Catalog

Lucas Richman has always considered the piano an integral part of his life. He considers his music for solo piano a creative extension of himself as an individual. The works here are piano adaptations of orchestral or chamber works but they all share the common genesis point of having evolved from sketches made originally at the piano. In addition to composing, Richman is a noted conductor and currently serves as music director of the Bangor Symphony and was formerly music director of the Knoxville Symphony. His music has been performed by more than 200 orchestras across the U.S. and he has received numerous commissions from orchestras and chamber ensembles. Pianist Vijay Venkatesh has been recognized on three continents as a pianist with profound musicianship and has been a top prizewinner in numerous competitions He is a graduate of the Colburn School, USC Thornton, and Indiana University.

Lucinda y las Flores de la Nochebuena is a children's opera with music by Evan Mack and libretto by Joshua McGuire. The concept was conceived at a National Opera Association Convention when Mack, McGuire, and director Anthony Radford agreed that operas for children were missing from new American opera. Subsequently California State University at Fresno commissioned a 45 minute opera that could tour schools and be performed in opera houses. The result is Lucinda y las Flores de la Nochebuena -- a multicultural Christmas opera for all ages. Since its premiere in Fresno, Lucinda has been produced all over the United States and seen by more than 20,000 children. Composer Evan Mack, a member of the faculty at Skidmore College, has devoted much of his compositional life to opera and song. Mack was named 2018 Professional of the Year by Musical America and was a composing fellow at the John Duffy Composers Institute. Librettist Joshua McGuire has collaborated with Evan Mack on numerous operas. He was commissioned in 2015 to write a libretto for Washington National Opera's American Opera Initiative. His is an author as well as being on the faculty at Vanderbilt University.

Shirl Jae Atwell earned a bachelor of music education degree from Kansas State Teachers College and master of music theory/composition degree at the University of Louisville and completed four years of post-graduate work in composition at the University of South Carolina. An active composer, she still finds time to serve as a full-time string orchestra educator with the Jefferson County Public Schools, Louisville, Kentucky. She is currently serving as President of the Kentucky Cello Club. Her ballet, Lucy, with music by Ms. Atwell and choreography by Alun Jones, was premiered by the Louisville Ballet in January 1999. The ballet was inspired by the discovery of the 3.2 million year old skeleton in 1974. The ballet was the subject of a Kentucky Education Television documentary that was aired on November 10, 1999. In June 2000, the televised production of Lucy was awarded the Arts & Culture Emmy by the Ohio Valley Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Thomas Ludwig's Violin Concerto is a lovely work. There is a reason why a violinist of the caliber of Mark Peskanov is attracted to it. The slow movement is gorgeous and the University of Miami Symphony Orchestra accompanies him as if it were a major Orchestra. It is a live performance, but very well recorded. Thomas Ludwig was born in Detroit, Michigan. He studied first with his father and then entered Juilliard on a full scholarship to study violin. At the age of 20, he was appointed Music Director and Conductor of the New York City Symphony. He studied conducting with Bernstein, von Karajan and Jean Morel. He also studied composition with John Corigliano. Today, he pursues a career as both a composer and conductor. He has served as resident conductor for the American Ballet Theater and Mikhail Baryshnikov at the Metropolitan Opera House and on tour. He has also been Music Director of the Atlanta and Washington Ballet Companies. About Ludwig and his Symphony, The New York Times wrote: "Ludwig is perfectly talented. His Symphony is vividly Orchestrated, possesses tremendous emotional intensity and yet is succinct and skillful in its control of form." Ludwig's music is immediately accessible and should appeal directly to the listener who enjoys romantic American music. Both performances are world premieres.

The New York New Music Ensemble's recording presents three of Lukas Foss's three best chamber works in reverse chronological order of composition. The recording opens with Tashi (1986), working its way backwards through Solo Observed (1982), and concludes with Echoi (1961-63). This presentation allows listeners to enjoy a musical narrative that begins at the end, with a work that represents the culmination of more than 40 years of compositional inquiry. The significance of Tashi's assimilation of stylistic elements is then understood retrospectively through the other two works, each more strongly associated with forward-looking compositional techniques than the last. Foss himself, who as a conductor was known for his innovative programming, would undoubtedly have appreciated this approach to the recording of his music. These three works provide an effective overview of Foss's eclectic compositional style and insight into his aesthetic and expressive motivation. The acclaimed New York New Music Ensemble has commissioned, performed, recorded, taught, and fiercely advocated for the music of our time, achieving international acclaim in its endeavors. The NYNME has more than 25 recordings to its credit and has commissioned and premiered more than 130 works by some of America's most distinguished composers.

This is a recording of folk and classical music transcribed for folk instruments. The connection between folk and classical is sometimes direct, as in Brahms's arrangements of existing folk tunes, or in the folk-based chorale tune of Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring; but more often the connection is one of mood, as in the folk dance-like character of My Lady Carrie's Dompe or the two bourées from Bach's English Suite. In trying to decide what to put on this recording we relied primarily on instinct, a feel for a piece, and whether it would work in transcription for folk instruments; but beyond any intellectual justification was the overriding sense of playing music we love. While the common theme is lullabies and dances, we did get sidetracked occasionally, when we simply wanted to play a particular piece.

Carver Blanchard writes: "Lute Unleashed is a traditional recording in that it presents the work of a composer-arranger whose instrument is the lute. In centuries past that is what professional lutenists were; indeed had to be if they were to support themselves. An appointment to a court or great house afforded one of the few opportunities for regular employment and carried with it a particularly wide range of duties. These included playing in dance ensembles, accompanying singers, providing entertainment for banquets and special occasions, and of course, responding to the spontaneous and unforeseen. One can only guess how often a half-drunk guest of the duke made his way to the lute player and needed help getting through the song he had heard somewhere last week. It is today's studio musician, not today's concert musician, whose situation and abilities most nearly resemble those of the working lutenist of the Renaissance. I was born and raised in Louisiana and most of the material on this recording comes from memories of my boyhood in the South. There may at first appear to be some novelty in the use of the lute for the performance of such relatively modern music. In fact, it brings to modern music the same distinctive and compelling qualities that made it the most popular instrument in Europe for over 200 years."

This is one high-class kid's record! Actually, the subtitle is Ballets for Children of All Ages, and both scores take an off-beat spin on two familiar storylines (somehow, the Red Sox get involved with Cinderella's family). Bernard Hoffer, born in Switzerland, studied at Eastman with Louis Mennini, Wayne Barlow and Bernard Rogers. Even if you've never heard of him, you've heard his music for his specialty over the years has been commercial music for such clients as McDonald's, Ford, and Chevrolet. He was nominated for an Emmy for his theme for the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour on PBS. For the past fifteen years he has devoted his time to concert works. These two delightful scores (featuring small instrumental ensembles) are performed by none other than famed new music specialists Boston Musica Viva and Richard Pittman and the one-and-only Bob McGrath, who has just celebrated his 35th year on Sesame Street.

Steven Mackey was born in Frankfurt, Germany to American parents. He attended the University of California for his BA, the State University of New York at Stony Brook for his MA and Brandeis University for his Ph.D. His first musical passion was playing the electric guitar in rock bands in northern California. He later discovered concert music and has composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, dance and opera. Since the mid 1980's he has resumed his interest in the electric guitar and regularly performs his own work, including two concertos as well as numerous solo and chamber works. Mackey is currently Professor of Music at Princeton University where he has been a member of the faculty since 1985. He teaches composition, theory, twentieth century music, improvisation and a variety of special topics. As co-director of the Composers Ensemble at Princeton, he coaches and conducts new work by student composers as well as 20th century classics. Mackey writes: "I have always loved the string quartet. I was a musically illiterate, teenage rock musician when I first heard a string quartet and it deflected my fate towards concert music in general and composition in particular. The string quartet is a perfectly balanced ensemble in which each instrument can blend with the others or stand in relief, and where each has the possibility of infinite gradations of tonal nuance with a variety of bow strokes and placements, not to mention plucking. The quartet is capable of a wide range of expression, from light-hearted to profound and from bawdy to refined. We know this because some of the greatest music ever written - the greatest music imaginable - confirms these virtues."

MAD DANCES? Mad indeed! This collection of American music for saxophone and piano is a representation of the wonderfully "mad" and spectacular contemporary saxophone repertoire. There is a uniquely mad-like quality to all of these works: this madness is presented in many different ways, using the definition of "mad" quite loosely. Libby Larsen's Holy Roller is full of madness, invoking the intensity of revival meetings and sermons of "holy roller" type preachers. Skookum Suite, by Kevin Isaacs is inspired by the Sasquatch, or "Skookum," who becomes "mad, sad and glad" as he is discovered by humans, escapes, and finds true love. William Albright actually provided us with our album title in the second and fourth movements of his brilliant Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano, while David Diamond's sonata allows us a brief respite from madness with his eloquently composed and truly American work. The collection ends with an arrangement of David Del Tredici's Acrostic Song from Final Alice...well, what could be madder than the Mad Hatter? All this given brilliant performances by the esteemed saxophone player, Dan Goble, and pianist Russell Hirshfield.

The ever-enterprising Illinois State University Wind Symphony offers world premiere recordings of three works, the oldest of which (David Maslanka's Symphony No. 3) being written in 1991. David Gillingham's Concerto for Euphonium and Band (Summer of 2008) features Jason Ham, who is a member of the West Point Band and on the faculty at Interlochen Summer Arts Camp and Montclair State University.

Dr. Man-Ching Donald Yu is a Hong Kong born Chinese composer, pianist and conductor. As a prolific and versatile com¬poser, he has composed more than 150 original works that have been frequently performed internationally. The stylistic traits of his recent works are character¬ized by the intermingling of the expressive and lyrical language of atonality, stylistic diatonicism with new tonality, and Chinese color while sometimes blending with micro-polyphonic musical materials. Born in 1980, Yu received his formal training at the Royal School of Music and Baylor University, subsequently studying at the Internationale Sommerakademie Universitat Mozarteum Salzburg and at Hong Kong Baptist University, where he received his Ph.D. in composition and music theory. His music has been performed throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. Yu's awards include the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship and awards from ASCAP. He is the founder and conductor of the Hong Kong Amadeus Chamber Orchestra and a faculty member of the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The works on this premiere recording dedicated to his compositions are diverse and range from large-scale orchestral works to chamber music, to electronic music and works for solo instruments.

Composer David Del Tredici credits pianist Marc Peloquin with getting him back to writing music for piano after a 20 year hiatus. The two met at the turn of the century and Del Tredici was so impressed with Peloquin's curiosity, performance skills and joy in his music, that he was persuaded to start again. This is the second in what will be four volumes of Del Tredici's works for piano. The music on this recording includes works written in 1958 and 1984 as well as ones written between 2003 and 2015. Critically acclaimed by the press, Marc Peloquin has appeared in a wide rnge of venues, including the Kennedy Center, the Guggenheim Museum, the American Academy in Rome and Weill Recital Hall, among many others. Known for his advocacy of composer of our time, Peloquin has recorded music by Otto Luening, Chester Biscardi, Samuel Barber, and Dennis Tobenski. He studied at Boston University, the New England Conservatory, and the Manhattan School of music. He is on the faculty of the New School University and artistic director at the Bloomingdale School of Music.

"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.

With the release of this 3-CD set, Marc Peloquin has now recorded the complete piano music of David Del Tredici. The first volume was released on Naxos. The collaboration and friendship between Peloquin and Del Tredici goes back two decades and has proven fruitful for both composer and performer. David Del Tredici, known as the founder of Neo-Romanticism, is one of America's most distinguished and honored composers. Del Tredici has been on the faculties of Harvard and Boston University and was Distinguished Professor of Music at The City College of New York for more than 25 years. Marc Peloquin, known for his advocacy of new music, has recordings on CRI, Naxos, Urtext, and Albany Records. He is on the faculty at the Bloomingdale School of Music and formerly taught at the New School University. He is a graduate of Manhattan School of Music and Boston University.

Born in Buenos Aires, Jorge Liderman has studied under Mark Kopitman, Ralph Shapey and Shulamit Ran. He writes: "This album is a collection of solos, duos and trios I wrote during the last 20 years. They are all inspired by, based on, quote, or make reference to pre-existing musical sources...in this disc the sources range from tango to William Byrd, and from Guillaume de Machault to Andean folklore."

A major new release of David Del Tredici's chamber works. One of the most admired and acclaimed composers of his generation, Del Tredici's music is impossible to describe without superlatives. His work is a brilliant splash of emotional color in a contemporary music landscape where monochromaticism is common. This 2-CD set includes five works composed between 2001 and 2013-- a piano trio, string quartet, variations for bass trombone, a duo for violin and bass trombone and Bullycide, a major work for chamber ensemble, inspired by the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998. The performers are the elite of the new music world and include Del Tredici's nephew, the phenomenal bass trombonist Felix Del Tredici.

Ruth Schonthal's compositions, which reflect the concerns of today's world, display a unique blend of deeply-rooted European traditions, depth of feeling and masterful blending of traditional and contemporary techniques. Born in Hamburg of Viennese parents, she began composing at five. She was the youngest student ever accepted at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin but, being Jewish, she was later banished. Her family fled the Nazi regime by settling in Stockholm, where her exceptional talent was recognized, leading to her being accepted at the Royal Academy of Music. Again, on the run, the family settled in Mexico City, where Schonthal studied with the famed Manuel Ponce. She eventually continued her studies at Yale under Paul Hindemith. Through the exposure to diverse influences and methods in her travels, Ruth Schonthal was able to extrapolate an unusually rich mixture of compositional techniques. She never followed "current" trends, instead finding her own unique voice. In these songs, composed both early and late in her career, one can sense the emotional qualities she considered foremost in her music. She once said that she envisioned her work as a mirror held up to a world full of complex human emotions. In short, these are works that reveal the innermost soul of a complex and fascinating composer.

Thomas Mann's extraordinary novella Mario and the Magician was written while he was vacationing on the Baltic seacoast, hard at work on his massive novel Joseph and His Brothers. An unpleasant incident that occurred down on the beach inspired Mann to create an ominous allegory about the rise of fascism and the Nazi blight that was beginning to affect Germany at that time. American composer Francis Thorne's interest in Mario goes back to 1963, when he discussed with Mann's daughter, Elizabeth Borgese, the possibility of an opera. Permission was granted, and work began with librettist Chester Kallman, but delays forced inevitable changes. Years later, Thorne would work with J.D. McClatchy (librettist, incidentally, for Tobias Picker's Emmeline [TROY284/5]). The work was premiered March 12, 1994. Thorne himself is part of that great generation of American composers born in the 1920s (others being Donald Erb, Leonard Rosenman, and the late Meyer Kupferman and Jacob Druckman) who came to prominence in the late 1940's and early 1950s, writing strongly accented music often with prominent jazz influences. Thorne's first professional job was as a jazz pianist at New York's famed Hickory House, with Duke Ellington's recommendation. He later studied with David Diamond. His output includes concertos, symphonies, chamber music and songs both "classical" and pop. He was also principal founder of the American Composers Orchestra, and has served on the boards of CRI Records, The Virgil Thomson Foundation and the MacDowell Colony. Mario and the Magician is his only opera.

Born in 1959, composer Mark Gustavson studied at Northern Illinois University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Columbia University, Conservatory of Amsterdam, Tanglewood and the Banff Centre. He is on the faculty at Adelphi University and Nassau Community College. He has received numerous honors, including a composer award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Fulbright Fellowship. His music has been commissioned and performed by notable chamber ensembles including Speculum Musicae, Parnassus, The Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra and the New Music Consort, among many others. The five pieces on this recording, covering a period of 13 years, are representative of Gustavson's primary interests, which is composing instrumental music from works for solo instruments or orchestral music. His unique voice, influenced by approaches to music from around the world, often sounds spontaneous or improvised, although it is strictly notated.

While composer Mark N. Grant studied at the Eastman School and took courses at Juilliard, Mannes, and Manhattan, he first embarked on a career as a journalist before turning to composition. His music has been performed in the United States, Europe and New Zealand and is the recipient of grants and commissions from the American Music Center, Meet the Composer and the New Renaissance Chamber players, among others. He received the Friedheim Award in 1996 for his music and won ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for two of his books on music. If music were food--which to the soul it is--Grant's gives you a choice of a dependably traditional menu as well as an à la carte rich in surprises. The first recording devoted to his music includes a monodrama for soprano and chamber ensemble (Auto da fé); a song cycle for two sopranos and piano (The Book of Illuminations); as well as a work for guitar (Alba: The Lover's Departure at Dawn) and for theremin (Bird of Pardise).

David Rakowski grew up in St. Albans, Vermont playing trombone in community bands and keyboards in a rock band. His first composition was a band piece he wrote his junior year in high school, in order to win the Vermont All-State Composition Competition (he lost). The first music he heard that he really liked was Le Soleil des Eaux of Boulez and Ensembles for Synthesizer of Babbitt, on a Time-Life "Music of Today" compilation that his band director had lent him. He eventually studied composition at the New England Conservatory, at Princeton with among others, Milton Babbitt, and at Tanglewood with Luciano Berio. He has been composer-in-residence at the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival and Guest Composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference. He has taught at Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia Universities. Currently he is Professor of Composition at Brandeis, whose faculty he joined in 1995.

All of the works on this recording evidence the hallmarks of Martin Amlin's style: a facile flow of elaborate rhythms; a harmonic language rich with the notes that comprise seventh chords; a non-strict usage of tone rows; an honoring of the past through recognizable formal structure and thematic evolution; and a French sensibility that might be described as neo-impressionistic. A student of Nadia Boulanger, Martin Amlin received masters and doctoral degrees from the Eastman School of Music. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards and has been a resident at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. A member of the faculty at Boston University, he is also director of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Composition Program. A noted pianist as well, he performs the works on this CD with noted artists Leone Buyse and Michael Webster, who have long been advocates of his music.

A graduate of Harvard and Yale, Martin Boykan counts Walter Piston, Aaron Copland and Paul Hindemith as his composition teachers and Eduard Steuermann as his piano teacher. He founded the Brandeis Chamber Ensemble and was pianist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has written for a wide variety of instrumental combinations including four string quartets, many trios, duos and solo works, song cycles as well as instrumental ensembles and choral music. His music is widely performed by ensembles like the New York New Music Ensemble, Earplay, Music Viva, Collage New Music and Speculum Musicae, to name a few. The recipient of many awards and commissions, Martin Boykan is an Emeritus Professor of Music, Brandeis University and was Composer in Residence at the Composer's Conference in Wellesley and the University of Utah. His music appears on the CRI and BMOP record labels.

Most of the music on this recording honors artists whose works are going or have gone, and each work is either a song or composition in the lyrical mode. The compositions celebrate the work of departed masters--Yehuda Amichai, Gyögy Ligeti, Johannes Brahms and Willie Dixon (among others) and the title honors the last album recorded by Walter Becker and Donald Fagin of Steely Dan. The distinguished American composer Martin Bresnick's compositions are performed throughout the world and he is the recipient of many prizes and commissions including The Rome Prize, The Berlin Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among many others. Recognized as in influential composition teacher, Martin Bresnick is a member of the faculty at Yale University's School of Music.

Donald Martino began music lessons at the age of nine; learning to play the clarinet, saxophone, and oboe. He started composing at 15. He attended Syracuse and Princeton Universities. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received two Fulbright scholarships, three Guggenheim fellowships and grants from the NEA. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for Notturno and in 1985 the Kennedy Center Friedheim Competition for his String Quartet. He has taught at the Third Street Music School Settlement in New York, Princeton University, Yale University, the Yale Summer School of Music and Art, Tanglewood, the New England Conservatory of Music, where he was chairman of the composition department from 1969-79, Brandeis University, where he was Irving Fine Professor of Music, and Harvard University, where he is currently Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus. Prize-winning pianist David Holzman has performed the 20th century's most challenging masterpieces throughout the United States and abroad. He has premiered works by more than 100 composers from around the world. He studied with Paul Jacobs and Nadia Reisenberg. He began his solo career in the 1980s and has earned consistent praise for his virtuoso performances. Andrew Porter, writing in The New Yorker has described him as a "master pianist." This disc contains exciting performances of fine American piano music.

Composer Mary Lee Taylor Kinosian is also the violinist for the Upton Trio. Her music draws on and celebrates the American experience. The Upton Trio was formed in 1989 to present chamber music concerts for schools in South Carolina. The Trio has performed at Weill Recital Hall in New York City, at the Kennedy Center, and has been featured on NBC Nightly News. The Trio maintains an active commissioning program and has recorded several compact discs. The Upton Trio is permanent artist-in-residence at the Nickelodeon Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina.

The internationally acclaimed flutist Marya Martin, assisted by musicians from the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, offer a program of Eric Ewazen's music for flute. The Flute Sonata and the Bridgehampton Suite were both written specifically for Ms. Martin, a long-time friend of the composer's; the SeaSkye Songs were inspired by the poetry of Karen Wagner, written as a tribute to a friend who had committed suicide; and Mosaics was composed for another flutist friend. Composer Ewazen says that he was completely influenced by Martin's lovely golden tone and her spectacular technical agility. This compact disc of world premiere recordings offers beautiful performances of Eric Ewazen's music for flute, and adds immensely to the chamber music repertoire.

David Maslanka writes about his Saxophone Concerto: "This concerto turned out to be a good deal longer than I would reasonably want. As I got into the composing, the ideas became insistent: none of them would be left out!" About his Marimba Concerto, here is what Mr. Maslanka has to say: "This concerto could easily be subtitled 'rhapsody' or 'fantasy' because of its meditative or free-flowing quality. It is easy to describe the overall shape  an extended slow to moderate opening section, an explosive fast section, a quiet closing section  but less easy to describe the internal working of the piece." Here the listener will have to use his or her imagination. David Maslanka was born in New Bedford, MA. He attended the Oberlin Conservatory, and studied for a year at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. He did master's and doctoral work in composition at Michigan State University with H. Owen Reed. He is now a free-lance composer and lives in Missoula, Montana.

This is a live recording of the world premiere performance of this work that took place in April, 1996 and as such there is some noise and a few rough spots, but this is music of the highest order that is well worth hearing. Mr. Maslanka calls his new composition Mass, a setting of the Latin Ordinary including Hymn to Sophia, Holy Wisdom by Richard Beale. This is a very serious piece of music in a vein similar to Britten's War Requiem. Maslanka writes: "Almost from the start of my thinking about the Mass, I was moved to include the female creative or the Holy Mother, an image that has arisen in many forms in my meditative life. I asked my friend Richard Beale to consider the problem. His marvelous and almost instantaneous response was "Hymn to Sophia, Holy Wisdom," a set of seven poems on the Holy Mother theme, that I have used in my setting of the Mass as preludes to the Latin texts." As you can see from the forces listed that are needed to perform this Mass, it is a huge work. The recording itself captures beautifully the sheer magnitude of the sound of this music.

About this music David Maslanka writes: "In recent years I have developed an abiding interest in the Bach Chorales, singing and playing them daily as warm-up for my composing time, and making my own four-hand settings in the old style. The chorales now regularly find their way into my music, and have become a significant "leaping off" point for me. The first movement of Quintet No. 3 from 1999 opens with the chorale "Your stars, your cavernous sky." The Quintet was first performed on March 14, 2000 in Columbia, Missouri by the Missouri Quintet. Music for Dr. Who from 1979 is a whimsical little piece which takes its title from the British science fiction TV series of the 1970s. The music has no official connection to the TV show, but came about as a result of my watching one particular episode. Little Symphony (1989) was written as part of a birthday offering to composer Barney Childs. Sonata for Oboe and Piano was written in 1992. Its inspiration was a poem of ecstatic vision written by an Eskimo woman." Composer David Maslanka was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He studied clarinet, music theory, and composition, receiving degrees from Oberlin and Michigan State. Today he lives and composes in Missoula, Montana.

David Maslanka is an American composer whose music we feel strongly about here at Albany. We are pleased to be able to bring you this world premiere recording of two important pieces for saxophone. Mr. Maslanka writes: "The Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano was commissioned by the North American Saxophone Alliance. It is a large, passionate and sometimes ferocious piece which mixes old and new elements. Song Book was commissioned by the artists who perform it on this disc. The movements of Song Book are relatively brief. They have a particular thing to say, a particular mood and attitude to express, and then they are done. I think of the pieces as emotional scenes. Whereas the Sonata tends to be overwhelming in its technical and textural demands, the lines and textures of Song Book are for the most part much simpler and quieter."