Catalog

The music on this disc came to be out of a unique collaboration between three artists spanning three generations: José Limon, Jon Magnussen and Carla Maxwell, the artistic director for the Limón Dance Company. After Limón's death, the ballet Winged was revived. There was a need for a new score and Magnussen was chosen from a pool of graduate students at Juilliard to write the music. Because that collaboration proved so successful, Carla Maxwell asked Magnussen to write a new score for Psalm when she revived the dance.

Have you noticed how some of the most interesting new guitar music is coming from Europe? Here's what Volkmar Zimmermann has to say: "Our first contact with Jonas Tamulionis harks back to 1997. As always, I was on the lookout for new and exciting works for guitar quartet. As it came to pass, I received a letter from the Lithuanian Music Information Centre telling us about a composer hitherto unknown to us, a composer who we eventually came to discover possesses a loving heart for the guitar... It was truly a delight for us in 1998 when Jonas wrote his guitar quartet, Per Suonare a Quattro, which serves as the ticket for our journey, a serpentine path leading to (this) CD...we sincerely hope you will enjoy the music created by this eminent Lithuanian composer as much as we do." Needless to say, guitarists will want to snap this one up, and listeners who enjoy the music of East Europe will be intrigued as well! More information on the composer and performers is available at the following websites:

These five works for cello by noted Cuban-American composer Jorge Martín were written between 1997 and 2010 -- most of them having some association with his vocal music. Martín studied at Yale and Columbia University and has received awards and grants from a number of prestigious institutions including the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Cintas Foundation, among others. Cellist Yehuda Hanani has performed with such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra and is a guest at many international festivals. His pioneering recording of the monumental Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination. A soloist, chamber musician, recitalist and teacher, Mr. Hanani also has a weekly broadcast called Classical Music According to Yehuda.

The people who remember Joseph Fennimore's piano playing in the late 1960s and early 1970s still talk about it with admiring astonishment. "A pianist of talent and temperament," declared the New York Times after Fennimore's 1967 New York City debut. "He was wonderful," echoed the Washington Post a few years later, "a rarity in an age of fine pianists." Still another reviewer summed up his review thus: "Joseph Fennimore is the name. If the concert managers, booking agents and the public have any sense at all you will be hearing more of it." To anyone familiar with Fennimore's musical personality and the subsequent development of his career, reading such statements gives a twinge. In 1974, with what looked like a career of enormous promise ahead, he gave a farewell recital in New York; apart from a couple of appearances as an accompanist, he hasn't played in public since. Born in New York City on April 16, 1940,.Fennimore grew up in the upstate towns of Ballston Spa and Scotia. He began piano study at six and at 13 made his first appearance with an orchestra. He continued his studies at the Eastman School of Music, where he was a piano student of Cecile Genhart. At the Juilliard School, where he subsequently received a master's degree, his teacher was Rosina Lhevinne. What has struck many who have heard Fennimore's playing - quite aside from the obvious brilliance and expressiveness - has been its remarkable spontaneity. It is music-making utterly uninhibited by academicism, though that statement implies no lack of intellectual content. Rare, in fact, is a musician so widely read, so intellectually probing, so articulate as Fennimore.

It's been a while, but here is a third recital by Joseph Fennimore, who lives only a short distance from us in Albany. Born in 1940 in New York City, Fennimore graduated with honors from both the Eastman and Juilliard Schools. While teaching piano at Princeton and working in the theatre (he was substitute assistant conductor for the Broadway revival of No, No, Nanette), he co-founded with Gordon Hibberd the Hear America First concert series in New York City devoted to American music, programs eventually broadcast on NPR. Moving to Albany in 1980 to care for his parents, Fennimore taught at the College of St. Rose and still teaches privately. Composing since childhood, his catalog includes orchestral works, operas, songs, and solo works. Earlier, he had a short-lived and critically-acclaimed career as a pianist and still has a strong following for his attractively eclectic programming (when was the last time you heard solo piano pieces by Gibbons?) Previous releases in this series are on TROY102 (Volume 1: music of Liadov, Schumann, Scriabin, Gluck/Sgambati, Griffes) and TROY161 (Volume 2: music of Granados, Fennimore, Brahms, Bach and Chopin). In addition, you can sample more of his own music on TROY065 (Chamber works) and TROY113 (Selected piano music, including the delightful Concerto Piccolo for piano and chamber orchestra).

Albany Records celebrates composer Joseph Fennimore's 75th anniversary with the release of this two-cd set of his 24 Romances and other select works. Born in 1940, Fennimore is known not only for his compositions, but also as an extraordinary pianist and teacher. He is best known for his works for piano and chamber ensembles. The Romances were not written as a set, but rather composed over a span of 30 years, from age 43 to 73, amidst a prolific, hugely creative career. The Romances grew from ideas that periodically arose, took hold, took shape, and suited the general idea of a Romance: a short, imaginative piano work. Also included on this 2-CD set are his Fifth Sonata for Piano; Passacalle; Sonatinella; and Three Pieces for Piano. Jeffrey Middleton, long a champion of Fennimore's piano music, graduated from Juilliard and received his doctorate from Yale. His career has included chamber music, vocal coaching and accompanying, solo performances, and teaching. Middleton is on the faculty of the School of American Ballet, and was the 2010 recipient of the Mae Wien Award for distinguished faculty service.

This recording celebrates and commemorates 60 years of the deepest friendship between pianists Joseph Fennimore and Gordon Hibberd, with 16 four-hand waltzes performed by both as well as sonatas performed by composer/pianist Joseph Fennimore. The waltz recordings were made during the 1990s on three different occasions at three different locations and the Sonatas and Sonatinas during the 1960s. Both Fennimore and Hibberd received degrees from Eastman. They lived in New York City pursuing their careers until the 1980s when they relocated to New York's Capital District. This will be the 10th recording released by Albany Records of the music of Joseph Fennimore whose music has been called " a disarming mix of spare lyricism, poignancy and gently nose thumbing irreverence "

At Albany Records we believe in the talent of Joseph Fennimore, both as composer and a superb pianist. The piano recital on this disc is wonderful, but as an added bonus, this album has program notes, composed by Mr. Fennimore: "Food, Lies and Audiotape," which are very funny indeed. Here is a taste of his writing. "Most pianists' bios are depressingly similar. Pre-natal study, debut at two, the Shangri-La of conservatories, a list of competition triumphs, galactic appearances, carefully selected blurbs all calculated to imply the subject will become a household name any moment now. Just waiting for that lucky break. An American myth. Things don't work that way anymore, if they ever did. Who wants to be a household name anyway? Not me. I want to be a special thing for a special few - a few more that is." Fennimore then goes on to tell how he was unable to get along with people in the business of music. However, he was able to get along with the people at Albany Records. For us his music is special: to be enjoyed. Other Fennimore titles include TROY102 (Fennimore in Concert I), TROY023 (Selected Vocal Works), TROY065 (Chamber Music) and TROY113 (Selected Piano Music.)

The 11 Capricci by Joseph Marie dall'Abaco (1710-1805) are quickly becoming a staple in the canon of solo cello repertoire. Born in Brussels, the composer and cellist was present and active in many of the major musical centers of 18th century Europe. This recording represents the first American contribution with a modern instrument. Cellist Erin Ellis leads a versatile career as a performer and teacher. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician across the United States as well as in Canada, Chile, Italy, and Holland. A cello professor at West Virginia University, Ellis has conducted masterclasses and workshops at many nationally recognized institutions and regularly presents at state, regional, and national conferences. She is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Eastman School of Music.

Joseph Summer is familiar to audiences both as a composer and as the founder/director of The Shakespeare Concerts. Summer's oeuvre includes eight operas, chamber opera, cantatas, more than 100 vocal works, string quartets and many works for chamber ensembles. He studied at Oberlin and Carnegie Mellon University. This is the sixth recording of his music for Albany Records. The Ulysses Quartet was founded in 2015 and won a gold medal at the 2016 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and first prize in the 2018 Schoenfeld International String Competition. They have performed around the world to critical acclaim and advocate for music by underrepresented composers.

This string quartet by noted American composer Joseph Summer is a musical interpretation of the named stories of the preeminent 20th century fabulist, Jorge Luis Borges. Born in 1956, Joseph Summer studied at Oberlin and was on the faculty at Carnegie-Mellon. Summer has written four comic operas based on the stories of The Decameron. These operas are part of a planned seven opera cycle, which follows the exploits of a half dozen characters over the course of a week in an imagined 14th century Naples. Founder of The Shakespeare Concerts, Summer's music inspired by Shakespeare appears on three previously released recordings on Albany Records.

Composer Joseph Summer, who has been fascinated with Shakespeare for most of his life, has composed The Tempest, using a libretto written by his daughter, Eve Summer. Summer is founder and executive director of The Shakespeare Concerts, which presents recitals and recordings of music inspired by the immortal bard. Summer comments that "Everything that Shakespeare limned in The Tempest is about the life of my family, in fine detail. It's not as if incidents of The Tempest make brief appearances, or indeed, happen only once. The plot elements embrace us repeatedly." He goes on to relate his family's banishment from Tennessee; sojourns on desert islands; and being adrift in the Indian Ocean.

Tim Adams and Bill Banfield write, "This project was for us, two musician friends, a chance to make music together in the most organic way. Our first work was a collaboration with Bill composing a percussion concerto for Tim to play with the Indianapolis Symphony in 1996. But music with no boundaries, playing ideas based on initial reactions to what we heard, that seemed like music headed in the right direction. The other thing was the relationship of the various percussion instruments with the guitar. Here, percussion has a role equal to a solo voice, used thematically as well as harmonically. The guitar acts equally as harmonic, thematic and rhythmic accompaniment for the drums. This is interactive music. The conception of this recording was that we would base the music on the impulse of the percussion ideas, just like a master drummer informs an ensemble... By listening to this CD we hope you are able to stretch and listen to this music in some non-traditional ways and be able to enjoy the music, the creative process, the friendship and joy of making music as we do." You'll no doubt recognize William Banfield not only from his solo albums but from his symphonic works performed and recorded by many labels over the years. Tim Adams is heralded as one of the most dynamic and versatile percussionists today. He is professor of percussion at Carnegie-Mellon University and a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Two British composers and one American -- and all three are of great distinction. Alwyn was equally at home writing some of the most memorable film scores for the British cinema (particularly "Odd Man Out," [1946]) and composing a series of beautiful Symphonies along with chamber music. Constant Lambert, in his short life, gained renown as one of the most gifted British conductors, but composed a wealth of colorful music, including the Suite featured here drawn from one of his last ballets. Gunther Schuller is not only famed for his musicology but his ability to cross over from jazz to classical and back. He helped create the jazz-classical hybrid known as "third stream" over 50 years ago. This collection is another outstanding example of the imagination and musicianship of the DePaul University Winds and their ongoing series for Albany.

Commissioned by acclaimed cellist Jonathan Miller, this digital only recording of Judith Weir's Three Chorales for cello and piano is a world premiere. Weir is a London-based composer of Scottish ancestry who occupies a central position in the UK's most august musical circles. Of the Three Chorales, Weir sasy that these three pieces for cello and piano are meditations—personal, secular and musical—on images from religious poetry. Jonathan Miller is a member of hte Boston Symphony Orchestra and has performed as soloist with numerous orchestras including the Boston Pops and Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He is the founder and artistic director of the Boston Artists Ensemble. He is joined on this recording by pianist Randall Hodgkinson, who has an international career as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician.

This recording of transcriptions for tuba and euphonium, arranged and performed by Chris Dickey also includes a work for tuba and piano by American composer James Grant. Covering a variety of style periods and musical language, these works should be welcome additions to the tuba and euphonium literature. Chris Dickey is on the faculty of Washington State University, the University of Idaho and the Red Lodge Music Festival. Active in the tuba-euphonium community, he serves on the board of directors for the International Tuba-Euphonium Association. He has been a featured artist at brass festivals in Argentina and Uruguay and maintains an active performance schedule with orchestras, brass bands, and universities throughout the U.S. He is joined for this recording by pianist Karen Savage, associate professor of piano at Washington State University.

Albany is proud to present another, truly unique recording by horn player Eric Ruske. His previous albums for horn with piano or orchestral accompaniment (TROY456, 615, 782) have been among best sellers among horn aficionados and players alike. This release presents Ruske strictly solo, with a wonderful blend of familiar and unusual works, particularly the colorful Persichetti and Ketting compositions. At the age of 20, Ruske was named Associate Principal Horn of the Cleveland Orchestra. 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'Interpretation Musicale in Reims, France. An active chamber musician, he has appeared with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the Moab Music Festival, the Newport Music Festival and the Spoleto Festival, just to name a few. An Associate Professor and member of the faculty of Boston University since 1990, Mr. Ruske also directs the Horn Seminar at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.

Justin Hellman came back to composing classical music on his 41st birthday. He started his involvement in music as a teenager by performing electric bass and writing songs. From there he moved to studying the acoustic bass and began focusing more on jazz. His jazz quartet performed regularly in the Bay Area and one of his compositions was featured on an episode of The Good Wife. He went back to school to pursue a medical degree, training in oculoplastic surgery. Garden of the Gods is Hellman’s first classical album. The Friction Quartet is known for its commissioning of new works, curating imaginative programs, collaborating with artists, and presenting interactive educational outreach. Since their formation in 2011, Friction has given world premiere performances of more than 80 works. Their performances appear on National Sawdust Tracks, Innova, Albany, and Pinna Records.

The Ohio Light Opera performs Emmerich Kálmán's delightful three-act operetta in a new English performance. Written by Kálmán in 1915 and called Miss Susie, producers from Broadway secured the first international rights. In 1916, with English lyrics by novelist P.G. Wodehouse, the show opened at the New Amsterdam Theater as Miss Springtime and ran for 227 performances. Spurred by this success, Kálmán sought a German language libretto to adapt Miss Susie for Vienna, where it opened in 1917 and was called The Carnival Fairy. Subsequently mounted in Berlin with significant rewrites by Kálmán, this version in a new English translation is the one used for the Ohio Light Opera production.

Kamran Ince is rapidly emerging as one of today's most exciting and original young composers. He was born in Montana to American and Turkish parents. His early musical training was in Turkey at the Ankara and Izmir conservatories. Later he attended the Oberlin Conservatory and the Eastman School of Music, where he earned a Doctorate. Among his teachers were Christopher Rouse and Joseph Schwantner. He is currently a member of the music faculty at the University of Memphis. About Fantasie of a Sudden Turtle the composer writes: "First of all the title has nothing to do with ninja turtles. The contradiction between sudden and turtle is a reflection of my love for contrast and also represents this particular turtle's desire to do a lot of things it cannot. The work consists of a sequence of fantasies, dreams that a turtle might have." About Kac! (Escape from "A") Ince writes: "Kac has the meaning in Turkish of How many? or Escape. The work contains extreme contrasts with sections ranging from complete stasis to raw, savage activity." And finally about Kocekce Ince writes: "Kocekce is the name of a folk dance found in the Black Sea region of Turkey. The music is always very fast with constant irregular meters. It is usually played by the Kemence, a string instrument similar in size to a small violin."

Composer Kamran Ince's father was Turkish and his mother is American. He grew up partly in each country and now splits time between Memphis, Tennessee where he is on the faculty at the University of Memphis and Istanbul, where he teaches at Istanbul Technical University. Ince is first and foremost a composer in the Western classical tradition, but he is not bound by that tradition. He is also well versed in Ottoman classical music and grounded in Turkish culture. In ways sometimes explicit and sometimes subtle, his music reflects that dual heritage. The many musicians Ince gathered to record the varied chamber pieces on this recording have in common not only the big technique his music requires, but also the wildness and intensity it demands. They are Ince's triumphant champions, and he is their inspiration.

The opera Judgment of Midas was commissioned by Crawford Greenewalt, Jr. to mark the 50th anniversary of the Sardis excavations in Turkey. Composer Kamran Ince took two stories, inspired by a tale from Ovid's Metamorphoses, as the basis for the opera. The stories interweave around the ancient city of Sardis and a mythic music contest said to have happened there. Turkish/American composer Kamran Ince's music bridges Anatolia and the Balkans to the West. The energy and rawness of Turkish and Balkan folk music, the spirituality of Byzantium and Ottoman court music, the tradition of European art music and the extrovert and popular qualities in the American psyche are the base of his sound world. Acknowledged as one of America's best composers, Ince is Professor of Composition at the University of Memphis and at MIAM Center for Advanced Research in Music in Istanbul. His numerous prizes include the Rome Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Boulanger Prize and the Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His extensive discography appears on Warner Classics, Naxos, Innova, Argo/Decca, and Albany Records.

John Schlenck was born in Indianapolis. At age 21, he graduated from the Eastman School of Music with a major in composition and moved to New York City. There, he soon discovered his affinity with Indian thought and joined the Vedanta Society of New York. Serving as its music director since 1961, Schlenck has composed many songs and a number of larger works with Vedantic and other spiritual texts. His instrumental works include three symphonies, a piano concerto, and numerous chamber and solo compositions. After traveling the length and breadth of India for three years as a mendicant friar, Swami Vivekananda arrived at Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of the country, in late December, 1892. This place of pilgrimage contains a temple to Goddess Kanyakumari, an aspect of the Universal Mother. About a quarter mile from shore, twin rocks jut out from the sea. After worshipping at Mother's temple, Vivekananda swam through the turbulent, shark-infested waters to the farther of the two rocks. He remained there for three days and nights on the solitary rock, meditating intensely on the condition of India - her present degradation, the misery of her people, her past glory and future potentialities. The composer writes: "in the winter of 1981-82, I spent three months in India, visiting many of the places where Vivekananda had stayed, meditated and taught. A high point was my visit to Kanyakumari. I was profoundly moved by the drama and pathos of Vivekananda's tour through India, by his compassion for the suffering people and by the nobility of his vision." It was from the recollections of this trip that the music on this CD was composed.

Armenian composer Sirvart Kalpakian Karamanuk was born in Istanbul in 1912. She studied at the Istanbul Municipal Conservatory, graduating in 1939. Her first compositions, written in the 1940s, were for the piano. She gradually broadened her musical interests, composing numerous art songs, choral works, large-scale compositions for chorus and orchestra as well as chamber works and arrangements of liturgical chants. Like many composers of the Armenian diaspora, Karamanuk's creative concerns focus on maintaining a link with Armenian church music and folk song and absorbing the classical traditions of Armenian culture. In molding her own musical language, Karamanuk borrows from Armenian oral tradition. This recording of her songs includes a cantata and was the first large-scale setting of poems by Armenian poet Bedros Turian.

Cary Ratcliff, a native of California, studied composition and piano at the Eastman School of Music. He says in his notes that, "Accompanying in the voice studio of the late Jan DeGaetani exposed me to depth of interpretation and commitment to the artsong tradition that plays in my head whenever I write songs....Composed over the years for many singers and occasions, my solo songs vary widely, but Katie [Kathryn Lewek] has taken on the lion's share of them and unified them under her wide-ranging and vibrant artistry."

This is the first major release devoted to the African-American composer Ulysses Kay. Encouraged by William Grant Still, he would study under Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson at Eastman, and his works are distinctively American in spirit and strength. Of special interest is his music to The Quiet One, one of the first major film scores by a Black composer.

Esteemed composer Bernard Hoffer's eighth recording for Albany Records features three works for piano — one with string; another with French horn and violin; and the third with two trumpets. Hoffer is known not only for his chamber and orchestral music but also for music written for films, television, and commercials. He scored the hit children's cartoon series Thundercats and the theme for the PBS News Hour. Winner of the First Prize at the New York International Artists Association Piano Competition and the Silver Award at the Paris International Competition, pianist Kayoung An made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2013. She has performed with orchestras both in the United States and abroad. On the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, Ms. An studied at the Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, Colburn Conservatory, and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her collaborators include conductor David Gilbert, violinist Kurt Nikkanen, horn player Dan Wions, and Gil Hoffer and Christian Hinkle, trumpets.

Originally from Texas, Turner has resided in Luxembourg for more than 25 years. He is a member of the world-famous American Horn Quartet and a member of the Luxembourg Philharmonic. Turner has been composing since the age of 10. His principal successes as a composer have been in the chamber music genre, more specifically for brass. The works recorded here were all composed by Kerry Turner in the mid-1990s and represent four of his major works Ñ in gorgeous surround sound.

With the exception of far sight sun light, the compositions on this recording of music by Ketty Nez take their inspiration from East European folk sources, including an Anatolian Turkish folk song and Bartok's transcriptions of Rumanian folk tunes. Ketty Nez is on the faculty at the Boston University School of Music and was a guest teacher at the Liszt Academy in Budapest and has had residencies at the Ecole Nationale de Musique in Montbeliard, at CCRMA, and at the Institute de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique. Her music has been performed in Europe, North America, and Asia. She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, the Eastman School of Music, the Curtis Institute of Music, and Bryn Mawr College.

Composer/pianist Ketty Nez joined the composition and theory department at the Boston University School of Music in the fall of 2005. Ms. Nez completed a residence of several months at the École Nationale de Musique in Montbéliard, France, prior to the premiere of her chamber opera An Opera in Devolution: Drama in 540 Seconds, at the 2003 Seventh Festival Avantgarde in Munich. She comments: "The five recent chamber works on this recording, Postcards from the 1930's, timed curves, between, before, and wind down ii, were written for myself to play, and were composed after moving to Boston in 2005 to start teaching at Boston University while the most recent work on this recording, and marking a departure of sorts, Postcards from the 1930's was the byproduct of my everlasting curiosity for the sounds and rhythms of my own ethnic backgrounds, a mixture of Slovenian and Slavic Macedonian.

Tim Page tells Kevin Oldham's tragic story in the notes for this disc. "When I look back upon the mid-eighties and my apprentice years as music critic for The New York Times, it sometimes seems that I did only two things: cover debut concerts and write AIDS obituaries - alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, over and over again...Kevin Oldham was one of my debuts  a handsome, vibrant, self-assured and splendidly virtuosic young pianist who played his first New York recital at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1985. Eight years later, he too would die from AIDS and I would write his obituary. But by then, he had become a composer, one who had fought a desperate battle to leave the world some fresh and lovely music...He died on March 11, 1993. In the case of Kevin Oldham, AIDS ended the life of a gifted composer who was just getting started. We'll never know what he might have created. We regret the music that will never be, and we mourn for Kevin  a brave, funny, smart, articulate and compassionate man. But, through Kevin's own Herculean efforts, something has been saved. You hold the proof in your hands."f

Lettie Beckon Alston was born in Detroit, Michigan. She now resides in Michigan and is Associate Professor of Music at Oakland University. At the age of 15 she began piano lessons. She went to Wayne State University where she studied piano and composition. She graduated with her bachelor and masters degrees. She was the first African-American composer to obtain a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan, where she studied composition with Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom and Eugene Kurzt. She also continued to study the piano and took courses in electronic music. Dr. Alston went on to teach at Wayne State University in 1983, the Detroit Public School in 1986, Oakland University as a Visiting Assistant Professor in 1987 and Eastern Michigan University in 1988. She returned to Oakland in 1991. This recording is entitled "Keyboard Maniac" because of the excitement electronics bring to Art Music, and Lettie Alston says, "as a composer, pianist and organist writing for the piano and electronic medium has been a spiritual awakening for me."