Catalog

Here is a disc of music to be enjoyed. Anyone who likes Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms, will enjoy Gillis. This is a true “crossover” CD. Gillis was born in Cameron, Missouri and studied the trumpet and trombone as a boy. He performed in the Cameron Rotary Club band and in his high school orchestra. In high school he formed his own jazz band for which he wrote arrangements and original music. At 17, he moved to Ft. Worth, Texas and enrolled in Texas Christian on a trombone scholarship (don’t you love this guy’s roots?). He studied orchestration and composition at North Texas State in Denton, then got a job as arranger and producer for a Ft. Worth radio station. He then went to the NBC station in Chicago, lasted one year there and went to NBC in New York where he served as the chief producer and writer for the NBC Symphony Orchestra concerts. He established a close personal relationship with Toscanini who conducted many of his works. After the Orchestra disbanded in 1954, he became vice-president of the Interlochen Music Camp, then Chairman of the Music Department at Southern Methodist University (1967-68), chairman of the fine arts department at Dallas Baptist College (1968-1972) and in 1973 he was appointed composer-in-residence at the University of South Carolina. So, you are thinking, Gillis sounds like a typical academic composer. Hardly. Gillis’ music will not only brighten your day, but your entire holiday season. All the works but the Symphony No. 5 1-2 are recorded here for the first time anywhere.

This collection of recordings of works for cello and violin represents a long-time collaboration between Curtis Macomber and Norman Fischer. Their respective careers have featured countless contemporary music performances and recordings, so it was only natural that they would record these duos, composed by five renowned creators of new music. Both Macomber and Fischer have enjoyed stellar careers. Macomber is hailed as one of the most versatile solo and chamber musicians before the public today, with a discography ranging from complete Brahms String Quartets to the Roger Sessions Solo Sonata. Fischer is a Grammy-award winner and has concertized on five continents and 49 of the 50 United States.

For their first commercial recording, the Alabama Wind Ensemble offers three concertos by American composers. James Beckel's The Glass Bead Game is a horn concerto loosely based on the Hermann Hesse novel of the same name. Scott McAllister's Black Dog is a rhapsody for solo clarinet and wind ensemble, inspired by Led Zeppelin's rhapsodic-style song Black Dog. David Maslanka's Trombone Concerto is a memorial to Christine Capote, a flutist and teacher who was a dear friend. The performers and conductor Kenneth Ozzello are all faculty members at the University of Alabama.

The Ibis Camerata was formed in 2001 at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music and is made up of four of the school's most talented and accomplished doctoral graduates. Coming from varied cultural and musical backgrounds, they have been able to combine their unique talents to form one of North America's premier young ensembles. As the group explains, "The idea for this project slowly evolved as a result in our involvement in the musical life of the University's School of Music. Since our formation in 2001, the group has actively performed the works of composers at the University of Miami, most notably those of Dennis Kam, who is the chair of the department of music theory and composition. All of the composers featured on this CD are in some way linked to the University. Dennis Kam, Peter MacDonald and Lansing McLoskey are currently faculty members of the School of Music. Sofia Kraevska and Raina Murnak are graduate students and teaching assistants to Kam, and Frederic Glesser is a former student of Kam. Our ultimate goal was to create a CD that represented the diversity of sounds and variety of styles that have developed from the University of Miami's composition department."

Award-winning flutist Jan Vinci presents a wonderfully diverse program of works from around the world, in all styles and moods. As she writes, "My hope is that this eclectic program of rare gems and premieres will exude passion, create intrigue and fascinate both audiences and performers." First Prizewinner of England's International Performance Competition, Jan Vinci has performed at Alice Tully, Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall and Symphony Space, to mention only a few of the worldwide venues where she has given concerts. With a chamber music career spanning more than 20 years, Ms. Vinci performs with Iridescence (flute and harp duo) and Tritonis (flute, guitar and cello). She has commissioned over 15 works and appears on Five Premieres: Chamber Works with Guitar (Albany Records). Dr. Vinci is Senior Artist-in-Residence at Skidmore College. She holds a D.M.A. from The Juilliard School, an M.M. from Cleveland Institute of Music, and a B.M. from Bowling Green State University.

Commissioned by Dicapo Opera Theatre, Thomas Pasatieri's charge for God Bless Us, Every One! was to bring the cast of characters to the shores of America. God Bless Us, Every One! suggests what might have happened 20 years after the famous final line of Dickens' original tale. The libretto combines the characters from A Christmas Carol with the plot of another Dickens' story, Doubledick, and mixes them all into the turbulent years during the American Civil War.

Sonata for Orchestra is a large, unfinished tonal work that Godfrey Winham was working on just before he died in 1975 at the age of 40. The first two movements were completed but the third had just been begun at the time of his death. This is a world premiere recording. The Composition for Orchestra was written in 1953 as a musical example of his thesis, Composition with Arrays. Winham was studying with Roger Sessions at the time of this work. The Piano Concerto by Roger Sessions is one of three he concertos he wrote and exemplifies the qualities that have made Sessions one of America's foremost composers: rhythmic vitality, orchestral brillance, dramatic power, and great melodic beauty. Pianist Barry David Salwen enjoys an international career as a concert pianist. Additionally he is a long time faculty member of the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He was the first to record the complete solo piano music of Roger Sessions, which appears on Albany Records. Conductor Joel Suben is known for championing new works by American and European composers, having led first performances and commercial recordings of some 500 works. His discography is extensive and appears on the Naxos, Albany, New World, Centaur, CRI, and Parnassus labels.

Two of his most important orchestral works, Sacred Symphonies and the Idumea Symphony, are beautiful, strikingly kaleidoscopic works in the best Ivesian tradition. A renowned pianist, Bell presents here a recital of his highly original piano music. The vocal works of Larry Bell can also be heard on Albany TROY741.

Two works for voice by the internationally recognized composer C. Curtis-Smith are offered on this recording. The first -- Gold Are My Flowers -- is a cantata/melodrama for soprano, baritone and chamber group. The work tells the story of the coming of European civilization to the wildernesses of the world using poetry by the Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan, portions of the Navajo Night Chant, excerpts from Columbus' Log and Book of Prophecies and Biblical passages quoted by Columbus in his Log. A Civil War Song Cycle, the second vocal work, follows the emotional and chronological sequence of the Civil War. C. Curtis-Smith is the recipient of more than 100 grants, awards and commissions. He was the youngest faculty member ever awarded the Western Michigan University's Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award. His Twelve Etudes for Piano were selected for the repertoire list for the Eleventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2001. His music has been performed throughout the United States, Germany and Japan.

Ned Rorem composed his End of Summer during the late summer of 1985 in Nantucket. "The trio follows in the wake of my septet, Scenes from Childhood. The pieces are about the same length and are formed from souvenirs. But while the septet contained 12 movements describing geographical landmarks of my youth, the trio is in but three, each suggested by musical works of yore. There are suggestions of Satie, Brahms, hopscotch ditties and Protestant anthems." An Oboe Book was commissioned for the 30th anniversary of the Martha's Vineyard Chamber Music Society and premiered in July 1999 by the guest soloists on this CD. Ariel, Five Poems of Sylvia Plath was composed in New York during May 1971 and was presented as a gift to Phyllis Curtin. The poems that make up the text are among Plath's last writings and vividly reflect that tumultuous period in her life and the suicide that soon ended it. In assembling a set of songs for clarinet, double bass and piano, Gotham Ensemble music director Thomas Piercy asked composer Rorem if he had any songs whose vocal line seemed particularly suitable for the clarinet. Piercy wrote: "Ned suggested any number of his songs would be appropriate. Playing through more than fifty, we settled on the four heard here. After listening to a rehearsal in preparation for the recording, Rorem decided to title the set Four Poems without Words."

Steven Stucky was half-finished with a brief work for large orchestra before deciding on the French term son et lumiere for his title. Meaning "sound and light," the coinage originated in Chambord in the early 1950s to refer to outdoor evening spectacles that featured brilliant lighting effects and recorded music as the background for talks about historical buildings. In Stucky"s resulting "orchestral entertainment whose subject is the play of colors, bright surfaces and shimmery textures," the composer explains that his aim was to "recapture the Tlan and immediacy that regular meters and repetitive rhythms make possible." Today, Stucky is professor of composition and director of the new music group, Ensemble X, at Cornell. A short, highly evocative - almost mystical - work for solo English horn and chamber orchestra, "Watercolors is not about the substance of water," says the composer Gabriel Ian Gould, "as much as it is about our perception of water. It also has very little to do with watercolor painting, as the title might suggest, although there is something in this piece of the technique's soft edges and blended colors. I have attempted to represent not water itself, but rather its fluid qualities of refraction and reflection, opacity and translucence, lightness, darkness and the myriad shades and tones in between." This work won Gould his second BMI Student Composer Award. John Harbison's Cello Concerto was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Scored for large orchestra, it features an especially varied percussion section, with an array of pitched and unpitched gongs suggestive of the sort of East Asian ensemble called a gamelan. Dedicated to and premiered by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, it debuted in Boston on April 7, 1994, with Seiji Ozawa conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. These first performers, according to the composer, considerably determined the concerto's character and flavor. Harbison notes that the three connected movements "all move without warning between slow and fast, expressive and virtuosic, domestic and exotic. These moods are connected by the solo cello line, which rises from the East, eventually to descend, refracted, in the West." Almost joltingly catchy, straightforward and down-to-earth after the light sensitive works of this disc's other composers, Morton Gould's Symphony No. 2 (the handwritten score gives two subtitles: "On Marching Tunes" and "Symphony on Marching Tunes") was commissioned by the Young Men's Christian Association for its hundredth anniversary and dedicated to "the Freedom-loving Youth of the World." The premiere took place during a radio broadcast by the New York Philharmonic, under Vladimir Golschmann, on June 4, 1944. An anecdote, courtesy of Gould's biographer, Peter Goodman, attaches to that first (and apparently, before the Albany Symphony Orchestra's 1999 concert, the only) performance of the complete work: Golschmann had scheduled a rehearsal of the symphony the day before broadcast and asked Gould whether he planned to attend. The composer - known for his unrelenting work ethic - surprisingly said no, claiming some pressing engagement about whose nature he was surprisingly tight lipped. After the broadcast, Golschmann met the composer at the Russian Tea Room, where Gould introduced him to his companion, his wife Shirley. "I had no idea you were married!" the conductor said. "When was the wedding?" "Yesterday," said Gould. The timing of the premiere is also interesting on the level of global, not just intimate, affairs. Two days later, in the climactic military thrust of World War Two's European theater, Allied forces would invade Normandy. This led ultimately to victory, but victory built on a mound of many, many lives. The structuring of Gould's symphony may be reflective of the true cost of triumph.

David Claman is on the faculty of Lehman College-CUNY. A graduate of Wesleyan, the University of Colorado, and Princeton, he has received grants, commissions, and fellowships from numerous organizations, including the Fromm Foundation and the American Institute of Indian Studies. This recording offers an overview of his passions and interests — including the poetry and sentiments of Tamil sayings from the first century A.D., the compositions of South Indian composer Syama Sastri; Moby Dick; and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. His composition armory includes consumer electronics, conventional instruments, and live improvisation.

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.

The Gramercy Trio (Sharan Leventhal, violin; Jonathan Miller, cello; Randall Hodgkinson, piano) tours the country presenting concerts and residencies, with programs that include standard repertoire and new works. Their performances are met with critical acclaim with the New York Times calling their performances "distinctive and memorable beautifully wrought and sensitively balanced." Their recordings can be heard on the Newport Classic, Naxos, Parma, and Albany record labels. The three trios performed on this recording are all world premieres. Written in 2012, Schuller's trio is one of his last works; Nicholas Underhill's trio was written in 2005 and came out of a long association with Randall Hodgkinson; and Matthew Aucoin's trio is the most recent composition, having been written in 2015 at the invitation of Jonathan Miller. The Gramercy Trio has made an impressive addition to the piano trio repertoire with these works by three generations of American composers.

Terry Rhodes and Ellen Williams write: "Long having been fans of the music of Libby Larsen, we were thrilled to learn that this renowned and prolific composer would be among us in residency at Meredith College for a week in March 2002. And what a tremendous week it was - with Libby coaching young women composers who had gathered from all over the country! Libby epitomizes generosity of spirit. She not only shared her thorough understanding of composition and the realities of the music business, but also her unbounded passion for vocal music. After this wonderfully inspiring time together, we all decided to collaborate on a CD together. Longtime friend and valued colleague, Benton Hess, also had agreed to participate in this project. The summer of 2002 followed, with continuing dialogue among us all, as we researched and finally selected the appropriate repertoire. Autumn 2002, found us readying for a series of recitals of this program to perform in the spring of 2003. The process culminated in several illuminating days in New York City when we had the great fortune to work with Libby herself on her music. As we sang through the program, Libby shared her intentions for each piece, affirming what we had accomplished thus far, but also encouraging and inspiring us to discover that "next level," to really find the essence of each song. What a gift! We finally recorded on May 12, 13, 15 and 16, in Baldwin Auditorium on the Duke University campus in Durham, North Carolina. We'll continue to perform these wonderful songs with great joy and commitment, and we offer our very special thanks to Libby Larsen for creating such distinctive, humorous, heartwarming and honest music."

Continuing Albany Records' series of music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Walker, this recording focuses on his chamber music. The music ranges from his first string quartet composed in 1946 to the piano sonata composed in 1985. Walker is the recipient of six honorary doctoral degrees and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2000.

Sinfonia No. 5, a new work completed in 2016 by the distinguished composer George Walker, is in one continuous movement. On this world premiere recording, two versions are presented. The work has four quotes of varying lengths inserted in the score with the first version containing five brief speaking parts for soprano, tenor, two baritones, and bass. The second version does not contain the spoken text. Goerge Walker is the recipient of seven honorary doctorate degrees as well as a Pulitzer Prize for his work, Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra. His extensive discography includes recordings of his chamber, vocal, instrumental and orchestral music. This is the fifth volume of his orchestral music to appear on Albany Records.

The orchestral works on this CD of world premiere recordings incorporate a wealth of compositional techniquesÑarchaic, arcane and contemporary. These works constitute a cross section of musical perspectives that can also be found in his chamber works. The focus on creating relationships that have direction and dimensionality distinguishes these scores from other trends embraced in the 20th century. Unique to all these works is an harmonic vocabulary imbedded into a formal organization that is precise, logical and certainly not academic in the current sense.

Gregory Fritze is a prize-winning composer, Fulbright Scholar and an active performer, conductor and educator and is chair of the composition department at Berklee College of Music. His passion for the tuba has inspired numerous compositions and this recording features his music for that instrument performed by Gary Bird, the retired professor emeritus of music at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and friends. The works range from tuba duets to a concertino for tuba and orchestra.

Composer/pianist Grigor Khachatryan is an Armenian-American who was born and raised in the post-Soviet Union Armenia. He was taught from childhood that life holds no meaning without freedom. Both of his piano sonatas are based on stories that honor men and women who have given their lives to preserve human freedom and elevate the value of human life. Khachatryan came to the United States as a teenager, living in Bedford, Indiana where he finished high school, taking piano lessons at Indiana University at the same time. He went on to do his undergraduate and graduate work there, completing a Doctorate degree in Piano Performance. A winner of many awards and competitions, Khachatryan is active as a concert artist and composer. He is on the faculty at Concordia College, Moorhead.

The reasonably experienced listener encountering the music of Louis Gruenberg for the first time is likely at various moments to receive a general impression of artistic kinship with such composers as Szymanowski and Messiaen. Those with a more specialized knowledge of 20th century music may hear a certain affinity with another long neglected creative figure, Igor Markevitch. Better known as a conductor, Markevitch (1912-1983) was widely regarded in the 1930s, by no lesser judges than Bartok and Milhaud, as the outstanding composer of his generation. Markevitch was once described as a "dry mystic", a phrase that might also be used to describe Gruenberg's music. Brought to the United States when he was two, Gruenberg was essentially an American phenomenon. He did do some studying (with Busoni and Koch) and then some teaching and piano-playing in Europe between 1903 and 1919, and one of his most successful dramatic works, The Emperor Jones, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1933, was to achieve a revival in Rome in 1950. But most of his career was spent in the United States, where he was one of the founders of the League of Composers in 1923 and headed the composition department at Chicago Musical College from 1933 to 1936, afterwards moving to California. More pertinently, he devoted much attention to American musical genres, publishing four volumes of spiritual harmonizations, and deriving substantial inspiration from jazz for The Daniel Jazz and several other works. The three works recorded here show relatively little trace of these American resources, fitting for the most part into a broadly European musical tradition that he shared with many compatriots of his generation.

Paul Chihara writes: "The three pieces on this CD were written when I was a young composer, I had just resigned my teaching position at UCLA (in 1973), and was just entering the free-lance world of movies, Broadway and ballet. Within six months I found myself working on my first film for Roger Corman (Death Race 2000) and first commissioned ballet score (Shinju, for the San Francisco Ballet). Each of the three works on this CD were revised extensively over the last few years, and recorded and mixed with the latest technology in Hollywood and New York. The Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra with Trumpet Obbligato was written for Pepe Romero and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in 1975. Maestro Neville Marriner was the orchestra's first music director, and he chose me to be his first composer-in-residence. Over the years, we have maintained the warmest artistic relationship. The concerto also reflects my friendship with the great Spanish guitarist Pepe Romero, and our mutual fascination for scary movies with their haunting stories and images of tragic, beautiful women. The concerto evokes the mysterious films from Japan from that period: especially Kuroneko (Black Cat) and Onibaba (Demon Woman). Mistletoe Bride (1978) was my second ballet commissioned by the San Francisco Ballet, which subsequently appointed me to be its first composer-in-residence. Its story (and principal musical theme) is based on the tragic ballad of the same name, attributed to Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839). Despite its title and hallucinogenic orchestral textures, Grass has nothing to do with marijuana. It was composed in 1974 for the great avant-garde bass virtuoso Bertram Turetsky, and commissioned by Giora Bernstein and the Claremont Music Festival. It derives its title from the pastoral lyrics of the 17th century English poet Andrew Marvell: his Mower songs, with their obsession for the mysterious Juliana, and the recurring metaphor of grass as a symbol of life and death."

Created with the concert pianist's repertoire in mind. H. Leslie Adams Piano Etudes are studies of varying styles, moods, tonalities, and thematic natures — each providing different technical challenges, while expressing the composer's personal sense of beauty. A graduate of Oberlin, Long Beach State University and Ohio State University, H. Leslie Adams' music has been performed by orchestras in the U.S. and abroad and he is the recipient of commissions from the Cleveland Orchestra, Ohio Chamber Orchestra, and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, among others. Pianist Thomas Otten, a faculty member at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, has been the recipient of numerous national and international prizes and has performed internationally as a concerto soloist and recitalist. His performances of these etudes are engaging and beautiful. Piano Etudes, Part I, was recorded by Maria Corley for Albany Records (TROY639).

This recording of the hilarious Gilbert & Sullivan 1878 comic opera was made at the 2013 Ohio Light Opera Festival and includes complete music and dialog. H.M.S. Pinafore has been the most frequently performed work at the Ohio Light Opera and an audience favorite on both sides of the Atlantic since its initial run.

All of the works on this disc of choral music are world premiere recordings. As Dr. Hailstork says in the notes for this album, he has always enjoyed singing, right from the beginning when he was a boy soprano in the choir of the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, New York. Here he was exposed to a wide range of choral music. When he went to Howard University from 1959-1963, he also sang in the choir. The choir often appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra singing the great works from the choral-orchestral repertoire. Dr. Hailstork studied with H. Owen Reed, David Diamond, Vittorio Giannini, Nadia Boulanger, and Mark Fax at Howard University. He is currently on the faculty of Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia, where he is Professor of Music and Composer-in-Residence. In the past few years his music has been performed more and more often. The McCullough Chorale, founded in 1984 by Donald McCullough is Virginia's only professional chorale.

Italian opera was all the rage in German courts at the turn of the 18th century and the young Handel's trip to Italy from 1706 to 1710 allowed him to immerse himself in Italian music. This spurred a remarkable output of cantatas, many written for the meetings of the Arcadian Academy, a group of noblemen and artists who gathered in Rome to further their literary agenda and raise the level of Italian poetry. Though their main interests were in pastoral subjects, these three cantatas dealt with portrayals of tragic heroines, the scorned and betrayed: Agrippina, Lucrezia and Armida, whose stories were drawn from Roman history and myth. No doubt the Academy was impressed with subject matter, which would have been at home in full operatic treatment! Hailed as "outstanding" by the New York Times, soprano Melissa Fogarty's wide range of experience has taken her from the stages of the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera to the world of early music. She has appeared in concert with the Seattle Baroque, New York Collegium and Concert Royal. Her unusual experience (in rock bands during her college days) has given her the kind of versatility to branch out into other fields, including the works of Harry Partch and even klezmer music.

Any disc that contains the music of the wonderful American composer Douglas Moore, is a welcome addition to the catalog. Mr. Moore (1893-1969) composed "Gallantry" in 1957 and it was first performed in March 1958 at Columbia University on a double bill with Dominick Argento's "The Boor." The libretto by Arnold Sundgaard is a parody of television soap operas, reminiscent perhaps of the once popular "Young Doctor Malone," complete with commercial interruptions for Lochinvar Soap, the soap of silken supremacy, and Billy Boy Wax, the waxy wax that spells relax, which are sung by a female announcer assisted by three dancers called the Billy Boy Girls. The parody came full circle on August 30, 1972, when CBS broadcast a production of "Gallantry" on its television network. Menotti's "The Telephone" was composed in 1946. It was premiered by the Ballet Society of New York at the Heckstar Theater in February 1947, on a double bill with the same composer's "The Medium" It proved so successful that three months later, it began a long and successful run on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. Hindemith composed his "There and Back" in 1927. It was first performed in the United States at the inaugural season of Tanglewood in 1940. Hindemith himself was one of the pianists in the pit orchestra.

Without question John Harbison is one of America's most prominent composers. He has been composer-in-residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Tanglewood, Marlboro, Aspen, Ojai, and Santa Fe Festivals, and the American Academy in Rome. He is Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught at Cal Arts and Boston University, is President of the Copland Fund and serves on the board of directors of the Koussevitsky Foundation. The Most Often Used Chords was composed in 1992 for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra which gave it its first performance on October 22, 1993. The Flute Concerto was composed on a commission from the Wallace Foundation and Meet the Composer for Ransom Wilson. It was premiered on October 29, 1995 with Mr. Wilson and the American Composers' Orchestra under Paul Lustig Dunkel. The Symphony No. 3 was commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and is dedicated to the composer Christopher Rouse. Mr. Harbison has been front and center in America's classical music news recently because of the performances by the Met of his new opera The Great Gatsby. Well, this new disc recorded in the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in magnificent, warm sound, shows a different aspect of the genius of this great American composer.

Robert Xavier Rodríguez’s (b. 1946) music has been described as “romantically dramatic” and glowing with a physical animation and delicate balance of moods that combine seductively with his all-encompassing sense of humor.” He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Goddard Lieberson Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among many other prizes. He has served as composer-in-residence with the San Antonio Symphony and the Dallas Symphony. His music appears on more than 20 recordings. The music on this recording includes a song cycle for mezzo-soprano and string quartet based on poems from Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire. The second work, Romance With a Double Bass is for narrator, double bass, and piano and is based on a comic short story by Anton Chekhov. Performers include the Amernet String Quartet, mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway, bassist Daniel Nix, pianist Mikhail Berestnev, and narrator Mary-Margaret Pyeatt.

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.

Among the oldest of all musical instruments, the harp remains an under-utilized instrument in contemporary compositions. Composer David S. Lefkowitz thrives on pondering the nature of the harp and exploring the harp's unique limitations in new and imaginative ways. The music presented on this recording includes prize-winning compositions, commissions, as well as music written for the composer's friends and spans 20 years of Lefkowitz's compositional efforts. A graduate of Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania and Eastman, Lefkowitz has won international acclaim, having works performed in Europe, Asia, Russia, and throughout North and South America. He is a two-time winner of the Fukui Harp Music Awards Competition as well as having received awards from the National Association of Composers, the Society of New Music's Brian M. Israel Prize and the ALEA III International Competition, among many others. This is the second recording of his music to appear on Albany Records.

Music from an ancient land meets an instrument of antiquity: the result is a fascinating collection of music by composers either born in Israel or settling there from many points in Europe. Soloist Marina Minkin herself came from the Ukraine in 1981. A student of Mark Kroll, she is active in both Israel and the United States and is a founding member and director of the Ad Libitum Ensemble.