Catalog

The 21st Century Consort, founded in 1975, performs an annual concert series at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Under the direction of its founder and conductor, Christopher Kendall, the Consort's artists include principal players from the National Symphony Orchestra, along with other prominent chamber musicians from the Washington, DC area. In addition to its history of touring, broadcasts and recordings, the Consort's four decades of performances have been recorded live and comprise a growing archive of contemporary music. For this recording, they have chosen three major works, two of which (Christopher Patton's Out of Darkness and James Primosch's Sacred Songs and Meditations) were commissioned by the 21st Century Consort. Stephen Albert's music has long been championed by the 21st Century Consort so the inclusion of his Cathedral Music on this recording is especially fitting.

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.

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.

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 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.

Paul Neebe — soloist, orchestral musician and chamber player — performs widely in the United States and Europe. He is principal trumpet of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and the Wintergreen Festival Orchestra. A graduate of Juilliard and the Catholic University of America, Neebe has taught at the University of Virginia, James Madison University, Elon University and the Summer University in Bayreuth, Germany. His commitment to the commissioning and recording of contemporary American works for trumpet was the impetus for this CD. All four trumpet concertos (by Richard Cioffari, Walter Ross, Roger Petrich, and Eddie Bass) were commissioned and premiered by Mr. Neebe and represent major additions to the trumpet repertoire.

Robert Xavier Rodriguez has been called "one of the major American composers of his generation" (Texas Monthly), and his 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 he is on the faculty at the University of Texas at Dallas. This recording includes the world premiere of Rodríguez' De Rerum Natura from a live performance inaugurating the new Edith O'Donnell Arts & Technology Building at UT Dallas. Commissioned by the university for this occasion, De Rerum Natura is a 27-minute tone poem based on the Latin poem by Roman poet Lucretius. The young violinist Chloé Trevor is featured in the Mozart Violin Concerto. A rising star on today's international violin scene, Trevor has won prizes at numerous competitions and been a featured soloist at venues such as Avery Fisher Hall and the Young Prague Festival.

Florencio Asenjo's music is inspired by literature and the visual arts as these three works so aptly show. El Gran Teatro del Mundo (The Great Stage of the World) is the title of a sacramental play by Calderon de la Barca, while Gleanings from the World of Lafacadio Hearn comes musicially from parts of Hearn's stories. The Birth of Venus reflects Asenjo's reaction to Sandro Botticelli's Nascita della Venere. This is the sixth release of Asenjo's orchestral music to be released on Albany Records.

Thomas Sleeper enjoys an active dual career as composer and conductor. His compositions include three symphonies, six operas, 14 concerti and numerous chamber works. His music is regularly performed through the U.S., in Europe, Asia and South America. He is director of orchestral activities at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music and music director of the Florida Youth Orchestra. With this world premiere recording of four of his concerti, we discover a composer in full control of his considerable faculties. His musical voice is oblique, as language in a dream, which tends to evaporate the more you attempt to sharpen your focus. These works display a composer with something interesting and important to say in a voice that is uniquely, authentically and unmistakably his.

Lynn Klock has been an enthusiastic participant in new music for the saxophone for more than 40 years, with dozens of composers having written new works for him. This recording features Klock with conductor Dennis Zeisler and the Virginia Wind Symphony in new concertos for soprano and alto saxophone and wind ensemble. It follow a previous recording on Albany Records of new music written for Lynn Klock for baritone saxophone and piano. Lynn Klock has appeared as a soloist throughout North America as well as in Russia, Europe, South America, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Canada. Klock has presented master classes at national and international conferences as well as at educational institutions across the United States and overseas. He is Professor of Saxophone at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra.

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.

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.

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.

Born in 1934, composer Bernard Hoffer attended the Eastman School of Music. After serving as arranger for the U.S. Army Field Band, he came to New York as a freelance musician/pianist, composer, conductor and arranger. He has written extensively for films, television and commercials for which he has won several Emmy nominations, including the music for the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour. One of the major works on this recording (MacNeil/Lehrer Variations) is based on the theme he wrote for the News Hour in 1975. The two elegies on the recording are Hoffer's musical reaction to friends and loved ones' deaths. The Symphony was influenced and inspired by an exhibit of the New York abstract expressionist Richard Pousette-Dart's work.

2013 celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jerome Moross, an American original. Best known for his outstanding motion picture scores, he considered himself primarily a composer of concert music and this recording, originally released by Koch, demonstrates his considerable contribution to American music. Writing for the theatre remained Moross' first love as a composer. Frankie and Johnny, written in 1938, was one of a number of works he wrote for this medium. The recording spans his compositional output from his earliest work, Biguine, written in 1934, to his last completed work, Concerto for Flute and String Orchestra, written in 1978.

Jerome Moross (1913-1983) was in the vanguard of composers who realized that there was a music of America, and for America written by Americans. This recording, originally released by Koch, offers three major scores by this major American composer. Moross grew up with and listened to jazz bands, played in theatre pits and found that his own composing style was totally, spontaneously conditioned by it. Having found his métier relatively early in life, he stuck to it through thick and thin to the end. And perhaps because he was so young when he found his voice, his music sounds young--always, early and late. His music is exciting and always sounds fresh, but uniquely his own.

Three works for solo instruments and orchestra by Laura Schwendinger are presented in world premiere recordings. Esprimere for cello and orchestra was written in 2007 for Matt Haimovitz and premiered by him. Curtis Macomber is the soloist for Charoscuro Azzurro for violin and chamber orchestra and Waking Dream, a single movement work for flute and chamber orchestra was written for flutist Christina Jennings, who gave the premiere. The first composer to win the American Academy in Berlin Prize Fellowship, Laura Schwendinger is on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin Madison and directs their contemporary chamber ensemble. The recipient of numerous prizes, awards and commissions, Ms.. Schwendinger's music has been performed by leading ensembles and artists of our time. The three soloists, all virtuosos of international acclaim, give stunning performances of this music of infinite beauty.

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.

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.

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 most recent volume in the series on Albany Records devoted to the orchestral music of George Walker includes two concertos -- one for piano and the other for cello -- interspersed with works for large chamber ensembles and Icarus, commissioned by the New Jersey Youth Symphony in 2004. George Walker's music has been performed by every major American orchestra and many international orchestras, including those of Great Britain, Europe and South America. Recordings of his music appear on Sony, BIS, Klavier Centaur, Naxos and Albany Records, among others. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1996, Walker has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He is the recipient of six honorary doctoral degrees.

Composer William Hill writes in the notes that his "Symphony No. 2 is subtitled Beethoven 7.1 due to its numerous references to Beethoven's great 7th symphony, and is designed as a companion piece for that symphony." The brainchild of conductor Lawrence Golan, the "Point-One Series" is an ongoing project consisting of the commissioning and recording of contemporary compositions that are musically linked to great masterpieces of the orchestral repertoire. The objective is to help create a body of high quality contemporary works whose chances for a viable future are increased by the natural place within orchestral concert programming that they have. The first release in this series included Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 and Peter Boyer's Tchaikovsky 6.1 (TROY1027).

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Florence B. Price (1887-1953) studied at the New England Conservatory, the Chicago Musical College and the American Conservatory. Price composed throughout her life, producing as many as 300 compositions. In the 1930s and early 1940s some of her longer works were performed by music groups sponsored by the WPA in Illinois and Michigan. Price was highly visible as a teacher, performer and organizer in Chicago’s concert and church music spheres. Her Concerto in One Movement for piano was premiered in Chicago in 1934 with Price herself as pianist. There is no evidence of the piece being performed after the 1930s and there are no copies of the composer’s manuscript of the orchestral score. Composer Trevor Weston was commissioned to reconstruct the concerto’s orchestration in order to revive this deserving work. Price’s groundbreaking Symphony in E Minor was the first prize winner of the 1932 Rodman Wanamaker Music Contest and was premiered in 1933 by Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It is the first work by a black woman to be performed by a major symphony orchestra in the United States.

This disc includes a premiere recording made in 1992 with Leon Kirchner conducting his Music for Orchestra with the orchestra he founded at Harvard along with two historic releases from the SONY Columbia catalog, both featuring Leon Kirchner, as a pianist in his Piano Concerto No. 1 with Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting, recorded 1956 and as a conductor in Lily (for soprano and chamber ensemble), recorded 1973. Leon Kirchner (1919-2009), composer, conductor, and virtuoso pianist, was recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in 2009, and an Honorary Doctorate at Harvard in 2001. He received the New York Music Critics Circle award, the Naumburg Award, Pulitzer Prize, and the Freidheim Award, and commissions from the Ford, Fromm, and Koussevitzky Foundations, the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Symphony, Spoleto and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festivals, the Boston Symphony, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Kirchner studied with Arnold Schoenberg, Roger Sessions, and Ernest Bloch. He was composer-in-residence and a performer at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Tanglewood Music Center, Tokyo Music Today (Takemitsu Festival), and the Spoleto, Charleston, Aldeburgh, and Marlboro Music Festivals.

For his fourth recording on Albany Records, "maximalist" composer Florencio Asenjo gives us three orchestral works based on literature. The Batrachomyomachia or The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice is an anonymous ancient Greek parody of the Iliad. Palm-of-the-Hand Tales is incidental music to ten of Yasunari Kawabata's narratives from his Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. Basile's Pentameron frames incidental musical episodes from Giambattista Baile's Penteramron, which was the source of famous stories by Perrault and the Grimm brothers.

Two works for soprano and orchestra by American composers comprise this recording. Frank Ticheli composed An American Dream as his fifth and final work for the Pacific Symphony Orchestra during his seven-year tenure as the orchestra's Composer-in-Residence. Based on a text by Philip Littell, the work addresses the conscious and unconscious sea of anxiety during the winding down of 20th-century America. Lansing McLoskey has chosen to excerpt lines for his text for Prex Penitentialis from two works by Petrarch: the Canzoniere, a collection of love poems, and Septem Psalmi Penitentialis, in which the civil war between body and soul is made explicitly and profoundly clear.

Composer Charles Bestor received his musical training under Paul Hindemith, Vincent Persichetti, Peter Mennin and Vladiir Ussachevsky. His long career has included numerous awards and commissions and recordings of his music appear on Albany Records, Capstone, Centaur, New Ariel, Serenus, Orion and MSR Classics. He has pursued a parallel career as a teacher and administrator and served on the faculty and administration of the Juilliard School, Wilamette University and the Universities of Massachusetts, Utah and Alabama. He is presently Professor of Composition Emeritus and Director of the Electronic and Computer Music Studios of the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. This recording is the first devoted to his orchestral works. Two works on the recording (Requiem and The Long Goodbye) are the composer's attempt to generalize a private personal loss.

John Duffy, considered "one of the great heroes of America music," has composed more than 300 works for symphony orchestra, opera, theater, television and film. He is a two-time Emmy winner and the recipient of the American Music Center's Founder's award for Lifetime Achievement. Critics call his work "...haunting...memorable...and brilliant." It is American music of authentic vim and vigor.

The Bowling Green Philharmonia offers another fascinating mix of new music in this sixth volume of the series. Ranging from the young Avner Dorman's Variations Without a Theme for Large Orchestra to the even younger Raymond Lustig's Unstuck to 103-year-old Elliott Carter's Pastoral for English Horn and Strings with works by Marilyn Shrude and Steven Stucky occupying the generations in-between, the recording gives the listener an opportunity to hear fine music in excellent performances.

Thomas Sleeper enjoys a highly prolific career as both composer and conductor. An active guest conductor in the U.S. and abroad, Sleeper has appeared with more than 30 orchestras on four continents. His compositional oeuvre to date includes two symphonies, two orchestral song cycles, eight concerti, six operas, numerous chamber and solo works and music for film. Sleeper is the Director of Orchestral Activities at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music.

The most recent work on this recording, the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, was completed in 2008 and features the composer's son as soloist. The composer observes that "The special qualities of all of the works on this cd are captured skillfully by the conductor Ian Hobson and the Sinfonia Varsovia." This recording is the second volume on Albany Records that features this esteemed composer's orchestral music.

This recording offers a tantalizing sampling of Morton Gould's work from the vibrant decade of the mid 1930s and '40s, featuring two of his trademark Symphonettes, the gutsy Concerto for Orchestra and his earliest big orchestral work -- Chorale and Fugue in Jazz -- presented in full for the first time since its 20-year-old composer wrote it with Interplay, the diminutive concerto holding center stage.