Catalog

Since its inception the Mirror Visions Ensemble has explored song repertoire from a number of angles. The initial interest was the back-to-back performance of multiple settings of a single text, leading to programs built around favorite portraits. This has been followed by musical travelogues and concerts at museums that feature music with a connection to the exhibit or museum. During the last decade, the ensemble has commissioned 69 new works, two of which are presented on this recording. Berg's Lincoln Letters is set to texts more personal than political, while Hagen's Songs from Dear Youth are set to letters from the Civil War. Platt's From Noon To Starry Night is a cantata based on a selection of Walt Whitman's poems, including the roughneck Whitman, the democratic Whitman, the transcendentalist Whitman, Whitman the "lover of comrades," and Whitman the bard of war.

Leon Kirchner's life has been liberally peppered with moments of recognition for his powerful and innovative music. Both the first and second quartets heard on this recording received the Critics Circle Prize; the third received the Pulitzer. While still an undergraduate, he was accepted into Arnold Schoenberg's graduate composition seminar at UCLA. He has received many honors and prizes, including membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was a professor at Harvard University for 25 years. This recording includes his fourth string quartet, written in 2007 when Kirchner was 87, for the Orion String Quartet, who are able champions of his music.

The collection of classic and original rags offered by Gary Smart on this recording celebrates the lyrical side of this quintessentially American music. The ragtime genre is diverse, more so than the casual listener might think. There is the folk rag tradition, the brilliant, aggressive Eastern rag tradition, and the many interesting takes on ragtime composition that span the entire twentieth century from Artie Mathews to Charles Ives to William Albright and beyond. But Scott Joplin's classical musicality remains the source of Smart's inspiration. Joplin's marriage of a singing African-American rhythmic polyphony with the harmonic and textural structures of the European classical tradition is dazzling in its effectiveness and Mozartian in its elegance.

This recording of the choral music of Margaret Meier features A SOCSA Quilt, which details the journey, through words and music, of survivors of childhood sexual abuse from the distressing memories of post-traumatic shock through healing and recovery. Margaret Meier received her Bachelor's degree from Eastman and her Ph.D. in composition from UCLA. She has taught at a number of universities and is currently on the faculty at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California. This CD represents the core of her musical passion: music that expresses life experience and that celebrates connection to the love and care of God.

The Palisades Virtuosi was established in 2003 to promote and enrich the repertoire for flute, clarinet and piano. Their programs combine standard repertoire with works that are a product of its aggressive and zealous commissioning program. More than 20 composers have received commissions and this recording, their second on Albany Records, highlights five of these. From the oldest composer, Frank Levy, born in 1930, to Carlos Franzetti and Allen Shawn, both born in 1948, to Caroline Newman and Gary Eskow, sharing 1951 as their birth years, this recording give us a range of styles and generations, all exquisitely performed by the ensemble.

Formed in 2004 the trio Neoteric, made up of faculty members at Southern Illinois University, began their relationship with Bernard Hoffer through a request for works in the American Music Center newsletter. After writing two works for their ensemble, Hoffer suggested the idea of more substantial works, hence the Concerto di Camera and Divertimento included on this recording. Born in Switzerland, Hoffer is a graduate of Eastman where he studied composition with Bernard Rogers and Wayne Barlow. He has written extensively for films, television, and commercials for which he has won several Emmy nominations and Clio Awards. He scored the hit children's cartoon series Thundercats and Silverhawks.

An American original, John Jacob Niles was a composer, performer, and author. Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1892, he came from a musical family. While working with a surveying team in eastern Kentucky as a teenager, he kept a notebook in which he recorded lyrics and music of old folk songs known in the area. Niles served as a U.S. Army pilot in World War I and made numerous reconnaissance flights until he suffered serious injuries in a plane crash. After the war he studied music at the University of Lyon, the Schola Cantorium in Paris and the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He renewed his search for folk songs in Appalachia as he accompanied noted photographer Doris Ulmann on her travels. He composed and arranged more than 1,000 songs, many of them made famous by Jo Stafford. These songs of our American heritage are beautifully sung by Hope Koehler.

Two one-act operas by the incomparable Lee Hoiby: Bon Appétit! was written for Jean Stapleton in her late career with music draped over the words and gestures of Julia Child, the mother-of-all foodies. This is the Rill Speaking, with libretto by Mark Shulgasser, is based on a seminal early work by playwright Lanford Wilson, first produced in 1965. It is of the genre of plotless, multivocal evocations of the 20th century small town. Into this theme Wilson introduced that of the birth of the writer, and his short play observes the seed of creativity. Hoiby's musical setting is water to that seed, bringing forth new branches, leaves and berries.

This recording of music by Peter Boyer centers around a commission by conductor Lawrence Golan to write a work to be performed in concert immediately following Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony. The idea was that the new work, while not intended to be in the style of Tchaikovsky, would share some musical material so as to be intrinsically connected to it and find a natural place in concert programming. Peter Boyer, born in 1970, received his D.M.A. from the Hartt School. He studied with John Corigliano, then relocated to Los Angeles where he studied film music with Elmer Bernstein. His music has received more than 200 performances by 70 orchestras. His major work Ellis Island: The Dream of America received a Grammy Award nomination.

The Refuge is the fruition of the Houston Grand Opera's commitment to connect with its community. The brainchild of General Director Anthony Freud, the idea was to commission an opera based on the experiences of the ethnically-varied immigrants who make Houston their home. The libretto, written by Leah Lax, is based on the oral histories of families from Africa, Central America, Vietnam, Pakistan and India who have made their way to Houston and made it their home. Their courageous journeys make this an American opera in the truest sense. Their stores are eloquently captured in music by the Houston-native, Christopher Theofanidis.

From the well-known (Ran, Adler, Daugherty) to the less well-known (Bryant, Ruo, Ross), this series continues to offer music of distinction and variety with comments by each of the composers preceding the actual performance. The works evoke programmatic concepts, particularly Shulamit Ran's Vessels of Courage and Hope, inspired by the tragic story of the voyage of the SS. President Warfield (Exodus 1947) during World War II. The ship carried Jewish Holocaust refugees who were refused permission to land in Palestine and were forcibly returned to Germany.

This recording is, in many respects, a unique and creatively conceived kaleidoscope of American culture presented through the expressions and influences of African Americans. Moses and Floyd offer exceptionally convincing interpretations of each song, with clear understanding of the nature and unique message contained in each. The diverse genres, art songs by African American composers and artful settings of spirituals, also include works written by other Americans who use idiomatically African American musical resources, and whose creative energies have been powerfully influenced by African American folk life. This is a delightful tapestry of works that comprise a cross section of musical personalities and compelling lyrical content.

Practice in the Art of Elocution, An operina for soprano and piano was adapted by the composer-librettist from The Standard American Speaker and Entertainer published in 1901, while Sorry, Wrong Number was adapted from the play by that name by Lucille Fletcher. Both of these witty one-act operas are given delightful performances by the cast and orchestra of the Center for Contemporary Opera. Beeson, inspired to write operas while still a teenager, has 10 operas to his credit, as well as music for orchestra, concert band, vocal and choral groups. In addition to composing, Beeson has had a distinguished career at Columbia University where he is the MacDowell Professor Emeritus of Music.

Florencio Asenjo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is best known for his approach to composing called "maximalism," the objective of which was to achieve a high density of content in constant change: he decided to base his composing on the creation of sequences of themes that, taken in succession, were each a development of the preceding music. Again, this was not to be a formal development, or a variation on previous themes, but the creation of entirely new themes connected aesthetically to the preceding ones, a development of substance rather than of form, just as the various characters in a play do not repeat the same sentences over and over again except for special purposes; rather, each rejoins the preceding dialogue to take it further, while retaining the continuity of meaning and atmosphere. But please note: the result is not an avant-garde exercise. This is very colorful music, full of rich atmosphere and drama, upholding the traditions started by his fellow countrymen, such as Alberto Ginastera.

Lee Actor's career as a software engineer and a musician began in Albany, New York: for several years he was a violinist in the Albany Symphony Orchestra while completing an advanced engineering degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in nearby Troy. After moving to California in the late 1970s, he studied with Brent Heisinger, Charles Jones and the late Andrew Imbrie. Actor's music is filled with rhythmic drive and shows a superb ear for orchestral color. Often he builds up a work by emphasizing one or another of the instrumental families Ð woodwinds, brass and strings Ð then mixes them in a rich impasto of orchestral color. In the process he creates music that catches the ear and draws the listener into a world of emotion and drama. All of these recent works are a perfect showcase of his distinct range and style.

Created by conductor Frederick Harris, Jr., in the fall of 1999, the MIT Wind Ensemble is comprised of MIT undergraduate and graduate students studying a wide variety of fields including Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering and related fields for which MIT is world-famous. The central mission of the MIT Wind Ensemble is the enhancement of the musical education and artistic sensitivity of its members through large and small wind ensemble performances of music of diverse styles from the 16th century to the present day. A secondary mission is the creation and nurturing of new music, such as the recent works on this disc that vary considerably in style and aesthetic ideas. Since 2001 the Ensemble has commissioned 18 original works by Boston-based and nationally recognized composers such as Gunther Schuller, John Harbison, Ran Blake (best-known as a third-stream artist) and Joe Lovano.

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 Massachusetts in 1943, a pupil of Joseph Wood and H. Owen Reed, David Maslanka has become especially well known for his works for winds in many combinations -- solo sonatas, chamber works and substantial works for wind ensemble -- including five Symphonies. Of these two recent works, he writes "The title Desert Roads suggests an interior journey, a time of inner searching, of not knowing, of creative incubation. I have chosen to call these four movements "songs" for clarinet and wind ensemble. This connects them directly to the romantic idea of Ôsongs without words'...because of my longtime and persistent use of chorale melodies, it has been suggested that I am somehow proselytizing for the Christian faith. This is not the case. My attraction to these melodies is that they are the product of countless generations of human seeking, and have about them an aura of depth and power. The word "book" gives the feeling of a larger collection of material, something extensive and varied, and something that may have a story to tell."

Carl Zeller, after service in the Vienna Court Chapel Choir, studied both composition and law and earned his doctorate in law from Graz University in 1869. He spent most of life in government service, writing music in his spare time. Although Zeller composed several works for the musical theatre, his reputation rests mainly on The Birdseller, which had its premiere in 1891. It has a familiar boy-meets-girl plot, set in that never-never land of operetta where mistaken identities are as common as pine trees and nightingales sing on cue. The Birdseller has one of the most captivating scores ever written. Its best-known melody is "Roses in Tyrol," the magnificent song and ensemble that climaxes Act I. One of the most popular productions of the Ohio Light Opera in the 1990s, this 2007 revival will certainly delight listeners long familiar with the score as well as those who are discovering it for the first time!

Born in China, son of a Baltic businessman employed by the Tsar, Boris Blacher was a true iconoclast, who traveled to exotic locales and studied architecture and mathematics but who, during the 1920's, took up music, writing works redolent of American jazz, which would get him into trouble after the rise of the Nazis. Yes, Blacher was another composer of "degenerate" music who did eventually write a genuine "hit" Ð the Orchestral Variations on a Theme of Paganini, a much-recorded piece. In recent years, more of his output has been released on CD, revealing a fascinating, original musical voice. This unique adaptation of Shakespeare's Rome and Juliet modifies the work in striking ways, omitting some characters, telescoping the action, even resorting to having different characters perform their lines simultaneously, creating an "overlapping dialogue" effect. Musically, the ensemble writing often bears a striking resemblance to Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du Soldat," perhaps a tribute from one master to another.

Richard Pearson Thomas is equally at home writing works for the concert hall and the stage (including the Off-Off Broadway hit "Parallel Lives") and "Ossessione" is his modern counterpart to the "standard" repertoire of 24 Italian Art Songs, with a re-examining of the texts casting them through a modern perspective. The first performance with John Muriello led to a collaboraton, including Thomas' unique adaptation of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," displaying Muriello's remarkable abilities as a singing actor. As a novel bonus, this CD also includes their sparkling interpretations of classic pop songs about love such as Arlen's "That Old Black Magic" and Richard Rodgers' "Bewitched."

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.

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.

In the far corner of every concert stage, there is an area reserved for the back row of the orchestra. This zone — between the timpani and the double basses — is home to the low-brass section, comprised normally of two tenor trombones, a bass trombone and tuba. Although integral to the symphony orchestra, the low-brass section is seldom featured, and this recording is an opportunity for the listener to discover the special sounds and characteristics of this group. This album consists primarily of chamber music, some of which was composed specifically for this instrumental combination. Also featured are innovative arrangements of piano and non-brass chamber music, and short excerpts from the orchestral repertoire. This is the music the PSO members perform on a weekly basis, and which forms the foundation of their approach to sound and ensemble.

And now for the serious side of Don Gillis...Yeah, right! Actually, in both the "Encore" Concerto and the Harp Rhapsody (written for the NBC Symphony's Edward Vito), one can hear some very serious thoughts being bandied about, but nearly all of these pieces represent high spirits and good, clean fun. "Twinketoes" was originally meant for a ballet about a crippled girl who dreams of becoming a ballerina, and surgery allows her to fulfill her destiny. But Gillis lost interest in the soap-operish plot. Instead, he assembled a suite, and we have the opening number, as sprightly as any Broadway overture, and with enough humor to keep Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck going. And we also have one of his last works, the whirlwind Rhapsody for Trumpet, which shows some more modern touches (bongo drums!). The Short Overture is a concise ball of energy, not really for any proposed opera, but a great curtain-raiser just the same.

America's premiere opera composer here presents his first full-length comic opera, based on the classic farce "A Flea in Her Ear" by Feydeau. But here, the composer, working from his own libretto, has set the work on a ranch in Texas in the 1940s. The original source's hilarious story of supposed infidelities and the characters' outlandish attempts at getting even without finding out the truth of the matter translates wonderfully to the new setting and, indeed, at the first Lexington performances both critics and audiences were delighted by the new work. This represents the latest in an ongoing project with Albany and Pasatieri to record his major stage works (the most recent being the acclaimed "Frau Margot") and we're certain you'll share in the high spirits and fun that the Kentucky audiences had!

In the nearly 30 years that Hi Kyung Kim has been living, studying and composing in the Western World, her music has established itself as Asian-American in voice and spirit. But for all the recognizably Korean musical ideas, rhythmic and sonic, in her music these seem to occur not as flags or labels but appear integrally in the music's fabric. And in the hearing of it, a personality emerges that is individual and not specifically or necessarily identifiable as Korean-American. As she has admitted, these Korean elements come into her music unbidden, unselfconsciously, and cites a conversation she had with the late Korean-born composer Isang Yun, in which he said "That he did not have to think about his musical elements intentionally utilizing Korean music, since (these were) already imbedded in him."

Genevieve Feiwen Lee received her degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of Music and the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Boris Berman. As an open-minded, generous and expert proponent of new music, she presents two significant composers, the French-born Bodin and the American Tom Flaherty. As Kyle Gann writes, "The 21st Century composer for piano faces tremendous competition from the past, yet for many, the medium still offers irresistible temptations. This recording offers compositions commissioned from Bodin and Flaherty; apart from making extensive use of the piano's ability to display different tempi simultaneously, these composers approach piano composition in different way: Bodin shows interest in layering and complexity, while Flaherty's approach is more linear and sound-oriented."

The University of Calgary Wind Ensemble is widely recognized as Canada's leading wind orchestra. It is made up of the most advanced performers of wind and percussion instruments at the University and has earned a substantial international reputation. Under the direction of Dr. Glenn D. Price, the Ensemble has received great critical acclaim for its performances, recordings and broadcasts. Dr. Price is also a renowned percussionist and a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. This recording, featuring music by European, Asian and American composers (including one of the most recent works by the popular Michael Torke), is the ninth in their series and the first to be released on Albany. The works represent a wonderful range of colors, styles and compositional techniques.

Carl MaultsBy is a contemporary "renaissance artist" whose talents have been utilized both in the commercial realm of musical theatre, film, television, records and in the cultural media as well. A former artist and repertoire staff producer for RCA records, MaultsBy attended Columbia University where he studied with the late Vladimir Ussachevsky and Mario Davidovsky. His credits include liturgical music, music for the Harry Belafonte film Beat Street and the dance music for the Broadway musical "It's So Nice to be Civilized." As he writes, "Eye of the Sparrow" was conceived as a joint installation project between visual artist Karen Fitzgerald and myself...which took place in January 2006, at the Celebration of the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King at St. Bartholomew's Church, New York City. The title was inspired by the evangelical hymn, "His Eye is on the Sparrow," a personal favorite of Dr. King."

Born in Chicago, William Kraft has had a long and active career as a composer, conductor, timpanist/percussionist and teacher. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he served for 11 years (1991-2002) as Chairman of the Composition Department and Corwin Professor of Music Composition. He is of that generation of American composers who came to prominence starting in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s whose music is characterized by a distinct brashness, tinged with the energy of jazz and a definite sense of the dramatic. As an avid percussionist, many of the works which first brought him fame spotlight that part of the orchestra, and as director of the Los Angeles Percussion Ensemble, he premiered many now important works. This diverse collection, ranging from solo to orchestral works, exemplifies the wonderful range of this dynamic American composer.

Lance Hulme's music reflects the ambience and musical approach of the North American musical tradition. There is compositional eclecticism, a playful and uninhibited attitude with tradition and a crossover between "serious" and vernacular music. All these elements are to be found in his music as well as more advanced structural and aural techniques. His music has received awards from the International Witold Lutoslawski Competition and ASCAP and has been performed by ensembles and orchestras throughout the United States and Europe. Hulme studied at Yale University and the Eastman School. He actually began his career as keyboardist for the jazz/fusion band Dreamscape, so popular and jazz elements can be heard in many of his works, particularly Flame Dance.