Catalog

This recording of brass and organ music by the noted American composer Larry Bell features Chris Gekker, trumpet, the Cambridge Symphonic Brass Ensemble and Richard Bunbury, organ. Recognized by The Chicago Tribune as "a major talent," Bell has been awarded the Rome Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and the Charles Ives award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among many others. His music has been commissioned and performed by a distinguished array of performers and has been the subject of documentaries on National Public Radio and Radio Amsterdam.

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.

Rhythmic vitality, lyricism, a fascination with folksong and virtuosity, and a distinctive American voice are traits that unite the four works on this recording performed by Leonard Garrison on flute and piccolo. Garrison, assistant professor of flute at the University of Idaho is the flutist for the Northwest Wind Quintet and principal flute of the Walla Walla Symphony. He has been flutist in the Chicago Symphony and the Tulsa Philharmonic, soloist on NPR's Performance Today and winner of the 2003 Byron Hester Competition. A graduate of Oberlin and SUNY-Stony Brook, Garrison received his DMA from Northwestern University.

Stephen Parsons, professor of trombone and director of the School of Music at Illinois State University, has assembled a collection of works for trombone from the 20th century. With French, Dutch, American and Danish composers, the recording showcases some of the best music written for trombone and is a beautifully performed concert program featuring a number of world premiere recordings.

Jack Beeson's musical background resembles those of many another contemporary composer but his storyline diverges from the expected mid-century composer-in-formation's path when he chose to study in New York City with Bela Bartok rather than go to France to work with Nadia Boulanger. His loyalty to Columbia University, where he has worked for more than 63 years, again, breaks the mold. Few of his colleagues can boast of such singular interweaving of individual creativity and organizational fealty. Widely known as he is for his operas, Beeson is no slouch in other areas of vocal music. In addition to his ten operas, he has written many songs and a good number of choral works, seven of which are featured on this recording. The individuality that marks his creative output is evident, showing itself in his selection of texts.

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.

This program grew out of Stephen Swanson's frustration with the coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom and with his son's decision to enlist. He and his wife began researching song dealing with war and formulated a program of songs about the individuals involved in America's historic military conflicts, their friends and their families. The primary consideration was the texts rather than the settings. The fervent nationalistic patriotism of World War I; the intimate personal glimpses in to World War II; the satirical songs from the Cold War; the Vietnam-era protest songs; the setting of Abraham Lincoln's letter to a mother who lost five sons Ñ all demonstrate the conflict between the need to fight and the horrific losses war imposes.

"I have had a life-long love affair with the borough of my birth -- Manhattan -- in the city of New York. Here many of my friends live, and here the compositions on this CD originate. Each piece tells its own story." Ms. Silverman holds a BA from Barnard College, an AM from Harvard and a DMA from Columbia. Currently on the faculty of Mannes College The New School for Music, she is a founding member of Music Under Construction and the International Women's Brass Conference. She is the recipient of many awards and commissions and her music has been performed by the Baltimore Symphony and the Brooklyn Philharmonic among many other orchestras and chamber ensembles.

The extraordinary tuba player Timothy Buzbee has put together a unique program of music by American and Swedish composers that reflects his eclectic interests and passions. His phenomenal technique and command of the instrument have won him principal tuba positions with a number of orchestras and he has recorded more than 20 CDs. A native of Texas, he has been a featured soloist with the Singapore Symphony, Acapulco Philharmonic and other orchestras and has performed throughout North American and Asia with several different brass quintets and brass ensemble.

The distinguished composer Carson Cooman writes,"The works on this disc date from an eleven year period (1997-2008) and were chosen to create an interrelated program of songs and piano pieces. As a composer who has always believed strongly in the need and importance of music for all purposes and the value of new music in everyday life, these small pieces are something I take every bit as seriously as writing a large-scale concerto or symphony. The overall intent is a life-affirming celebration of the American experience: emotional, physical, and natural." Cooman (b.1982) has an extensive catalogue of works in many forms, ranging from solo instrumental pieces to operas, and from orchestral works to hymn tunes. He is in continual demand for new commissions and his music has been performed on all six inhabited continents.

For all the differences among them, Joaquín Turina, Alexandre Tansman, and Carlos Surinach were alike in one regard: each was sympathetic to making his music an affirmation of his cultural heritage. At the same time, their lives spanned a period when modernism was sweeping away the romantic tenets that had upheld 19th-century nationalism. Hence, each came to fashion a distinctive amalgam of nationalist tendencies and newly emergent techniques and modes of thought. Given beautiful performances by the Ames Piano Quartet, the recording ends with a work by Astor Piazzolla that was written as part of the incidental music for a play by Alberto Rodriguez Muñoz.

Marthanne Verbit writes, "Long before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2001, I began to think about what role a musician might play in the environmental struggle our planet faces. In choosing to make a recording of five piano works from 1997 to 2007, this may be fiddling while Rome burns. However, it can do no harm to share these very personal musical visions of what is endangered, what is now lost, what needs to be celebrated or preserved, and it may give some pleasure." The noted environmentalist William deBuys, who provides an eloquent essay for the booklet says, "...Each piece tells its own deeply felt, inspired story, each in the language of solo piano, which itself is an endangered form..."

Calvert Johnson has put together a varied and fascinating program of music by Japanese and Chinese composers for harpsichord and organ. Johnson is Professor of Music and College Organist at Agnes Scott College. He is also organist at the First Presbyterian Church in Marietta, Georgia. Johnson earned the master's and doctorate in organ performance at Northwestern University and studied at the Toulouse Conservatoire where he was awarded the Premier Prix. He has performed throughout the U.S., Japan, England, Italy, France, Monaco, Switzerland and Germany. His extensive interests and expertise include books on early Spanish, Italian and English organ music and modern editions of works by women composers.

The joy we feel in anticipating the sun's return after the winter solstice is greatly magnified by the spiritual light that comes with Christmas. This recording, Christmas Joy in Latvia, is a collection of new musical works to enrich the season's array of colors. The essence of the CD is expressed by its title: it highlights age-old values in a contemporary fashion. The old world and its traditions change with each new year.

Drifts and Shadows: American Song for the New Millennium beckons us to an exhilarating journey--via these stimulating songs of integrity, substance and passion. Baritone Elem Eley has worked with each of the six composers. Their compositional styles range from aggressive, hyper-kinetic, and jazzy to compellingly melodious and richly harmonized. Eley enjoys an amazingly varied career, from opera, oratorio and recital to premieres of contemporary vocal works. A native of Georgia, he hold degrees in voice from Baylor University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and completed doctoral coursework at Indiana University. He is Professor of Voice at Westminster Choir College of Rider University.

This memorial disc of solos and duos by Andrew Welsh Imbrie (1921-2007) and one of his most distinguished pupils, Hi Kyung Kim (b.1954), boasts performances largely by the musicians who commissioned and premiered them. Two of Imbrie's last pieces, To My Son and Melody for Gayageum, written while he was fighting with his illness are included on this disc. Imbrie first studied with pianist-composer Leo Ornstein between 1930 and 1942, with an eye to becoming a virtuoso pianist as well as a composer. He spent most of World War II in the Army Signal Corps. He studied with Roger Sessions at Princeton and then at the University of California, Berkley. He was appointed professor of music at UC Berkeley in 1949, a post he held until he retired in 1991.

Craig Walsh, born in New Jersey in 1971, is a composer on the rise, widely performed across North America and Europe. He is also a composer plugged into new media while simultaneously writing music for traditional acoustic instruments. He is associate professor at the University of Arizona and has received numerous awards and fellowships. The works on this recording represent more than a decade of Walsh's acoustic chamber music. This is bold, compelling music with a distinctive voice that draws the listener in. Walsh has a knack for instrumental combinations that pack a great deal of information into textures that are spare yet timbrally rich. His music is well conceived while pushing the boundaries of performance techniques.

All of the pieces on this recording tell a story in one way or another. Some are narrative while others are programmatic or cinematic. Visual imagery, both imaginative and concrete is also part of the fabric of these works. These two elements have been part of several of Raymond Wojcik's works written throughout his creative life and they are brought together here for his second recording with Albany Records. Composer, conductor, and educator Raymond Wojcik received degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver and has served as conductor of the Garden State Philharmonic and the Brunswick Symphony. David Schiff, composer and writer notes: "At a time of technical gimmicks and stylistic uncertainty, Raymond Wojcik writes music from the heart that speaks directly to an audience in a distinctive voice."

The works on this recording span 25 years -- from the Sonata for Cello (1982) to unaccompanied minor (2007). Joel Hoffman comments that, "Like so many composers of my generation, I have worked, over these years, with a number of stylistic dialects -- from a hybrid serialism to a tonal/pan-tonal mix to a folk-inspired modal work to a post-minimalist framework. While I'm arguably the least qualified to describe the threads of continuity...I do observe two persistent qualities...a pervading lyricism and a rhythmic vitality." Hoffman is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, where he is also Artistic Director of its annual new music festival, MusicX.

José Luis Greco's premiere recording of works for strings and piano is a stunningly beautiful illustration of what can be achieved when one's personal philosophy of life is translated into sound. Indeed, what may not be known about the New York-born, Madrid based composer (whose musical output encompasses works for theatre and ballet, piano, orchestra, voice, and opera) is how much his philosophy, largely influenced by the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, inspires his compositions. Dark Love in Wonderland may be heard as a metaphor for how we experience our world within the totality of its contradictions. Greco is a member of the Royal Spanish American Academy of Science, Arts and Letters and his music has been performed all over the world.

What more could an advocate for American music want? This recording combines neglected works by well-known masters (Roy Harris' Symphony No. 11 and Gould's Cowboy Rhapsody) with masterful works by composers whose names may be unfamiliar (Douglas Moore's and Cecil Effinger's Symphonies). World premiere recordings that taken together make up as fresh, finely balanced and excitingly diverse a concert program as one could wish.

The works from On Course represent a broad cross section of sonic and stylistic moments created over an almost 24 year period by composer Laurie Altman. The generative links between all the pieces seem to be an overarching lyrical sentiment coupled with the interplay of animation, dance and drama. Laurie Altman attended Mannes, studying with Lester Trimble and William Sydeman. Influences abound with Altman: The Village Vanguard (Bill Evans), the Five Spot (Monk and Trane); the Chicago Symphony, jazz performances at The Blue Note and Soundscape -- a joining of classical and jazz.

Lansing McLoskey (b.1964) came to the world of composition via a somewhat unorthodox route. The proverbial "Three B's" for him were The Beatles, Bauhaus and Black Flag. His first experiences in composition were as a guitarist and songwriter for punk rock bands in the Bay Area in the early 1980s. It was through these years in the visceral world of punk that he first developed a love for classical music. Hailed as "one of the best composers of (his) generation," McLoskey has had his music performed to critical acclaim across the U.S. and in 12 other countries on five continents. His music has an emotional intensity that appeals to academic and amateur alike, defying traditional stylistic pigeonholes.

The virtuoso pianist Pedja Muzijevic was turned on to the music of John Cage by dancers. As he explains, "Mikhail Baryshnikov introduced me to the ethereal In a Landscape and we subsequently used it in our "Solos with Piano or not..." program. Then Trisha Brown choreographed a few of the Sonatas and Interludes and asked me to play them with her company... I promptly fell in love with the strange and interesting world of Sonatas and Interludes and started thinking that it would be wonderful to expose them to a variety of other music... Rest assured this program has no underlining story, title or deep meaning... Putting dried figs in a pork stew doesn't make any sense... It does taste good though!"

Lecolion Washington, Jr., a faculty member at the University of Memphis, has put together an intriguing mix of works for bassoon by African-American composers. Ranging from William Grant Still, who was born in 1895 to Daniel Bernard Roumain, born in 1970, the collection offers a concise history of African-Americans composers who have concentrated on classical music. Altogether a beautifully performed concert program of music for bassoon.

Edmund Campion completed his doctoral work at Columbia University with Mario Davidovsky before attending the Paris Conservatory to study composition with Gérard Grissey. He has explained his approach to composition in an interview with the Computer Music Journal: "Emerging technologies have been the generative source for most of my musical explorations...There is nothing new here. For Chopin, it was the modern piano, and for Schaeffer, it was the tape recorder. Finally, there is no distinction between acoustic sound, natural sound, or electronic sound. Everything is integrated with the full spectrum of all possibly sounds...I hope I am coming full circle, back to the essential musical material, it music that is made just for hearing."

Highlighting this recording of vocal works by Harold Blumenfeld is his half-hour Baudelaire cycle for orchestra with baritone and mezzo coloratura, Vers Satanique, in a world premiere recording. The work was long in evolving, beginning life scored for three voices and instrumental ensemble. It was not until numerous reworkings that Blumenfeld was fully satisfied with the version you hear so magnificently performed. Harold Blumenfeld is a composer given to language, opera and the human voice as this recording so dramatically demonstrates.

The songs heard on this recording are the outgrowth of several recital projects by Valerie Errante and Jeffry Peterson. Both artists are professors of music at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and have collaborated with all of the composers whose works are represented. Richard Faith (b.1926) was professor of piano at the University of Arizona in Tucson until his retirement in 1988. John Downey, who died in 2004 was on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Henry Mollicone is a graduate of the New England Conservatory and is currently teaching at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont. Yehuda Yannay is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is the creator of more than 100 works for virtually all musical media. Stephen Paulus is one of America's most prolific and accomplished composers, with more than 200 works to his credit.

The exceptional clarinetist Sean Osborn gives magnificent performances of these staples of the chamber music repertoire. Sean Osborn has traveled Europe and the US as a soloist and chamber musician, and traveled the world during his 11 years with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He has also performed as guest principal clarinet with the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and the American Symphony Orchestra. Recently appointed Clarinet Teacher at the University of Washington, Sean is currently based in Seattle, composing, teaching, and touring.

The moods of the works on this survey of Eleanor Cory's chamber music range from serious introspection (Three Songs) to playful exuberance (Chasing Time). Beginning to be recognized as a major force in contemporary music, Ms. Cory has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund and the Fromm Foundation, among many others. Her music is performed by orchestras and ensembles ranging from the Gregg Smith Singers to the New Jersey Symphony to Earplay. Ms. Cory is on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music Prep Division and Kingsborough Community College.

Argentinian-born Désirée Halac presents a beautifully performed recital of songs by Carlos Guastavino. The obituary written for The Guardian called Guastavino the most quietly distinctive voice in 20th century Argentinian music. His distillation of local folk elements into an avowedly romantic-nationalist idiom was unique and markedly different from his colleagues. Guastavino wrote some 300 works, more than half of them the delightful songs, often winsome or tinged with sadness, on which his reputation rests.

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.