music of a composer with an oeuvre as broad as Lowell Liebermann's--and not only because his music ranges from a body of widely performed piano works and chamber music, to a pair of acclaimed operas, to the body of works for large orchestra of which this recording presents just a selection. In a single piece, we can hear the centuries of music history absorbed into his omnivorous style, from the lyrical melodies and expansive, chromatic harmonies associated with the music of the so-called Romantic period, to non-tonal, atonal, and even twelve-tone elements. Brilliantly performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Grant Llewellyn, this recording illuminates Liebermann's compositional voice. One of America's most frequently performed and recorded composers, Lowell Liebermann has served as composer-in-residence for many organizations, including the Dallas Symphony and was the first composer to win the Composers' Invitational Award of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition.

Dr. Man-Ching Donald Yu is a Hong Kong born Chinese composer, pianist and conductor. As a prolific and versatile com¬poser, he has composed more than 150 original works that have been frequently performed internationally. The stylistic traits of his recent works are character¬ized by the intermingling of the expressive and lyrical language of atonality, stylistic diatonicism with new tonality, and Chinese color while sometimes blending with micro-polyphonic musical materials. Born in 1980, Yu received his formal training at the Royal School of Music and Baylor University, subsequently studying at the Internationale Sommerakademie Universitat Mozarteum Salzburg and at Hong Kong Baptist University, where he received his Ph.D. in composition and music theory. His music has been performed throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. Yu's awards include the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship and awards from ASCAP. He is the founder and conductor of the Hong Kong Amadeus Chamber Orchestra and a faculty member of the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The works on this premiere recording dedicated to his compositions are diverse and range from large-scale orchestral works to chamber music, to electronic music and works for solo instruments.

The intersection of Chinese cultural elements with Western art music provides a rich palette of Eastern colors in this first commercial recording of music for clarinet and piano by well-known Chinese composers. The composers on this recording were born in China, but have all studied and worked in the West. Chinese-American clarinetist, Jun Qian, has shared similar experiences with these composers and his performances show a deep understanding of Chinese culture and Western musical ideas. Dr. Qian, now on the faculty at Baylor University is principal clarinet for the Waco Symphony Orchestra. He was a professor of clarinet at St. Olaf College and served as principal clarinet of the Shanghai Philharmonic. Among his many honors, Qian was the featured soloist at the International Performing Arts Festival in Japan in 2004. Qian studied at Baylor University and the Eastman School, where he received his Masters and D.M.A. He is joined on this recording by a former colleague from St. Olaf College, pianist Kent McWilliams who previously taught at the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

Nicholas Goluses appears as soloist, chamber music player and with orchestras across North America, South America, Europe, Australia and the Far East to critical acclaim. He has been a featured performer at major festivals and as soloist with orchestras throughout the world. Goluses has made numerous critically acclaimed recordings for Albany, BMG, and NAXOS. Committed to performing new music for the guitar, Goluses has given world première performances of more than 100 works, including solo pieces, concertos for guitar and orchestra, as well as chamber music by many of today's leading composers. Nicholas Goluses is Professor of Guitar, founder and director of the guitar programs at the Eastman School of Music, where he has been the recipient of the Eisenhart Award for Excellence in Teaching, and also has served as chairman of the string department. Goluses has held the Andrés Segovia Faculty Chair at Manhattan School of Music where he received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, and was the recipient of both the Pablo Casals Award "for Musical Accomplishment and Human Endeavor" and the Faculty Award of Distinguished Merit. This recording offers a varied program of music for guitar including the first recording of the solo version of Joseph Schwantner's From Afar

Born in Chicago in 1931, composer/conductor James Bolle studied at Harvard, Antioch College and Northwestern. He was instrumental in founding numerous musical organizations, the first being The Chicago Youth Orchestra at age 15. He founded the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra, which he conducted for 29 years and Monadnock Music, which he directed for 42 years. As a composer, his major works include the opera Oleum Canis, five sinfonias, four string quartets, concerti, orchestral works, songs and chamber music. This is the second disc on Albany Records devoted exclusively to him music.

New works for percussion ensemble written between 1993 and 2009 are performed by the Columbus State University Percussion Ensemble on this recording. Offering a unique listening experience, two of the works are for saxophone solo with percussion ensemble and one is for organ and percussion ensemble. The recording and two of the works came as a result of a residency program that commissions a new work for the CSU Percussion Ensemble each year. Directed by Paul Vaillancourt, the CSU Percussion Ensemble performs and records music from the traditional percussion ensemble as well as commissioning and premiering works by internationally known and emerging composers. Saxophonist Amy Griffiths is on the faculty at Columbus State University and has made countless appearances as a soloist, chamber musician, and recitalist.

Argentinian-American composer Florencio Asenjo couples two works inspired by books whose authors were attracted to the contrast between the finite and the infinite with a concerto for orchestra that gives each type of instrument a solo part. Asenjo, who writes in a style he has labeled maximalism, which involves the creation of entirely new themes connected aesthetically to the preceding one -- a development of substance rather than of form. This is fifth recording of his music to appear on Albany Records. His music has been championed by Kirk Trevor, who conducts these performances by the Bulgarian Philharmonic.

Members of the renowned Boston Musica Viva perform three works by Bernard Hoffer, including a work commissioned by them, Concerto di Camera that features their spectacular cellist Jan Müller-Szeraws. Born in 1934 in Zurich, Switzerland, Bernard Hoffer attended Eastman where he studied with Bernard Rogers, Wayne Barlow, Paul White and Herman Genhart. After serving as arranger for the U.S. Army Field Band of Washington, D.C., he settled in New York, working as a freelance musician, composer, conductor and arranger. He is known not only for his chamber and orchestral music but also for works written for films, television and commercials, including the theme for the PBS New Hour, PBS's The American Experience and the hit children's cartoon series Thundercats.

Horn soloist Eric Ruske has established himself as an artist of international acclaim. Named Associate Principal Horn of The Cleveland Orchestra at the age of 20, he also toured and recorded extensively during his six-year tenure as hornist of the Empire Brass Quintet. His impressive solo career began when he won the 1986 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, First Prize in the 1987 American Horn Competition, and in 1988, the highest prize in the Concours International d'Interprétation Musicale in Reims, France. Mr. Ruske is in great demand as a teacher and clinician, and in addition to having given master classes at more than 100 universities and conservatories in the United States, he has taught at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, Banff Centre in Canada, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, and the Tokyo College of Music, among many others. Professor of Horn and member of the faculty of Boston University since 1990, Mr. Ruske also directs the Horn Seminar at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. His complete discography, including his critically acclaimed recording of the complete Mozart Concerti with Sir Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber, is included in this box set.

Composer Joel Hoffman writes that this collection of his chamber music is named Three Paths because each of the three works follows a distinctly unique pathway. He has explored a fairly broad variety of musical dialects over the course of his composing career and these works reflect that exploration. Hoffman's music draws from such diverse sources as Eastern European folk musics and bebop and is pervaded by a sense of lyricism and rhythmic vitality. He has received awards from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. He is on the faculty at the College-Conservatory of Music of Cincinnati, a guest faculty member at the China Conservatory in Beijing and the artistic director of MusicX.

The Phoenix Ensemble is a New York City based, mixed-instrument chamber music group, consisting of a full complement of winds, brass, strings, and percussion. The ensemble is dedicated to the performance and recording of classical music, and to the mission of making the musical arts a more essential and valuable experience in the lives of the general public. Since 1992, through performances, recordings, and residencies in schools and communities, the Phoenix Ensemble has presented hundreds of events designed to inspire a new and diverse audience for classical music. The group has a special interest in encouraging and giving a voice to composers of contemporary music, and creating events where these compos¬ers can present their music to a new audience. The group's 2009 recording of the clarinet quintets of Morton Feldman and Milton Babbitt has won wide critical acclaim. For this recording, the ensemble has selected two works for wind quintet. Arnold Schoenberg's wind quintet, his first strict 12-tone ensemble work, was composed in 1924 and Stockhausen's Zeitmasze was written early in his composing career (1957).

This recording continues the series on Albany Records of the music of the distinguished composer George Walker, who celebrated his 90th birthday June 27. 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 has been inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. Included on the CD are his Piano Sonata No. 3 written in 1976, his Music for 3 composed in 1971, his Piano Sonata No. 5 composed in 2003 and numerous songs. Walker's music is given superb performances by a sterling group of artists.

The Musical Arts Woodwind Quintet is the resident faculty wind quintet at Ball State University. They were awarded an American Masterpieces grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2010. The grant supported performances, educational activities, touring and this recording. Founded in 1957, the quintet has made eight cross-country tours, which have brought them an enviable reputation and high critical acclaim. This cd of works by American composers includes the world premiere recording of David Maslanka's Quintet No. 4.

The Sound of Time, a study in the electronic manipulation of language, consists of the artistic genre often referred to as installation art. All but one of them came into being as scores for a series of interactive sound and sculpture installations designed by fiber artists and a stage designer. The one exception is the three-movement Concerto Piccolo for trumpet and electronics that appears throughout the disc to provide a recurring reference to the outside world of acoustic musical sound. Composer Charles Bestor is the recipient of numerous awards and commissions. He is a Fellow at the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Ragsdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. This is the first compact disc devoted entirely to his electronic music.

The opera, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based entirely on the very ironic, humorous short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The libretto was written by Estela Eaton, the composer's daughter. Composer John Eaton was called " the most interesting opera composer writing in America today" by Andrew Porter. He has also received international recognition as a composer of electronic and microtonal music. Of his more than 20 operas, perhaps the best known is The Cry of Clytaemnestra. A recipient of the "genius" award from the MacArthur Foundation, he has also received an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. This DVD was filmed at live performances sponsored by the Center for Contemporary Opera and presented as the opening event of the ACA's Festival of American Music in 2010.

Baritone Stephen Swanson and pianist/composer David Gompper perform a program of songs about animals, including the world premiere recording of The Animals by David Gompper, which is a cycle of nine songs based on poetry by Marvin Bell. Ravel's Histoires naturelles is based on prose poems by Jules Renard. Ravel experimented with new methods of setting text in this elegant song cycle. Reger's songs were based on nursery rhymes and dedicated to his children. The selections from The Bestiary of Flanders and Swann include some of the most popular of this team's collaboration. Beautifully sung by Stephen Swanson, a professor of voice at the University of Iowa, these bestiaries offer animal songs in English, French and German.

Composer Allan Blank has written two song cycles for voice and piano with double bass, both of which are given world premiere recordings on this disc. One cycle uses poetry from the Holocaust and the second is based on poetry by Jane Kenyon. Allen Blank is Professor Emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Many of his more than 300 compositions have been published and recorded. Three of the performers are affiliated with West Virginia University (Catharine Thieme, mezzo-soprano, Robert Thieme, piano, Andrew Kohn, double bass). Soprano Jennifer Miller is an active performer in the Pittsburgh area and pianist Robert Frankenberry is a member of New York's Phoenix Players.

Karen Beres and Christopher Hahn, members of the CanAm Piano Duo, have been presenting innovative programs of duet and two-piano repertoire since 2002. They received the silver medal at the 2008 International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition in Boston and a distinguished ranking at the 2009 IBLA Grand Prize competition in Ragusa, Italy. As avid proponents of contemporary music, Beres and Hahn perform a varied repertoire of new works and masterpieces of the 20th century. Karen Beres is on the faculty at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Christopher Hahn serves on the faculty at the University of Montana. The program chosen for this recording includes a world premiere of David Maslanka's This Is The World; Libby Larsen's Gavel Patter based on American auctioneering patter and concludes with Lutoslawski's Paganini Variations in an arrangement for two pianos with added percussion parts.

The five varied compositions presented on this CD provide a concise portrait of Brian Fennelly's compositional practice. They are arranged to begin with string orchestra, move through combinations with soloists, and end with wind orchestra. Brian Fennelly (b.1937) studied at Yale where he was the first student to earn a degree in the newly created Ph.D. program in music theory. From then until 1997 he was Professor of Music at New York University. His numerous awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, commissions from the Koussevitzky and Fromm Foundations and composer residencies at the Rockefeller Foundation Center and a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His catalog includes works for orchestra, chamber ensembles and solo instruments as well as choral, solo song and electronic titles.

As a result of a workshop on finding the voice in Beethoven and Schubert, violinist Francesca Anderegg was inspired to find her own voice in the music of the 20th century as well as finding her own personal interpretation of classical repertoire. She has designed the program on this recording to show the ways in which the music of modernist composers Schoenberg, Perle and Carter shares the lyricism and expressivity of Mozart and Schubert. Ms. Anderegg graduated from Harvard and holds a D.M.A. from The Juilliard School. She was awarded the Lenore Annenberg Fellowship in the Performing Arts in 2010 and is on the violin faculty of Interlochen Arts Camp and St. Olaf College. Her festival appearances include Yellow Barn, The Lucerne Festival Academy, The Perlman Music Program and Tanglewood Music Center. She made her New York debut in February 2007 in a performance of the Ligeti Violin Concerto, which the New York Times lauded for its "dark, mournful tone" and "virtuosic panache."

The much anticipated world premiere recording of David Maslanka's Symphony No. 9 is a large collection of instrumental songs. There are many influences and underlying elements at work including time (memory, passing of time); water (cleansing and life-giving power); nature (river, ocean); and grace (compassion, forgiveness, rest). Each movement embodies one or more chorale melodies or other songs, such as Shall We Gather at the River and O Sacred Head Now Wounded. Born in Massachusetts in 1943, David Maslanka attended Oberlin, the Mozarteum in Salzburg and Michigan State University. His works for wind ensemble have become especially well known and popular with both performers and audiences. Symphony No. 9, indeed a masterpiece, will be universally welcomed.

The three works of the distinguished American composer Lowell Lieberman contained on this recording all have a German connection that is reflective not only of Liebermann's family heritage but also of formative time that he spent in Germany as a student. Liebermann is one of America's most frequently performed and recorded composers with orchestras worldwide having performed his works. His compositions have been recorded on more than 80 compact discs and his Piano Concerto No. 2 received a Grammy nomination. He has served as Composer-in-Residence of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Pacific Music Festival and the Saratoga Center for the Performing Arts. Three cycles — one for soprano and piano; the second for soprano, viola and piano; and the last for soprano, baritone and piano duet combine poignancy, humor and heartfelt emotion.

Andrew Earle Simpson's A Crown of Stars is a wedding oratorio celebrating the universality of human love and was commissioned by the Cantate Chamber Singers while Simpson was the ensemble's Composer-in-Residence. This is the world premiere recording. Mr. Simpson's music follows four principal threads of interest: humanistic music; music for silent films; theatrical music; and folk music. He has created a prodigious array of works for the concert and operatic stage, which have been performed throughout the U.S., Europe and South America. Russian composer Alfred Schnittke's (1934-1998) Requiem evokes vivid images, perhaps because it began as a stage work. It is based on music from a piano quintet that Schnittke dedicated to his mother just after her death.

The brilliant composer/organist Carson Cooman has selected compositions for this recording that are unified by their debt to early music (most especially its modality) as well as an economy of means in their construction. All are built from simple musical materials, elaborated and developed by their composers to create compositions that inhabit musical spaces of an often spiritual character. Five American composers (Patricia Van Ness, Jim Dalton, Tim Rozema, Al Benner and Harold Stover) are featured along with Swedish composer Thomas Aberg and Slovakian native Peter Machajdík. Cooman specializes in the performance of contemporary music and more than 130 new compositions have been written for him by composers from around the world. He performs on the Organ of Our Lady in Adergas in Velesovo, Slovenia, an organ built in the Thuringian Baroque style.

Called "one of the major American composers of his generation" (Texas Monthly), Robert Xavier Rodriguez's music has been described as "richly lyrical" by Musical America. He first gained international recognition in 1971 when he was awarded the Prix de Composition Musicale Prince Pierre de Monaco. Other honors include the Goddard Lieberson Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has served as composer-in-residence with both the San Antonio and Dallas symphonies and is on the faculty at the University of Texas at Dallas. This recording offers his complete music for cello and piano, written between 1979 and 2006. Cellist Jesús Castro-Balbi, who is on the faculty at Texas Christian University School of Music, and Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Lin, also on the faculty at TCU, offer ravishing performances of this music.

This recording is the first to draw attention to the compositional creativity of violist, teacher and choral director Harold Brown (1909-1979). He is remembered as one of the pioneers of the early music movement in North America, performing and recording Renaissance choral music in the mid 20th century. A graduate of Columbia, Brown taught at New York's High School of Music and Art and at Mansfield State College, and enriched the lives of a whole generation of New York singers with his promotion of the early choral music repertoire. The founder of the Renaissance Chorus of New York, the organization continues to be active today under the name of the Renaissance Chorus Association. Brown's chamber works for strings were composed mostly in the early to mid-1930s, and represent Brown's youthful, passionate style.

With works spanning both chamber and orchestral genres, Sebastian Currier's music has been performed at major venues worldwide by acclaimed artists and orchestras. His music has been heralded as "music with a distinctive voice" by the New York Times and "lyrical, colorful, firmly rooted in tradition, but absolutely new" by the Washington Post. Currier has received many prestigious awards including the Grawemeyer Award, Berlin Prize and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This recording features his music for violin and piano performed by internationally known violinist Yehonatan Berwick, who plays on a violin by Joseph Guarneri from 1735 and pianist Laura Melton, who is on the faculty at Bowling Green State University and a noted chamber musician and soloist.

With this 2-CD recording, the complete oeuvre of Arnold Rosner's songs is now available on compact disc. The texts range widely and their sources range from the gospel according to St. Luke and the Jewish Aramaic liturgy to Rosner's friends poems. The predominant language is English, but there are songs in Aramaic, French, German and Finnish as well. Born in 1945, Arnold Rosner attended New York University where he majored in mathematics and music. He formally undertook music composition study at the State University of New York at Buffalo, receiving the first Ph.D. in music awarded by that institution. He exemplifies the composite career of a diversely talented musician. He has taught at several colleges, was music director at WNYU and assistant music director of WNYC and is a capable conductor and pianist. He is the recipient of seven awards from ASCAP and a five-time recipient of Meet the Composer grants.