Catalog

Anthony Holland was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1955 and studied at The Cleveland Institute of Music and Case-Western Reserve University. He studied with Donald Erb, Hale Smith and Leslie Bassett. Since 1982 he has been a Professor of Music at Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York. Holland composed his Piccolo Concerto to demonstrate that the piccolo could be used as an expressive solo instrument. Pohadka a Variace was composed and premiered in the spring of 1997. The title means fairy tale in Czech. The guitar pieces were composed for Joel Brown, the soloist who performs them on this disc. Intensity 51.5+ is a light-hearted reference to Varese's Density 21.5. The original piece was 51.5 measures long. The + means the soloist repeats the piece as many times as they feel necessary. The New England Poems was commissioned by Sandy Schwoebel, long-time editor of The Flutist Quarterly, for performance at the National Flute Association Convention in Boston in1993. The Violin Concerto was commissioned and premiered by the great Czech violinist Frantisek Novotny. The music of Anthony Holland will appeal to anyone who enjoys mainstream American music. It is accessible and tonal.

Karel Husa's String Quartet No. 4 (Poems) was commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts for the consortium of the Colorado, Blair and Alard Quartets. The works was completed in the spring of 1990 in Ithaca, New York. A collection of six poems, the String Quartet No. 4 explores possibilities of unusual sonorities in a virtuosic writing. When Lucy Mann of the Naumburg Foundation requested a new work for the Colorado Quartet in 1983, Ezra Laderman thought the proposal over for about a week, and it was during this time that he realized that his Quartet No. 6 could be the first work in a triptych. He felt ready now to take the same material he had used in No. 6, music inspired by four youthful personalities, and place it "in the midst of life" as Laderman says. The four-note-motive of NO. 6 strides out again at the beginning of No. 7 - only now it is inverted, so that it reaches muscularly upward. The String Quartet 1982 by Mel Powell was composed for the Composers String Quartet, the Sequoia String Quartet and the Thouvenel String Quartet under a consortium commission from the National Endowment for the Arts, which, at the same time, commissioned this quartet and quartets from Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter. Powell's Quartet is played through as a single movement with clearly differentiated subdivisions.

The real draw for this disc is the presence of the great trumpet player, Adolf Herseth from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For indeed, he is one of a kind, a true master recognized for his brilliant musicianship by his colleagues and audiences the world over. "Quite possibly the most dazzling player on his instrument in the world today," says Donal Henahan in The New York Times. Mr. Herseth was appointed Principal Trumpet of the Chicago Symphony in 1948 immediately after graduating from the New England Conservatory. A native of Minnesota, he also holds a degree from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. During World War II he served as a bandsman at Iowa prefight school and ended his military service with the Commander of the Philippine Sea Frontier in the South Pacific. His years with the CSO have included numerous solo appearances and concerts with many of the world's finest conductors, not to mention work on some of the finest recorded performances in the repertoire. The Asbury Brass Quintet is based in Chicago. Mr. Herseth, who joins them in the performance of the Bohme Sextet, has touched the lives of each one of the members of the Quintet's players, either as a teacher, colleague or mentor.

Tom Myer is the Professor of Saxophone for the College of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder and has served as the Director of Jazz Studies from 1988-95. He received his M.M. degree in woodwind performance and jazz studies from North Texas State University. He earned his undergraduate degree in music education from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse. He has worked professionally for Woody Herman, Nelson Riddle, Ice Capades and Disney World, and has backed up such names as Dave Grusin, Doc Severinson, Bob Hope, Dionne Warwick and numerous others. Joseph Lukasik is on the music theory and jazz faculties at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1993, he received first prize in the Barlow International Composition Competition. Chris Theofanidis' Netherland was commissioned by Worldwide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Fund, as a consortium commission. There are two versions of the work, one for piano and one for Orchestra. David Gillingham is Professor of Music Composition at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.

Irwin Bazelon died on August 2, 1995 at the age of 73. He composed nine symphonies and over 60 Orchestral, Chamber and instrumental pieces. Born in Evanston, Illinois, he graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor's and master's degree in music. After studying composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale briefly, he went to Mills College in Oakland, California with Darius Milhaud. From 1948 until his death, he lived in New York City and Sagaponack. His Long Island retreat was the perfect counterpoint for the tensions and hustle-bustle of urban life with which his rhythmically complex and often jazz-tinged music bristles. In his early years in New York, Bazelon supported himself by scoring documentaries, art films and theatrical productions. During the 1950's and 1960's he composed more than fifty scores of this kind, which proved to be an invaluable preparation for his Orchestral music. As a valedictory of sorts he wrote Knowing the Score: Notes on Film Music. Published in 1975, this book is widely used as a college text. As a guest composer Bazelon frequently lectured at leading universities and music schools throughout the United States and England. Young people were especially drawn to his feisty spirit and no-nonsense approach to earning a living by applying compositional talents to the commercial world without sacrificing integrity. A long-time horse racing enthusiast, one of his best known works, Churchill Downs (Chamber Concerto No. 2) is named for the home of the Kentucky Derby, and his ninth symphony (subtitled Sunday Silence for the winner of the 1989 Derby) is dedicated to the horse. Definitely an interesting man who gives us interesting music.

Dr. Harvey J. Stokes is professor of music at Hampton University, and founder and director of the Computer Music Laboratory. His degrees are from Michigan State University, the University of Georgia and East Carolina University. He writes about this music: "One of several pinnacles in my creative career has been the composition of a trilogy of works for the Oxford String Quartet. My String Quartet No. 1 was commissioned by this ensemble and completed during the fall of 1990 in Hampton, Virginia. Since its premiere in 1991, it has been performed many times by them to great acclaim. Due to the success of this work, I decided to dedicate two additional compositions to the Oxford String Quartet. String Quartet No. 2 and String Quartet No. 3 were completed in 1992 and 1995 respectively. String Quartet No. 3 was premiered in 1996 on a concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Oxford String Quartet, and String Quartet No. 2 was premiered later that year during a concert tour of Argentina by the ensemble." In the Oxford String Quartet innovation and tradition come together. The Cleveland Plain Dealer raves about "vibrant, spell- binding strings...first class from top to bottom...who interacted with a corporate sense of articulation, balance and nuance provided by only the most astute Chamber players."

Marion Bauer and Ruth Crawford Seeger began their life-long friendship in the summer of 1929, when both enjoyed privileged living at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire - a haven for American artists since 1907. At a time when women in music had to face down Victorian stereotypes of dilettantism and sentimentality, the MacDowell Colony provided "a room of one's own." A Peterborough regular, Bauer came for her first visit in 1917. Within two days of arriving for what would be her only stay there, Crawford wrote how it was "glorious to be working again...I never knew the moon and stars could come inside me so." Considering their historical reputations, few people would suspect the meeting points between these two composers - Bauer, representing what Carol Oja in her forthcoming book calls the "forgotten vanguard," and Crawford, known today as a pivotal figure in the radical "ultra-modern" movement. But back then, both believed strongly in the manifest destiny of a similar kind of modernism: both spent the 1920s exploring frontiers of harmony; both greatly admired Scriabin, taking his mystical impressionism as their starting point; and both were influenced by transcendentalist aesthetics. After hearing some of Bauer's piano preludes, Crawford recorded her impressions in her diary: "I am bewildered by the strangeness of the experience, by our affinities. Our manner of building, our feeling very strongly the spirit of our work, our strengths and weaknesses - in all these, though we are individuals, yet we are very close. Though we have only just met, yet our spirits have been friends for years." And now their musics are joined on this beautifully performed new disc. There is no greater proponent of this music than Virginia Eskin, a proven, superb American artist.

In 1927, Bernard Herrmann was a sixteen year old student at DeWitt Clinton High School in New York. Bored by his instructors, he eagerly sought out other rebellious spirits among his peers, and found one - a fellow composer, no less - in his German class: 14 year old Jerome Moross. A close friendship began, and for the next several years the two friends explored the musical by-ways of New York together, attending concerts and seeking out such composers as Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, George Gershwin and Morton Gould. In the early 1930s, as members of the Young Composers Group - a small band of New York composers modeled after the Russian Five, and led by Copland, Herrmann and Moross gave the first public performances of their music. Both composers were inspired by the vigorous American idiom of Ives, Copland and others; but while Herrmann's music was increasingly shaped by European models, Moross was most drawn to American folk music and other popular forms. Now, all these years later, here these two friends are joined in their music on this delightful disc.

The composers of these trios all were born within a ten year span, and were of considerable significance in the first third of the 20th century, when American music was first finding its voice. They are representative of different currents in the musical stream, and the details of their lives and interactions provide insight into the American classical world music world during a fascinating period in our history. Hadley was born in Somerville, Massachusetts and studied with Chadwick at the New England Conservatory. He also studied in Europe with Ludwig Thuille. He was the conductor of the Seattle Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. His Piano Trio was composed in 1932 and is in a four movement symphonic form. Virtuosic string writing is evident throughout, as is Hadley's flair for lyrical melody. Daniel Gregory Mason was born in Brookline, Massachusetts into one of this country's most important musical families. His father Henry was one of the founders of the Mason and Hamlin piano company and his grandfather, Lowell was one of the most influential composer and educator of the 19th century. His uncle, William, studied piano with Liszt and played a major role in the development of classical music in this country. He studied with John Knowles Paine at Harvard and in France with Vincent D'Indy. He composed his Sentimental Sketches, Op. 34 in 1935. Bloch was born in Geneva but came to this country in 1916 to teach at the Mannes School. In 1920 he accepted the Directorship of the Cleveland Institute in 1920. He took the same position at the San Francisco Conservatory in 1925. He became an American citizen in 1924. He composed his Three Nocturnes in 1924. Cadman was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He studied music theory with Leo Oehmler and Organ with W.K. Skinner. He became very interested in music with American Indian themes. In 1916, after years of traveling, lecturing on American Indian music, he moved to Los Angeles where he composed operas, film scores and Orchestral works. He was a founder of the Hollywood Bowl and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Southern California in 1926. He composed his Trio in D Major in 1914. It was his very first venture into Chamber music. It demonstrates beautifully his love of melody. This disc fills an important gap in the catalog of early American Chamber music. Detailed and informative program notes.

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."

An internationally celebrated soloist and chamber musician, clarinetist Nathan Williams has been praised for his "sublime control," "silky sound," and "dazzling technique." He is principal clarinetist of the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra in Houston and a founding member of Strata, a clarinet, violin and piano trio that has commissioned and performed music for this ensemble for the past 20 years. He is a frequent guest performer and teacher at conservatories, colleges and universities across the country and abroad. Williams has appeared at Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Merkin Hall as well as having given concerts throughout the world including Europe, China, Israel, and Japan. His recordings appear on Albany Records, CRI, Naxos, New Dynamic Records and Arizona University Recordings. A graduate of Eastman and Juilliard, Williams is an artist/clinician for Vandoren and a Buffet Group USA Performing Artist.

David Liptak was born in Pittsburgh in 1949. After teaching composition and theory at Michigan State University and the University of Illinois, he joined the faculty of the Eastman School in 1987, where he has chaired the composition department since 1993. In 1994, he was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation to write a trumpet concerto for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, which was premiered in 1996. In 1995, he was awarded the Elise L. Stoeger Prize by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in recognition of distinguished achievement in the field of Chamber music composition. Other discs of his music appear on Gasparo and Opus One.

Echoes of America was commissioned by the Raleigh Chamber Music Guild in celebration of Robert Ward's 80th birthday. Jimmy Gilmore, the clarinetist for the piece, responded to the idea of a title for the trio with Echoes of America. He felt that each of the four movements related to some aspect of American musical culture in the southeastern part of the country. The work was completed in June 1997. About Appalachian Ditties and Dances the composer writes: "This work reflects the interest I have had in American folk music in general since the 1950's and in Appalachian music in particular since the 1970's when my wife and I had a second home in Sparta, North Carolina. The richness and vitality of that music is unparalleled by that of any other region of the country. The mountain folk are a singing people and the tunes are an inspiration or a solace for a wide spectrum of human feeling." The Raleigh Divertimento was commissioned by the Raleigh Chamber Music Guild for the Aspen Wind Quintet. "My great fascination with the beauties and difficulties of writing for the medium dates from the late 1940's when I coached woodwind ensembles at the Juilliard School. The creation of the work started with the melodies inspired by the sounds of the instruments." Lamentation first appeared as "Of Ancient Guilt" for piano and dancer and is dedicated to dancer Judith Martin who commissioned it and gave the first performance in 1947 at the Studio Theater in New York. Scherzo, which is frequently performed with Lamentation, was first performed in 1951 at the Peabody Conservatory by William Crystal. Dialogues for Violin, Cello and Piano first appeared as Dialogues for Violin, Cello and Orchestra, written on commission from the Chattanooga Symphony for its 50th anniversary season, 1982-83. The Chamber version of the work was premiered at Duke University on February 4, 1984.

Samuel Adler was born in Mannheim, Germany, on March 4, 1928. A prominent and important educator, Adler has enjoyed what might be called the patronage of the American University, which is the 20th century equivalent of the 17th century's church and the 18th century's court. Just as composers in the past often owed their allegiance to and drew their salaries from religious leaders or noblemen, so a large number of professional composers today are employed by colleges and universities, where they have many duties besides writing music. Adler's career is typical. In addition to being the creator of over 400 published works, he has also been a teacher, administrator, and author of textbooks. In 1966 he became Professor of Composition at the Eastman School, a position from which he recently retired; in 1974 he became chairman of the Composition Department; in 1984 he was named Mentor of the University of Rochester. He has published books on orchestration, musicianship, and choral conducting. And, like his counterparts two and three centuries ago, he is an accomplished conductor. Acrostics is a concerto for harpsichord, flute, oboe, clarinet, violin and cello. The work was written in 1985 as a Christmas present for the composer's good friends Barbara Harbach and Thomas George. Harbach had been performing the Harpsichord Concerto by DeFalla and Adler wanted to write a companion piece for that work for the same combination of instruments. The work was premiered in the fall of 1986 by Barbara Harbach, harpsichord, and members of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in Buffalo, New York. The Second Piano Concerto was commissioned by the Friends of Today's Music for the Music Teachers Association of California for the 100th Anniversary of the Organization in 1997 and premiered at their convention in San Francisco July 7, 1997. Choose Life , written in the summer of 1986, was commissioned by Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. It is a celebration of life.

A native of Philadelphia, Jan Krzywicki has studied with, among others, Vincent Persichetti, Nadia Boulanger and Darius Milhaud. He is active as a composer, conductor and educator. Since 1990 he has been conductor of the Philadelphia contemporary ensemble Network for New Music. He is a professor of music theory at Temple University, teaching courses in analysis, performance practice, and ear training.

Tyrone Greive writes in his extensive notes for this disc: "Like much other Polish classical music, the music on this recording reflects the basically western orientation of Polish culture in how it frequently sounds similar to one of the more familiar musical styles from Western Europe. Yet, there are moments when the melody, harmony or other musical elements take unexpected and unfamiliar-sounding turns, thus reflecting that Poland is a country where Eastern and Western cultures have traditionally intermingled. Often, works of individual Polish composers reflect the influences of other specific countries, schools and individuals, thus in some way mirroring Poland's cultural exchanges with the rest of Europe at a particular time." Much of this material appears on disc for the first time.

Here is a delightful sound - four trombones; mellow, rich. Admittedly, this will have appeal mainly to your customer who enjoys brass music. Hopefully, they will give this disc a try. Steven Witser has served as Assistant Principal Trombone of The Cleveland Orchestra since 1989 and is a member of the Center City Brass Quintet. Edward A. Zadrozny is an Associate Professor of Trombone at the University of Akron and Principal Trombone of the Akron Symphony Orchestra. Paul Ferguson has been director of Jazz Studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland since 1988. Raymond Premru was Professor of Trombone at the Oberlin Conservatory from 1988 until his death in 1998.

Stephen Shewan's music is both melodic and accessible, at times propelled by catchy rhythms flavored with jazz and pop idioms. In Shewan's music we hear a fresh voice at work, demonstrating a talent for ingratiating melody, infectious rhythm and a command of colorful orchestration. Stephen Shewan was born in Warsaw, New York. Currently he teaches music and directs the bands at Williamsville East High School, near Buffalo, New York. He is a graduate of Roberts Wesleyan College and Ithaca College, and is completing his DMA from the Eastman School where he studied composition with Samuel Adler. For a young composer, he has composed in every medium but opera. A previous release on Albany Records (TROY149) contains his Magnificat, Feast of Carols and String Quartet No. 1. His most recent work is Hymn for Spring (1999) for Chorus and Orchestra.

Leo Kraft is professor emeritus of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. He studied composition at Queens College and at Princeton University. He also studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. His From the Hudson Valley was commissioned by a consortium of 20 flutists from the National Flute Association and received its premiere on August 15, 1998 at their annual convention in Phoenix. Godfrey Schroth was a pupil of the American composer Paul Creston. He first came to attention in 1959 when his Piano Quartet won a major prize and was performed by the Phoenix Quartet. He describes his Spring in Bucks County as "a challenge to both the pianist and the flutist, who must play three instruments." The suite was premiered at the Philadelphia Art Museum in 1974. Its three movements are Equinoctial Dances, River Willows and Fields of May. Eric Ewazen was born in Cleveland, Ohio and studied under Samuel Adler, Milton Babbitt, Warren Benson, Gunther Schuller and Joseph Schwantner at the Eastman School, Tanglewood and the Juilliard School where he has been a member of the faculty since 1980. His Ballade, Pastorale and Dance was premiered at Aspen in July 1993.

Born to Polish-American parents in Niagara Falls, New York, Lawrence Gwozdz has achieved an international reputation for his success at revealing the inherent qualities of the saxophone intended originally by its inventor, Adolphe Sax. His debut in New York's Weill Recital Hall was described in Musical America as an "extraordinary performance of contemporary music" with "the kind of timbre Adolphe Sax most likely had in mind...always with subtlety and taste." He is Professor of Saxophone at the University of Southern Mississippi, and did indeed study with Sigurd Rascher, among others.

About her piece Canyon Echoes composer, conductor and flutist Katherine Hoover writes: "This piece was inspired by a book called 'The Flute Player,' a simply and beautifully illustrated retelling of an Apache folk tale by Michael Lapaca." Joan Tower is the composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Lukes. "In my piece Snow Dreams there are many different images of snow, its forms and its movements: light snow flakes, pockets of swirls of snow, rounded drifts, long white plains of blankets of snow, light and heavy snowfalls, etc. Many of these images can be found in the piece, if in fact, they need to be found at all. The listener will determine that choice." Roberto Sierra is Professor of Composition at Cornell University. "These six pieces for flute and guitar are a series of chronicles (cronica in Spanish) that I composed on the subject of the meeting between the aboriginal Indian culture of the Caribbean Islands and the Spanish Conquistadors." Augusta Thomas writes: "Music of all kinds constantly amazes, surprises, propels and seduces me into a wonderful and powerful journey. I am happiest when I am listening to music and in the process of composing music. I care deeply that music is not anonymous and generic or easily assimilated and just as easily dismissed. I would say that Eclipse Musings has urgent, seductive, and compelling qualities of sometimes complex, but always logical thought, allied to sensuous and engaging sonic profiles."

In the spring of 1997, the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik in Freiburg, Germany, presented the Eastman School with the idea of doing a collaborative exchange concert between the two institutions. Their idea was to mix Eastman and Freiburg faculty and students together in live performances of music written by faculty composers from both schools. It was their hope that this sort of collaborative venture between student and faculty performers and composers would bring the two schools closer together and help strengthen their exchange relationship. That initial idea was realized with concerts in Rochester, New York in October, 1997 and in Freiburg, Germany in February 1998, as well as this CD which was recorded at the Sudwestrundfunk Landesstudio in Freiburg, Germany.

The special appeal of this CD should be the presence of Ellis Marsalis as a composer, who is the father of Branford, Jason and Wynton. All the works on this CD are world premieres except the Marsalis piece and they represent a variety of styles both quoted and extracted from the various traditional idioms of the composer's heritage. The works offered here are representative of 20th century styles and techniques such as serialism and the tone row; atonality and polytonality; polymetric, multimetric and asymmetrical writings; the integration of Cuban and African rhythms; and the classical structure embracing the vocabulary of Jazz, Blues, Gospel, and Spirituals variously used by such composers as Ellis Marsalis, Adolphus Hailstork, George Walker, Alvin Singleton and others. The display of the breadth of artistic styles in these American compositions lends to the necessary integration of this music into the standard classical repertoire and helps facilitate familiarity with this music independent of color, race or gender.

Richard Wilson was born in Cleveland. At Harvard he studied composition with Robert Moevs. Today he holds the Mary Conover Mellon Chair in Music at Vassar College and since 1992 has been the Composer-in-Residence with the American Symphony Orchestra for which he gives pre-concert talks. He is also active as a concert pianist. His music is also available on two previously issued Albany CDs: TROY074, which contains Persuasions, for soprano and instruments, Lord Chesterfield to his Son for solo cello, Fixations for solo piano, and the Sonata for Viola and Piano; and TROY 333, Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom, that features ten choral works.

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."

Ezra Laderman writes: "The world I grew up in living in Brooklyn, always close to Ebbets Field and the Children's Museum, consisted of all those things kids did as first generation Americans. To that heady mix there was, as well, music. My parents, Isidor and Leah, were born in Galicia, Poland; came to the United States early in the 20th century, met, married, settled in Brooklyn, and when I arrived June 29, 1924, there was an upright Worthington piano in the apartment and my brother Jack practiced on it daily. When my younger brother Gabriel arrived in 1929, I was already deeply involved in music. When I was three I heard my first children's concert at Carnegie Hall led by the debonair Ernest Schelling. During the height of the depression I used to sit next to the fountain of the Sculpture Court at the Brooklyn Museum while the WPA Orchestra performed. On Saturday nights I would occupy an empty box overlooking the stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as some musicians from the pit Orchestra ate sandwiches and drank Chianti as the Salmaggi Opera Company performed Italian repertoire. On Friday afternoons at school we would hear Walter Damrosch take us on musical journeys over the airwaves. When we finally got our Atwater Kent radio, Sunday afternoons belonged to the New York Philharmonic (What a difference between children growing up then and children growing up now! Is it any wonder our classical music is in such trouble today?) One day when I was six, I was brought to the Brooklyn Community Music School, just down the street from BAM and suddenly my musical education in the guise of the Dalcrosse method began. This musical world competed with growing up a city boy, never knowing how desperately poor we were, going (on scholarship) to the Ethical Culture School, where learning Greek history was essential, moving, one step ahead of the landlord, to seven apartments the first decade of my life, and having the extraordinary sense that everything was possible. At four, I was improvising at the piano; at seven, I began to compose music, writing it down. I hardly knew it then, but I had at a very early age made a giant step to becoming a composer."

North America's foremost wind quintet, the Prairie Winds, combines the artistry of five virtuoso musicians from the Chicago Symphony and the faculties of the University of Illinois, Oklahoma State University, and Wheaton Conservatory. The music in this collection represents some of the finest wind quintet music written by North American composers. The richness and diversity of the past century's music is evident through the warmth and lyricism of the quintets of Barber, Persichetti and Copland, the mischievous tongue waggling and technical challenge of John Harbison's writing, and the pathos of Jacques Hetu's Quintette. All the music is powerful, comical, and personal, but most of all, it is the sounds of 20th century North America.

Harold Farberman’s career as a conductor has overshadowed his achievements as a composer. In fact, while a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Farberman turned first to composition as a further creative outlet, which in turn led to his more visible conducting career. From the mid-fifties onward, when he composed his first work, Evolution, for soprano, French horn and seven percussionists, Farberman has never stopped creating music. Farberman was born in New York City’s Lower East Side. Coming from a family of musicians (his father was the drummer in a famous 1920’s Klezmer band; his eldest brother was also a drummer) it seemed inevitable that he pursue music as a career. After graduating from Juilliard on a percussion scholarship in 1951, he immediately joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra percussion section. With a performer’s knowledge of percussion instruments and a dissatisfaction with their conventional treatment, he became an early advocate for the use of percussion sonorities as a major voice in compositional structures. His very first work, Evolution, written in 1954 before he began formal studies in composition, is scored for over 100 percussion instruments and has been recorded four times, once by Leopold Stokowski. Note the special way we are featuring Mr. Farberman this month; not only as the conductor of the fine Bazelon orchestral disc (TROY370), but here he also is represented as a composer.

Kenneth Frazelle was born in Jacksonville, North Carolina and was a student of Roger Sessions at the Juilliard School. He attended high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he now teaches. He is composer-in-residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Santa Rosa Symphony. His score for Still-Here brought him international acclaim. The music, written for the folksinger Odetta and ensemble, was written as part of a multimedia dance theatre work. The film version of Still-Here has been viewed by millions on National Public Television and in Canada, France and Japan. Composer and percussionist Aaron Bachelder has composed Chamber, choral, Orchestral and electronic music, as well as songs in popular genres. In addition to his compositional activities, he is a founding member of the improvisational Chamber group, the Spool Ensemble, and the rock band Chapsticks. Robert Ward writes that his piece Appalachian Dances and Ditties "reflects the interest I have had in American folk music in general since the 1950's and in Appalachian music in particular since the 1970's when my wife and I had a second home in Sparta, North Carolina. The richness and vitality of that music is unparalleled by that of any other region of the country." Lukas Foss writes: "I wrote my Three American Pieces at a time when I was in love with my newly adopted country. All the music possesses an open-air quality I think I learned from Aaron, but I have handled it my own way. And there is always the influence of folk music - I looked at it a lot. I was also in love with jazz. The only popular idiom I never got close to was Broadway."

About Mountain Roads, the composer David Maslanka writes: "The music of Mountain Roads is a very personal statement. I feel very deeply about every bit of it. The musical plan of it follows the model of a Baroque cantata, and style and content reflect my years of study of the Bach chorales, and of Bach in general. Obviously there are no words in my "cantata" but the music revolves entirely around two chorale melodies. The title Mountain Roads comes from a dream I had while writing the piece". About his Sax Appeal David Stock writes: "The work was commissioned by the Amherst Saxophone Quartet by Summerfest, a music festival in Pittsburgh, for its 10th anniversary season. The premiere took place in July, 1990. The work is in four movements: Set Up, Blues, Sarabande, and jump. Jazz is clearly the primary influence, as befitting the genre that brought this wonderful instrument into its own". Russell Peck's Drastic Measures is the only piece on this disc that has been recorded before. About it, the composer writes: "During my brief university teaching career I came into contact with excellent saxophonists at Northern Illinois University who had a quartet and wanted a piece from me. That's how I came to write Drastic Measures in 1976. A year later I went to the School of the Arts in North Carolina where James Houlik had a great saxophone studio and a wonderful student quartet that became the New Century Saxophone Quartet. I touched up the piece for them and that became its final form."

Anthony Iannaccone was born in New York City and studied at the Manhattan School of Music and the Eastman School. His principal teachers were Vittorio Giannini, Aaron Copland, and David Diamond. During the 1960's, he supported himself as a part-time teacher at the Manhattan School and as an orchestral violinist. His catalogue of approximately fifty published works includes three symphonies, as well as smaller works for orchestra, several large works for chorus and orchestra, numerous chamber pieces, a variety of works for wind ensemble, and several extended a cappella choral compositions. Since 1971, he has taught at Eastern Michigan University, where he conducts the Collegium Musicum in 18th century music for chorus and chamber orchestra. Another disc of his music is available on Albany Records (TROY280), which features his music for wind ensemble.