Catalog

Pianist and composer James Adler made his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of 16, the start of a varied career in the United States and Europe. He has appeared throughout the world at leading concert venues, including New York City's Alice Tully and Carnegie Halls. He made his London debut at the famed Wigmore Hall. Known as a pianist who "can create whatever type of music he wants at the keyboard" (Chicago Sun-Times), he has had particular success with his account of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, the final work on this disc. His succinct description of the whole program perfectly sums it up: "I wanted to prepare a CD program that is fun. Has rhythm. That is danceable. That is a little jazzy with depth and lyricism, and celebrates American traditions in music. Though not necessarily in chronological order."

Born in Illinois, conductor/composer James Bolle studied at Harvard, Aspen, Antioch and Northwestern University. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by both Franklin Pierce and Notre Dame Colleges. Bolle studied composition with Darius Milhaud and conducting with Richard Lert. His music has been performed in the United States, Israel and Canada. He founded Monadnock Music in 1966 and was music director of the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra for 28 years. He has recorded for Musical Heritage, Monitor, Titanic, Serenus, CRI, Gasparo, Koch International and Albany Records.

The recording of James Willey's String Quartets Nos. 3, 7 and 8, marks the culmination of a decades-long partnership between the composer and the Esterhazy Quartet, which began in 1977 with the Quartets performance of his String Quartet No. 1. Since then the Esterhazy Quartet has performed and recorded all eight of the composer's works in this genre. Aided by this long, closely-knit collaboration in which ideas, revisions and artistic inspiration would flow back and forth between composers and performers, James Willey has created one of the most beautiful and personally expressive canons of string quartets in the latter part of the 20th century.

Symphony No. 2: Earth, Fire, Air, Water for soprano, mezzo-soprano, men's chorus and orchestra is based on a text drawn from the words of North American Indians from the 17th to the 20th century. They speak of "the sacred earth," "the blessings of the great mystery," "their love of this beautiful land" filled with "singing birds and sacred trees," "spring," being "born free where the wind blew free and everything drew a free breath, accepting the kinship of all creatures and unity with the universe." Their voices also speak about being "destroyed by swords and guns," their "people scattered, gone," "the tree withered," their being reduced to a shadow without a voice. Their voices speak to us today. The symphony is divided into four contrasting movements, the structure of each determined by the text. The first performance took place in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The work was revised in 2000. About his Symphony No. 7, James Yannatos has written: "I think of Symphonies as a circle of sound that celebrates the richness and complexity of life to its natural culmination in death. It is divided into four large contrasting movements that could be titles The many aspects of God, Sanctity of Nature, the Glory of music, and, The Varied life of mankind. The text speaks in many tongues that relate to the spiritual journey of mankind."

Jan Krzywicki (b. 1948) is active as a composer, conductor and educator. He has been comÂmissioned by prestigious performers, and organizations such as the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Chestnut Brass Company, and performed across the United States by ensembles such as the Colorado Quartet, the Network for New Music, the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, Alea III, and others. He is the recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Rockefeller Foundation residency (Bellagio, Italy), a Bogliasco Foundation residency (Bogliasco, Italy), ASCAP and Meet the Composer awards, and has been a Fellow at the MacDowell, Yaddo, Millay, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts artist colonies. As a conductor he has led chamber and orchestral groups in literature from the middle ages to the present, including a large number of premieres. Since 1990 he has been conductor of the contemporary ensemble Network for New Music. Krzywicki is a professor of music theory at Temple University. All the compositions on this recording were composed in 2000 or later and complement his first disc of chamber works on Albany Records (TROY337).

Julianne Baird writes: "Music and the social status it expressed was an integral part of Jane Austen's life. Her novels are replete with details of domestic musical activities. Accounts of public concerts and private balls as well as music programs with hired musicians fill her letters. A dedicated amateur herself, Austen ordinarily played at the pianoforte at least an hour a day before breakfast from the 8-book music collection now preserved in her home at Chawton. For nieces and nephews she practiced 'country dances,' a number of which appear in her collections. Austen painstakingly copied and bound music that especially interested her. Two books are in her own hand - one of piano pieces and the other (Book III), of vocal music, recorded here in its entirety. Some pieces contain her own suggestions for ornamentation. Prominent themes are naval affairs, country life, drinking songs, love, Turkish and Moorish motifs, female character pieces, and the French Revolution. The novels of Jane Austen reveal her as a keen observer of early 19th century English society. Now, through her Songbook, she herself springs to life: her special likes and dislikes, her boisterous sense of humor, her passions, the way she amused herself and what she was like relaxing with her family and friends." This is a very special album indeed.

Called a "composer to watch" by Opera News, Elena Ruehr's music has been performed by the Borremeo String Quartet, the Shanghai String Quartet, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (where she was composer in residence from 2000-2005), and the Cincinnati Symphony, among others. Dr. Ruehr was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute in 2009 and she teaches in the music department at MIT.

Pamela Decker is Assistant Professor of Organ/Music Theory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She is also organist at Christ Church United Methodist Church in Tucson. She has been active as a performer since the age of 13. She was educated at Stanford University. She has won numerous prizes and scholarships for both performance and composition. Ms. Decker is Assistant Professor of Organ/Music Theory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Flores del Desierto was written as a set of three concert tangos for organ in honor of Astor Piazzolla who has attained legendary status for his risk-taking development of the Argentine tango. Retablos is a cycle of works based upon Gregorian chant themes: a triptych of pieces that are intended to be as independent as they are interrelated. The term retablo refers to a painted altar screen in a church. The three pieces are based on the following chants: Pange lingua, Ubi caritas and Victimae paschali. One of America's premiere organists, Janice Beck has presented recitals in many prestigious venues in North America and Europe. During a Fulbright Scholarship in Paris she studied with Jean Langlais and Nadia Boulanger.

Jay Reise composes in all genres, and his teachers included musicians with a wide variety of stylistic approaches: George Crumb, jazz player Jimmy Guiffre, Carnatic (South Indian) violinist Adrian L'Armand, and Richard Wernick. As critic Peter Rabinowitz has written, "His work is firmly in the Western tradition. But because of the fresh perspectives offered by his study of Indian music, he has been able to rethink some specific problems facing contemporary Western art music..." Many disparate elements of classical musical technique are employed in the three works on this recording, including rhythms based on concepts freely derived from the study of Carnatic music and the juxtaposing of chromatically-treated modes (folk-derived and symmetrical) with quasi-functional tonal music.

Jeff Manookian's Concerto for Piccolo and Orchestra was written in mid-year of 2002, and premiered on November 29, 2002 in Yerevan, Armenia with the same soloists as heard in this recording. The work engages the soloist and a large orchestra in a quasi chamber ensemble-like fashion. Despite this balancing act, there are many moments when the full forces of the symphony orchestra are brought to the fore. Its three movements are played without pause. Six authentic fragments from Armenia's rich folk musical heritage (with two original motifs by the composer as counter-subjects) are cast for viola and orchestra in the tradition of Khachaturian and Bartok, to become a bona fide concerto. The Improvisations on Armenian Folk Songs for Viola and Orchestra were first performed on April 30, 2000 in Salt Lake City. The Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra was composed in the summer of 2002, and also received its world premiere at the November 29, 2002 concert. The concerto is an unabashed programmatic tone-poem. A khachkar is an ornately carved stone cross. These icons are found in abundance throughout the countryside and mountainous terrains of Armenia. Armenia is the oldest of Christian nations on earth, accepting Christianity as its national religion in the year 301 AD. Khachkar, an instrumental prayer, is based on two borrowed religious tunes. It was first performed on June 1, 2002 in Salt Lake City with Laurel Ann Maurer as soloist.

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

Pianist Jeffrey Middleton graduated from the Juilliard School and received his Doctor of Musical Arts from The Yale School of Music. His career has included chamber music, vocal coaching and accompanying, solo performances, and teaching. Since meeting Joseph Fennimore in the mid 1980's, Mr. Middleton has been studying and performing his music. In addition to Cathay and Twenty Four Romances for Solo Piano, he has directed a production of Fennimore's Eventide, a three-character opera adapted from a text by James Purdy, at the Harlem School of the Arts. He also performed Molinos de Viento, a piano trio based on Hispanic themes, and many other works. Mr. Middleton is currently on the faculty of the School of American Ballet, Lincoln Center, where he teaches music for dancers. He received the Mae Wien Award for distinguished faculty service in 2010. He also worked for more than 20 years as vocal coach/accompanist for Betty Allen's Master Voice Class at the Harlem School of the Arts. For this, his fourth recording for Albany Records, he performs two works by Joseph Fennimore and Debussy's Douze Études.

Pianist Jeffrey Middleton, a champion of Joseph Fennimore's music, received his DMA from Yale. His career has included chamber music, vocal coaching and accompanying, solo performances and teaching. Of the music, Phillip Kennicott notes: "Fennimore's insistence on his right to work within a tradition, even if out of fashion, was pioneering. But his compositional style has undergone continual metamorphosis, and today the percussive aspects of the piano are more integral to his music."

Three concerto-like works by Jeffrey Mumford are offered on his newest recording for Albany Records. Mumford is the recipient of numerous awards, commissions, fellowships, and grants including the American Academy of Arts & Letters and the Guggenheim Foundation, among many others. His music has been performed extensively in the U.S. and abroad. Mumford was on the faculty at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and is currently Distinguished Professor at Lorain County Community College. In his music, Mumford cultivates rich connections between the aural and the visual, creating intricate, profoundly expressive music directly influenced by the people with whom he works over his long career. Noted soloists Christine Lamprea (cello); Winston Choi (piano); and Christine Wu (violin) are joined by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kazem Abdullah; Ensemble Dal Niente conducted by Michael Lewanski; and the Chicago Composers Orchestra conducted by Allen Tinkham.

Compositional clarity of purpose amid a counterpoint of ideas and materials brings together this generous collection of Jeffrey Mumford's music, all of which are heard in thoughtful and sensitive performances. A native of Washington, D.C., composer Jeffrey Mumford has received numerous fellowships, grants, awards and commissions including the Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Formerly on the faculty at Oberlin College, he is now Distinguished Professor of Music at Lorain County Community College. Mumford was in residence at the National Gallery of Art in 2013 and some of the works on this 2-CD recording come out of this residency.

Three world premiere recordings highlight this disc of chamber music by the distinguished American composer Jennifer Higdon. Ms. Higdon served as Eminent Artist-in-Residence at the University of Wyoming and this composer-supervised recording was the culmination of her activities there. Ms. Higdon comments that when composing "I often picture colors as if I were spreading them on a canvas, except I do so with melodies, harmonies, and through the instruments themselves." All of the performers serve on the music department faculty at the University of Wyoming.

Grammy Award winning artist Jennifer Montone is the principal horn of the Philadelphia Orchestra and an internationally acclaimed soloist and chamber musician. She has performed as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Saint Louis, Dallas, National, and the Polish National Radio Symphonies as well as the Warsaw National Philharmonic. Montone is on the faculty at Juilliard as well as the Curtis Institute. She was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006 and in 1996 was the winner of the Paxman Young Horn Player of the Year Award in London. Montone contends that horn players are privileged to perform some of the most beautiful music ever written and in this recording, imagined as a recital, she and her colleague, pianist Anna Polonsky explore the connection between Romantic and contemporary horn writing by following a chronological progression that spans 120 years. The works were written during a period of great musical and artistic innovation that saw the horn developed fully as a featured orchestral and solo instrument.

The works presented on this compact disc exhibit three manners in which Jeremy Gill has explored the musical past. 25, through its use of quotation and occasional imitation, represents the most common of the three. Suite for Brass deals with musical and poetic forms that were precursors to the music of Bach. Parabasis is an exploration of an imagined musical past, based solely on contextless titles and fragmentary descriptions. A graduate of Eastman and the University of Pennsylvania, Gill worked with George Crumb, George Rochberg, Joseph Schwantner, Christopher Rouse, Donald Erb and Samuel Adler. He is also active as a conductor and keyboardist.

The two works on this recording are concerned with time-cycles: Book of Hours with the ordering of days, Helian with the changing of seasons. Book of Hours uses the medieval Book of Hours, a devotional book containing prayers and psalms, for its structure while Helian is a setting of a poem by Georg Trakl and is concerned with years, not days. Active as a composer, conductor and pianist, Jeremy Gill studied at the Eastman School of Music and at the University of Pennsylvania. He has received awards from BMI, ASCAP, Meet the Composer and the American Symphony Orchestra League. He is Music Director of the Delaware County Symphony. This is the second release on Albany Records devoted to his music.

of death and the planets is a large song cycle by composer Jim Lahti, setting a poetry collection of the same name by John McEveety Woodruff. The work is, essentially, a 15-movement journey and over the course of approximately an hour and a half the listener will be transported through the solar system with occasional stops along the way for five departed souls with personal connections to Mr. Woodruff. Both the poems and the music are at times dramatic, poignant, sad, loving — and periodically whimsical. Passionate about music, di.vi.sion is an exciting group that seeks to move audiences. Formed in 1997 by violinist Kurt Briggs, the name is inspired by the group's flexibility to divide forces as needed and by their predisposition to commission new works using the musical form of division. Composer Jim Lahti's music has been heard in concerts in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, London, and France as well as on radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He is the 2018 recipient of the BRIO Award for excellence in music composition from the Bronx Council on the Arts. English-German tenor Rufus Müller has an active career performing for oratorio and opera and has worked with many of the world's leading conductor. Soprano Timothy Maureen Cole is a graduate of Westminster Choir College and Ithaca College. She has extensive performance experience in classical as well as musical theater repertoire.

Considered "one of the heroes of American music," John Duffy has composed more than 300 works for symphony orchestra, opera, theatre, television and film. His best-known work in television is his score for the PBS series Heritage: Civilization and the Jews. He also composed music for the New York City productions of Macbird, The Ginger Man and the Yeats musical Horseman Pass By. Duffy grew up in the Bronx, one of fourteen children of Irish immigrant parents. He studied composition with, among others, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell and Luigi Dallapiccola. As founder and president of Meet the Composer, an organization dedicated to the creation, performance and recording of music by American composers, Duffy initiated countless landmark programs to advance American music and to aid American composers. As he writes of this CD, "As the 2005 composer-in-residence (of the Virginia Arts Festival), I had the good fortune to work with JoAnn Falletta (and the soloists and ensembles on this recording). This CD covers 50 years of my composing life...A born and bred New Yorker, part time Virginian, and traveling Mainer, my music and this recording reflect my love of these seacoast lands, of our beautiful country and this vast earth, with its miraculous variety of peoples."

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.

Joel Hoffman was born in Canada and received degrees from the University of Wales and the Juilliard School. Among his distinguished teachers were Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, Alun Hoddinott and Easley Blackwood. Currently, Hoffman is Professor of Composition at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. His music has been commissioned and performed by the Cincinnati Symphony, the National Chamber Orchestra, the American Harp Society and the Atheneum Quartet of the Berlin Philharmonic. His compositions draw from such diverse stylistic sources as Eastern European folk music and bebop jazz. There are two qualities that are common to all of his works: a focus on melody and a pervasive rhythmic vitality. The three Piano Trios represent, in his words, "...a kind of central musical point for me, in that the medium incorporates three instruments with which I have the greatest and most intimate connection possible: my mother was a superb violinist, the cello is the instrument of my cellist-brother Gary and the piano is my instrument. So composing for this medium, for me, is about as natural an activity as composing gets. I find that my essential musical questions about sound, structure, harmony, melody and meaning in general are the ones I continually address when writing for the piano trio."

Violinist James Stern is a multi-faceted musician whose performances have been heard worldwide. Noted by the Washington Post for his "virtuosity and penetrating intelligence," he is known for his innovative programming that includes performing in multiple capacities (as violist, pianist, conductor, reciter, and arranger), and providing program annotations that are integral to the performance. His numerous recordings can be heard on the Albany Records, Bridge, Centaur, CRI, Dorian/Sono Luminus, Enharmonic, New Focus, and New World labels. This recording of the six sonatas and partitas of Bach reinforces his advocacy of this music as a single, unified work bolstered by multiple experiences of performing the entire cycle in a single live concert. The sonatas and partitas are presented in the order that Bach did and this facilitates simulation of the concert experience for the listener. The title of this recording comes from Bach's title on the manuscript, Sei Solo. Interpreted by some to mean Six Solos, which assumes that Bach was grammatically incorrect with the Italian (solo instead of soli), it is suggested that the title is actually a pun on the word sei, which can mean either six or you are -- hence the choice of You Are Alone.

Noted performers Peter Winograd and David Westfall perform the three violin sonatas by Brahms. Winograd, a member of the American String Quartet, made his debut at age 11. As a young violinist, he was a top prize winner in the 1988 Naumburg International Violin Competition. Since then he has performed as a guest soloists with orchestras around the United States and as a recitalist. He has been a member of the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and the Aspen Music School. His violin is by Giovanni Maria del Bussetto (Cremona, 1675). Pianist David Westfall maintains an active career as concert pianist, collaborative artist, and teacher. He has concertized and given master classes throughout the United States as well as in Canada, Europe, and the Far East. A graduate of Indiana University, Texas Christian University, Juilliard, and The Hartt School where he received his Doctorate in Musical Arts, Westfall taught for more than 30 years at The Hartt School of Music and founded the South Church Chamber Music Society in Connecticut.

The three pieces on this compact disc are the results of a collaborative effort between composer John Allemeier and dancer/choreographer E.E. Balcos, who together created an evening-length, dance-theater work based on three murder ballads — folksongs that describe homicides and their aftermaths. As both artists live and work in North Carolina, they fittingly focused their collaboration on murder ballads from that state. Poor Ellen is based on a balled that recounts the 1892 shooting of Ellen Smith by her lover, while Pieces of Silver was inspired by a murder ballad about Frankie Silver who killed her husband with an ax. Deep Water (Omie Wise) tells the story of how Jon Lewis drowned Omie Wise in 1807. Described as "rapturous" by American Record Guide, John Allemeier's music has been programmed at festivals around the world, including Europe, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil as well as in the U.S. A graduate of the University of Iowa, Allemeier also studied at Northwestern University and Augustana College with additional work in Germany and the Czech Republic. He teaches music theory and composition at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Born in Mill Valley, California, John Anthony Lennon earned a liberal arts degree at the University of San Francisco, as well as a master's degree and doctorate from the University of Michigan where he studied with Leslie Bassett and William Bolcom. He shares with those two composers a strong sense of unusual instrumental color as well as a strong grounding in traditional American forms. Lennon studied guitar early in life so it is not surprising that he has devoted a substantial portion of his career to this instrument, including his popular Zingari Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra (The Play of the Sixes is an independent part of that work). The works contained on this CD constitute one of the most significant contributions to the guitar literature in recent times. They are beautifully and idiomatically written for the instrument and have been played by such renowned guitarists as David Starobin and David Tanenbaum as well as Daniel Stanislawek who began his studies while growing up in Chicago, and has performed to critical and audience acclaim throughout the United States and abroad. He is a specialist in contemporary music.

Composer John Aylward has been awarded a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Grant and First Prize from the International Society for Contemporary Music, among many other honors. His music has been praised for its rhythmic vitality, rigorous formal qualities and its lyricism and is performed in the US and abroad. He is on the faculty at Clark University and is the founder of the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble and the Etchings Festival. This recording offers some of his best chamber works including a song cycle based on the poetry of Louise Gluck, a piece for violin and cello and a large chamber ensemble work titled Stillness and Change.

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.

Composer John Harbison's history as a jazz player divides into two widely distant segments: the first, as founder-leader of Harbison's Heptet (1952-63); the second in the present century as founder-member of the Token Creek Jazz Ensemble and coach for VocalJazz MIT. As he comments in the introduction to this recording, "The songs were never aimed at a specialized audience they had mainstream intentions, to catch ears and hearts, and occasionally to follow some restless habit of curiosity. They are fully inhabited by the performers here in ways I scarcely imagined, which is as it should be Are we hearing jazz, or some strange prolongation of the American Songbook ideal, or perhaps even new song forms?" Described by the New York Times as "a soprano of extraordinary agility and concentration," Mary Mackenzie has captured the attention of audiences throughout the United States. A passionate performer of contemporary vocal music, Ms. Mackenzie has collaborated with several leading composers, including Pierre Boulez, John Harbison, and Richard Danielpour, among others. When she was asked by the composer to perform some "new songs," she wasn't expecting to receive hand written sheet music with a cover page listing "Pop Songs." She discovered exquisite tunes that were not unlike the jazz standards of her grandparents' generation. This recording fulfills a long-time dream of sharing the ensemble's interpretations with the world.

The Albany Symphony conducted by David Alan Miller offers a recording of major works by the illustrious American composer John Harbison. The Great Gatsby Suite comes from Harbison's opera and concentrates on the instrumental music. Darkbloom: Overture for an imagined opera comes from material for an opera project that Harbison decided not to continue. The newest work on the recording, Closer to My Own Life, uses texts extracted from stories written by Alice Munroe, Harbison's favorite prose writer. Acclaimed soprano Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie joins Maestro Miller and the Albany Symphony for this work.

The featured work on this recording, Ansel Adams: America, was originally an orchestral piece co-composed by Dave Brubeck and his son Chris. The piano version was derived both from Dave Brubeck's original piano score as well as the finished orchestral score. Pianist John Salmon, a long-time champion of Dave Brubeck's music as well as his friend, offers the world premiere recording of this work. In Chris Brubeck's words, his father had a friend in John Salmon "with the breadth of knowledge and skill in both classical literature and jazz to take on my father's piano music. John's exquisite and spirited playing brought my father so much pleasure over the length of a long and rich relationship that lasted decades." On the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Salmon has distinguished himself on four continents as a performer, lecturer and educator.