Catalog

The distinguished professional musical career of Norman Dello Joio began for him at age fourteen when he became a church organist and choir director of the Star of the Sea Church on City Island, New York. A descendant of Italian church organists, his father was an organist, pianist, singer and vocal coach. Dello Joio recalls that his father was working with singers from the Metropolitan Opera who used to arrive in their Rolls Royces, and that his childhood was surrounded with music and musicians at home. In 1939, he was accepted as a scholarship student at Juilliard where he studied with Bernard Wagenaar. In 1941, he studied at Tanglewood and Yale with Paul Hindemith who told him "your music is lyrical by nature; don't ever forget that." Dello Joio has won the New York Music Critics' Circle Award in 1948 and again in 1962. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for Meditations on Ecclesiastes for string orchestra and an Emmy for his music to the television special, Scenes from the Louvre. He taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Mannes College of Music, and was Professor of Music and Dean of the Fine and Applied Arts School of Boston University. From 1959 to 1973, he directed the Ford Foundation's Contemporary Music Project, which placed young composers in residence in high schools with a salary to compose music for school ensembles and programs. In 2001, at the age of 88, Dello Joio continues to compose with no signs of retiring. His life achievements and compositions have enriched the landscape of American music. There are two other volumes available in this series (TROY344 & TROY359).

William Bolcom has said: "Curtis Curtis-Smith is one of the best-kept secrets in contemporary music. It is high time that listeners and musicians alike become acquainted with this music of passion and humor, intellectual agility and disarming emotional directness. I have long been its advocate to our best performers, who have played it enthusiastically worldwide, and I envy anyone who is becoming acquainted with it for the first time." C. Curtis-Smith (Curtis O.B. Curtis-Smith) was born in Walla Walla, Washington, studied at Whitman College, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois and at Tanglewood with Bruno Maderna. He has taught composition at the University of Michigan and is currently Professor of Music at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. His Great American Symphony was premiered in 1982 by the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra. The audacious title is as mischievous as it is ridiculous, and as American as a slick Madison Avenue advertising slogan. In the music, there are allusions to sundry aspects of Americana, from New Orleans jazz to acid rock; from gospel harmonies to boisterous marches to quaint southern folk hymns and Broadway show tunes. The composer writes: "On one level, the piece may be heard as fun and games entertainment, while on another it may be heard as an ironic and satirical commentary on the very tunes and styles it purports to trifle with. The piece has certainly enjoyed widely diverse reactions, from those finding it a masterpiece to those thinking it a travesty. Ross Lee Finney called it 'a controversial piece' and David Diamond, while finding the title a 'happy impertinence', admitted to lacking 'the requisite sense of humor about the title'. Another listener objected to my 'irreverent' treatment of The Star Spangled Banner in the last movement. I have never before, nor since, written such a brazen, outlandish, ill-behaved piece - yet GAS! is not malicious; it's more like a clown working things into his act."

Albany Records continues its series of recordings of George Walker, who has achieved international recognition as a pianist and as a composer. Walker has published more than 80 works for every medium except opera. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996. With his inclusion into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2000, he became the only living pianist-composer to receive this honor. The four piano sonatas, the brilliant and dynamic Piano Concerto and other shorter works that he has composed have expanded the standard repertoire of classical piano literature. Nevertheless, his devotion to the music of the great composers of the past remains undiminished, as evidenced by this superbly played recording.

The bass trombone came into prominence as a solo instrument in the mid to late 20th century, and is essentially a larger version of the tenor trombone. Until recently, it has been relegated mostly to supporting orchestral roles, doubling the bass or choral lines with an occasional turn in the spotlight. Higher quality instruments and new types of valves led to an environment for better players, and in turn, have inspired more composers to write for the bass trombone as a true solo voice. The trombone slide is a device found on no other instrument. The slide offers both a hindrance and an advantage; awkward and slippery, it can be difficult to maneuver. However, because of the fluid characteristics of the slide, a trombonist can at a moment's notice, imitate any number of machines and wild animals, or sing the most beautiful songs with vocal expression. Berlioz expressed the characteristics of the trombone best in his treatise on orchestration: "In my opinion, the trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments, which I have named the "epic" one. It possesses nobility and grandeur to the highest degree; it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents, to savage orgiastic outbursts. Directed by the will of the master, the trombones can chant like a choir of priests, threaten, utter gloomy sighs, a mournful lament, or a bright hymn of glory; they can break forth into awe inspiring cries and awaken the dead or doom the living with their fearful voices."

Since 1998, Benjamin Coelho has been a member of the University of Iowa's School of Music faculty, where he directs the bassoon studio. As a founding member of the Manhattan Wind Quintet, Mr. Coelho performed numerous recitals and concert tours throughout the United States. He has commissioned, performed, and recorded many works by American and Latin American composers, some of which are included on this recording. Before coming to Iowa, Mr. Coelho was the Vice-Dean and Bassoon Professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil). He also worked extensively as a performer in his native Brazil, holding principal positions with symphony orchestras in Rio de Janeiro, Campinas, and Belo Horizonte. In the United States, Mr. Coelho has played with the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony, and the Camerata Chamber Orchestra. Currently, he performs as the principal bassoon with the Cedar Rapids Symphony and the Iowa Woodwind Quintet. He is also a member of the Wizards, A Double Reed Consort. Mr. Coelho received degrees from Tatui Conservatory (Brazil), Purchase College and the Manhattan School of Music, and is working on his Doctorate of Music at Indiana University.

Horn soloist Eric Ruske has established himself as an artist of international acclaim. Named Associate Principal horn of the Cleveland Orchestra at the age of 20, his impressive solo career began when he won the 1986 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, First Prize in the 1987 American Horn Competition, and in 1988, the highest prize in the Concours International d'Interpretation Musicale in Reims, France. Of his recording of the complete Mozart Concerti with Sir Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, The New York Times stated, "Mr. Ruske's approach, firmly positioned with the boundaries of balance, coherence and good taste that govern the Classical Style, enchants by virtue of its confidence, imagination and ebullient virtuosity." A member of the faculty of Boston University since 1990, Mr. Ruske also directs the Horn Seminar at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.

Composer Judith Lang Zaimont is internationally recognized for the expressive strength, color and dynamism of her distinctive style. Many of her 100 works are prize-winning compositions; these include three symphonies, chamber opera, oratorios and cantatas, music for wind ensemble, a wide variety of instrumental and vocal chamber works for varying ensembles, and solo music for string and wind instruments, piano, organ, and voice. Her major works for piano are primarily recent, most of them composed since 1998. This is perhaps unusual in that the piano is her own instrument (she began studying at the age of five), and one might have reasonably expected considerable creative attention on her part from the very first to an instrument she knows so well.

Patti Monson is the flutist for the New York new music ensemble Sequitur and The Curiously Strong Wind Quintet. She has been a guest artist on many recital series dedicated to new music and holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Yale University School of Music. Her teachers have included Robert Dick, Bonita Boyd and Samuel Baron. She is currently on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, as director of the MSM contemporary ensemble TACTUS. She writes: "High Art - chamber music for solo flute is the second disc in a series of recordings to be dedicated to multi-voiced works for one flutist. I have always been enchanted by the Telemann Fantasies, Bach Partitas and other such magical works where pitches transcend their rhythmic values, and allow the solo musician to be playing multiple melodic lines at once. In the 20th and 21st century, composers are sharing similar passions. I am thrilled to present these works, which represent for me an exciting union: the personalities of musics composed during my lifetime and the traditions of my Baroque heroes. In this recording, the composers were invited to be the producers of their recordings."

William Ferris studied composition with Leo Sowerby, orchestration and conducting with Alexander Tcherepnin, choral conducting and organ in Chicago. Like Sowerby before him, he wrote for the church and the concert hall. Ferris was fond of saying that his first aesthetic experience came as a boy soprano in the Cardinal's Cathedral Choristers of Holy Name Cathedral. The inherent drama of the Catholic liturgies moved him greatly and when his voice broke, he was appointed Cathedral organist, a position he held for seven years. During the turbulent sixties, he moved to Rochester, New York, to become organist and choirmaster for Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. He returned to Chicago in 1971, served as organist at The Church of Our Savior and after 10 years teaching composition and theory at the American Conservatory of Music, became Music Director and Composer in Residence at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, where he established one of the nation's finest Catholic liturgical music programs, composing psalms, anthems and Masses for the weekly liturgies. In 1972, he founded the William Ferris Chorale, an ensemble specializing in 20th century choral music. Ferris was a distinguished conductor who championed 20th century music. He received numerous awards and honors and was the first American composer to teach at the Vatican. Stylistically, his music is informed by the Gregorian chant and polyphony he sang as a child, by the formal structures he absorbed as an organist and in his studies with Sowerby and by his love for the emotional directness of Italian opera, especially the works of Verdi and Puccini. The basis for his musical language is a lyrical gift for long-lined melody - even his instrumental works "sing" with a vocal character. He died suddenly on May 16, 2000 while conducting a rehearsal of one of his favorite works, the Verdi "Requiem.

Dr. H. Leslie Adams is a native of Cleveland who studied voice, piano, conducting and composition at Oberlin. The following are the composer's impressions on these pieces, taken from the printed program that accompanied the Cleveland recital of February 2002. "Welcome to my world of music. Allow me to share with you my thoughts and feelings through this unique medium of expression. These Etudes for Piano are a personal labor of love. They were begun to fill a void in my creative catalog of works. Up until then, only a few short pieces existed; now, with the Etudes, a quite extensive amount of material is at hand. Created primarily with the concert pianist's repertoire in mind, these studies can easily be played by a number of pianists at various levels of development. These are essentially studies of varying styles, moods, tonalities, and thematic natures - each providing different technical challenges, while expressing my personal sense of beauty." Jamaican-born Canadian pianist Maria Thompson Corley, gave her first public performance at the age of eight. Her undergraduate work was completed at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and she received both Masters and Doctorate degrees in piano performance from the Juilliard School, where she was a student of Gyorgy Sandor. Formerly an assistant professor at Florida A & M University, she currently serves as staff accompanist at Millersville University in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Charles Wuorinen is one of the world's leading composers. His many honors include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize (as the youngest ever composer to receive the award). His compositions encompass every form and medium, and include works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, soloists, ballet and stage. He has been commissioned to compose his Fourth Piano Concerto for Peter Serkin and the Boston Symphony Orchestra for James Levine's first season as Music Director. Wuorinen has been described as a "maximalist," writing music luxuriant with events, lyrical and expressive, strikingly dramatic. His works are characterized by powerful harmonies and elegant craftsmanship, offering at once a link to the music of the past and a vision of a rich musical future. Both as composer and performer (conductor and pianist) Wuorinen has worked with some of the finest performers of the current time and his works reflect the great virtuosity of his collaborators. He is Professor of Music at Rutgers University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. About Fred Sherry Wuorinen writes: "I've known and collaborated with Fred Sherry for more than three decades. During that time we have often performed together, and I have written many pieces for him - in fact, all the works on this disc have been composed for Fred. Saying that he is a superb player, wonderful performer, and profound musician is true enough, but for me needs to be supplemented with an appreciation for a long and marvelous friendship, a true meeting of minds, and an endless source of stimulation and merriment. I owe him more than I can say."

Born in New York City, Jay Reise's choreographic tone-poem The Selfish Giant, based on a fairy tale by Oscar Wilde, was commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Djong Yu in London in 1997. His opera Rasputin, described in The Washington Times as "a spellbinding, challenging and profoundly beautiful creation," was commissioned and premiered by the New York City Opera in 1988. Memory Refrains (a string quartet in one movement) was premiered by the Cassatt Quartet in 2002. Open Night was the first work commissioned by the Kimmel Center Fresh Ink Contemporary Music Series in Philadelphia in 2003. Reise studied with George Crumb, jazzman Jimmy Giuffre, Hugh Hartwell, Carnatic rhythm with Adrian L'Armand, harmony with George Rochberg, and Richard Wernick. Deeply influenced by Carnatic (South Indian) music and jazz, Reise has developed his own rhythmic method which is a signature element of his music after 1990. Jay Reise is the Robert Weiss Professor of Music Composition at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and president of contemporary music ensemble Orchestra 2001. Marc-Andre Hamelin is universally regarded as one of today's masters of the keyboard. Critics and audiences alike have enthusiastically responded to his seemingly boundless technique, which embraces both stunning virtuosity and profound sensitivity. The New York Times dubbed him a "supervirtuoso," and the London Financial Times said, "Hamelin's wizardry defies the laws of nature." Mr. Hamelin's work in the recital hall and on the orchestral stage has taken him throughout the world. His prolific recording career has resulted in nearly 45 recordings and numerous industry awards and nominations.

Mark Kroll writes: "Composers began writing new music for the harpsichord almost as soon as the instrument was rescued from extinction at the end of the 19th century. In fact, their contributions have played an important role in returning the harpsichord to its rightful place in the musical mainstream. The number of compositions has grown dramatically since those early days - and so has the quality. Each new work seems to exploit the unique sonorities of the instrument with ever increasing skill and sensitivity, and the contemporary repertoire now features excellent harpsichord music by almost every great composer of our time. American composers have been particularly enthusiastic advocates for the instrument. Six of them are represented on my first CD of contemporary American harpsichord music for Albany Records (TROY 457). This recording continues my exploration and support of this repertoire, and features some of the most exciting new contributions to the genre. All except the Hovhaness have been written in the last 25 years, and three belong to the first harpsichord pieces of the 21st century.

From the little that is recorded about Zipoli's life, we may understand that he pursued two paths during his lifetime: music and religion. At first it seems it was the religious road that led him to South America, but in fact, as well as wanting to take his vows in the order of the Jesuits, he was summoned to the New World because he was a musician as well as a missionary. As a child, he sang in the choir and was granted the support necessary to allow him to study in Florence. In 1709, he moved to Naples to study with Alessandro Scarlatti. His study with Scarlatti was short-lived and then went to Bologna and then Rome to study. In 1715, he was appointed organist of the Jesuit church in Rome. The following year his celebrated keyboard collection, Sonate d'Intavolatura, on which his fame rests, was published. Zipoli joined the Society of Jesus on July 1, 1716, and soon after went to Seville to await passage to the Paraguay province. With 53 other prospective Jesuit missionaries he sailed from Cadiz in April, 1717, but due to a violent storm, it was not until July that he and the others disembarked at Buenos Aires. From there they set out for Cordoba. By 1724, Zipoli had completed his theological studies and by 1725 was ready to receive priest's orders. Sadly, he died of tuberculosis before receiving them for lack of a bishop in Cordoba to ordain him that year. Zipoli was one of many excellent musicians recruited by the Jesuits between 1650 and 1750 for work in the Paraguay reductions. There is evidence that his music was in demand in South America. Jesuit documents of 1728, 1732 and later note his continuing reputation up to at least 1774. In the 1970s some 23 works by Zipoli (including copies of known keyboard pieces) were discovered among a large collection of manuscripts at the San Rafael and Santa Ana missions in eastern Bolivia. Sonate d'Intavolatura, Zipoli's work of 1716, consists of two bands of compositions for keyboard. The first band is devoted solely to the Organ. The second band is entitled "Sonate d'Intavolatura per Organo e Cimbalo." It is graceful and elegant music; its charm attracting republication in London and Paris in 1741. Band II of the complete keyboard works contains a series of four dance suites and two partitas. It is played here on the Cristofori piano from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection of Keyboard instruments.

Chris Gekker is Professor of Trumpet at the University of Maryland. As a soloist he has been featured at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. For 18 years Chris was a member of the American Brass Quintet. He was principal trumpet of the Orchestra of St. Luke's and frequently performed and recorded as principal of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He writes: "Eric Ewazen, David Snow, and I all entered the Eastman School of Music as freshmen in 1972, and in fact David and I were roommates that first year. We all became friends quickly, and I frequently prepared and performed their music during those student years. In the more than 30 years since then, rarely has a year gone by that I have not been involved in their works, and in some years there have been many performances. When I joined the American Brass Quintet in 1981, it was with great pleasure that I introduced pieces by David and Eric to the group, works that immediately became standards on the Quintet's recital programs and recordings. As far as our friendships have gone, well, some things do get better with age, and it is with a deep sense of gratitude that I look back upon all our years as colleagues. Both Eric and David write music that is important to me, music that I hear when I am away from my instrument, music that continues to challenge me to strive for improvement as a musician and trumpet player". David Snow holds degrees in music from Eastman and Yale University. He studied with Joseph Schwantner, Warren Benson, Samuel Adler, and Jacob Druckman. Eric Ewazen was born in 1954 in Cleveland, Ohio. He studied at Eastman and Juilliard. He has been Vice-President of the League-ISCM, Composer-in-Residence with the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble. Lecturer for the New York Philharmonic's Musical Encounters Series, and he has been on the faculty of the Juilliard School since 1980.

With Debussy's Jeux comes the notion of steps as a progression from one point to another in location, time and/or psychological state. As Debussy was a pianist-composer grappling with changing aesthetics in a time of turbulence, so Cuban-born American composer Jorge Martin is engaged in a similar pursuit today. His style is both accessible and provocative, equally using and breaking free of formal compositional technique, achieving its own unique voice. Martin and Jeanne Golan met as students at Yale University. Best known for his vocal works, Martin's first piano piece, Wand'ring Steps and Slow, was written for her. Its title comes from the last lines of Paradise Lost and suggests the loss of childlike innocence symbolized by the expulsion from Eden. Having written his first piano piece, Martin was inspired to delve into another. The Piano Fantasy on Sredni Vashtar also has a literary association. Saki wrote a tale of an orphan boy who defies a ferret he spies in his aunt's barn, to wonderfully horrific consequences. Martin turned this tale into an opera in 1992. He has reworked some of its music into the Piano Fantasy.

A regular on concert series throughout North America, Jonathan Keeble is quickly carving a niche as one of the leading performer/pedagogues of his generation. In addition to being a past winner of the Coleman Chamber Music Competition, and recipient of the Eastman School of Music Performer's Certificate, he is the recipient of numerous grants and awards. Mr. Keeble's passion for new music has led him to commission many new works for the flute from rising young composers. He is a popular performer at flute festivals around the world. He also routinely tours with Prairie Winds, a professional wind quintet. Mr. Keeble's teaching experience includes his present position as the flute professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with posts held at Oklahoma State University, and as visiting professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia.

Martin Amlin studied with Nadia Boulanger at the Ecoles d'Art Americaines in Fontainebleau and the Ecole Normale de Muisique in Paris. He received masters and doctoral degrees as well as the Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied piano with Frank Glazer and composition with Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler and Warren Benson. Formerly an instructor at the Phillips Exeter Academy and an Affiliate Artist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Martin Amlin is currently Associate Professor of Theory and Composition in the College of Fine Arts at Boston University. He has been rehearsal pianist for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Boston Pops Orchestra on many occasions. This recording premieres Amlin's two most recent sonatas, a variation set, and five preludes, linking them with works of two composers, Aaron Copland and Irving Fine, with whom he shares formative influences. Though of different generations, all three came under the distinguished tutelage of Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, and all three frequently drew inspiration from the creative atmosphere of Tanglewood, the legendary summer music center in the Berkshires. Thus, Amlin's voice, while uniquely personal, speaks within a tradition which demands uncompromising compositional integrity and stylistic conviction. A comparison of his music with that of his eminent forebears amply justifies the association.

Beth Wiemann was raised in Burlington, Vermont and studied composition and clarinet at Oberlin and Princeton University. She teaches composition and clarinet at the University of Maine, and splits her time between Maine and Massachusetts, where her husband, composer David Rakowski, teaches at Brandeis University. On this compilation of works for voice, clarinet, piano and electronics, Beth Wiemann brings together in compelling fashion three important facets of her life as a composer: a fascination with setting words, broad experience as an active performer of her own music and that of her colleagues, and an ongoing interest in the incorporation into her work of electronic and digital technology. Wiemann has been fascinated for years with the already heightened speech of poetry and its translation into the still more heightened speech of song. Among her earliest musical memories is that of hearing original cast recordings of Broadway musicals played in her home as a child. Unlike a number of composers of her generation, the Broadway idiom has exerted a far greater influence on her than later pop and rock styles, though not in an immediately obvious way. While genuinely admiring the craftsmanship of such composers for the stage as Gershwin, Kern, Porter, Rodgers, Bernstein and Sondheim, however, she has not sought to introduce superficial characteristics of their styles into her music in any literal sense. Instead, she has cultivated a harmonically subtle, more chromatic and less obviously tonally grounded pitch language. Her clearest connection with mid-twentieth century American musical theater is in her treatment of the declamation of the text. Consequently, from the songs recorded here to her recent opera, Deeds, her vocal compositions, like the best American popular songs, reflect a penchant for capturing the rhythms and nuances of vernacular speech. In keeping with that tendency, she is often drawn to poetry that is intimate and conversational in tone or concerned with aspects of everyday life. In travels to artists' colonies over the years she has had the good fortune to meet and befriend a number of poets, who often provide her with new material for musical setting. Most of this disc consists of selections from Weimann's collection Simple Songs, a project she began in 1990. Included are the first songs of the set, "No Moon, No Star" and "Night Thought." At the time of their composition, she was also engaged in setting them for women's chorus. She was prompted to make solo settings partly in response to a request from the soprano Karol Bennett for some songs to perform on a concert planned for the fall of 1990. Over time, Wiemann added other songs to the collection as she came across poetry that interested her. The latest song from the collection that appears on this disc is "Seamstress" composed in 2001.

On this CD are gathered shorter and occasional pieces and one extended work by California-born composer David Macbride. The pieces were written in a period spanning a little over a decade, and are played by him here with a nuanced artistry and great authority. It is a delightful and ultimately very moving recording, as it reveals a composer in mid-career who is able to do that very hardest of things, which is to allow the listener into his world without posing or imposing. In a period when "new music" often seems to need some kind of verbal explanation, Macbride's work, even at its most complex, holds true to music's purpose, which is to communicate directly to the listener with sounds. So natural and sure is his composer's art that any accompanying notes seem almost unnecessary. Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to recommend music that is at once so touching and so beautifully made. Macbride's roots in California and in Beijing, China, the birthplace of his mother, influence the tone of his music, which, even at its most dense, generates an extraordinary attentiveness and calmness in the hearer. His language seems an effortless coalescence of Eastern and Western elements, remnants of neo-classicism, figurations and harmonies from mid-century jazz, and, at times, echoes of Satie, Messiaen and of an attractive early work of fellow Californian John Cage. Different degree of influence from these sides emerge in different works, but one is struck in the end by the music's remarkably unified voice and sense of purpose. Transparent, lucid, firmly in the present, yet also deeply meditative, the overriding impulse behind Macbride's expression feels quietly, unpretentiously religious.

Pianist Sara Laimon is an active performer in both solo and chamber music. She has performed in Canada, the United States, England, France, Japan, Mexico and Poland, and she has represented the U.S. Information Agency as an Artistic Ambassador in India and Nepal. Laimon is a founding member and co-artistic director of the acclaimed New York-based group Sequitur and has been guest artist with numerous other ensembles. As a sought-after performer of new music, she has worked with composers such as Ligeti, Berio, Bresnick and Kirchner, as well as performing and recording music of many emerging American composers. The New York Times described her 2001 live performance of this disc's repertoire as "a sense of knowing exactly where she wanted to go: music-making as intelligent as it was technically proficient". Born in Vancouver, Laimon is a graduate of the Vancouver Academy of Music, the University of British Columbia, Yale School of Music and SUNY Stony Brook, where she received a DMA under Gilbert Kalish. She was a member of the piano faculty at the Yale School of Music and the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg before joining the McGill Faculty of Music in 2001, where she is currently chair of the Piano Area.

Eric Moe writes: "The waltz traffics in weightlessness. By adding an extra step to the one-two/left-right of pedestrian movement, it forces the waltzer and listener off the ground and into the air (left-right-UP). Some of these waltzes tackle gravity head on (Roger Zahab's Levitation of pianos during a waltz), others are more insinuatingly buoyant, but all share this attribute. These new waltzes are not exclusively American - there are contributions from Poland (Zygmunt Krauze's Music Box Waltz) and Nigeria (Akin Euba's Study in African Jazz 3) - but they are indebted to vernacular American rhythms which add even more bounce. Their distinguished European ancestry is recognizable, but these waltzes are very much of our time - only lighter. I have revisited Robert Helps' and Robert Moran's Waltz Project of the mid-1970s - half of the 22 waltzes on this CD are from the collection published by C.F. Peters. They include works that have become standards of the repertoire, such as Milton Babbitt's Minute Waltz and Philip Glass' Modern Love Waltz, as well as other gems. The remaining 11 waltzes are new, ten composed especially for this recording, with Ricky Ian Gordon's Waltz a happy discovery. The variety is enormous. Some have a direct connection with jazz: Anthony Cornicello's PostModern Waltz deconstructs a famous McCoy Tyner solo; my own Pulaski Skyway Waltz begins with a quotation from Mal Waldron's Firewaltz, Akin Euba's "African Jazz" study draws from the musical wells of Africa and Vienna, while Andrew Imbrie infuses a one-to-the-bar waltz with the headlong energy of bebop. Lee Hyla's One Moe Time has an improvisational feel, eventually cutting loose ecstatically before returning to its senses. Other waltzes comment trenchantly on the genre itself, like Ron Caltabiano's Character Sketch: About a Waltz. Virgil Thomson's birthday card to Mrs. Efram Zimbalist subverts the waltz rhythm with a thumping duple cross-rhythm in the process of quoting "Happy Birthday." Charles Wuorinen's Self-Similar Waltz operates on a deeper level of wit, reflecting its muscular self in myriad ways; the listening experience is like walking through a set of fun-house mirrors."

Bennett Lerner was born in Boston in 1944 and currently lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He is a well-known performer of contemporary music and has premiered many pieces by major composers. In 1985, he performed the Copland Piano Concerto with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic in honor of the composer's 85th birthday. The program was broadcast nationally on Live From Lincoln Center. Lerner was Copland's chosen soloist. His primary teachers were Claudio Arrau and Robert Helps, among others. Lerner received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from City University of New York in October, 2001, in piano performance and music history. Mr. Lerner writes: "Throughout my career I have had many close friends who were composers. Many of them wrote pieces for me, some of which I played in their world premiere performances, some of which I played many times, some of which I played only once, and some of which I played for the first time during the world tour of MUSIC BY MY FRIENDS in September-November, 2003. This recording is made up in large part of those pieces. In addition, it includes other works by my composer-friends." Comments from composers include Roger Zahab: "Your recordings are truly wonderful! I feel that you have done a magnificent thing for all of us. I wouldn't change a thing."; Tison Street: "The performances are absolutely stellar...Your performance of my Poem is just the best!..."; Donald Richie: "Your recording of your friends' music is your finest yet, and the relaxed beauty you bring to my little pieces is wonderful...."

Beth Anderson is a composer of new romantic music, text-sound works, and musical theater. Born in Kentucky, she studied primarily in California with John Cage, Terry Riley, Robert Ashley, and Larry Austin at Mills College and the University of California at Davis. She lives in Brooklyn and produces Women's Work, a concert series that enjoyed its premiere season in February 2004. Kyle Gann writes: There's an aspect of late 20th-, early 21st-century music that I half-kiddingly refer to as 'the simulation of normalcy.' Let me explain. The guiding principle of modernist music had been Ezra Pound's 'make it new.' Mid-century composers tried to make music that sounded crazy, strange, like nothing you'd ever heard before. The one-upmanship involved in that quest eventually got out of hand - or, at least, it left audiences behind, who gave up looking for recognizable features or points of entry into increasingly abstract and complex sound-structures. And so the generation that came of age in the 1970s inherited a logical double-bind worthy of a Zen koan. On one hand they had the same need to express originality and personality as their forebears. On the other, they needed to write music attractive enough, communicative enough, to kickstart a new new-music audience again pretty much from scratch, the traditional classical audience having more or less abandoned interest in anything outside the standard repertoire. What the best of these composers came up with is often a music that wears its originality on the inside: a music whose tonalities and textural consistency are not all that foreign from popular or classical music you're already used to, but whose underlying quirks make it a more challenging experience than you first think. All this is especially true of the aspect of Beth Anderson's music found on this disc. We have an extended piano solo; some songs; some piece for violin and piano. Nothing strange about any of that (though I'll admit, the concluding Cleveland Swale may be the only piece ever written for piano and two double basses). The music is mostly tonal. It is generally pretty, even lyrical. It even uses humorous poems and nursery rhymes. The pieces conform to genre, more or less. Your first impression may be that it's pretty simple stuff, possibly even nanve. But on close listening, such impressions turn out to be misleading...This is not 'normal' music. But on a certain level it sure stimulates normalcy."

One of the most influential violists of our time, Joseph de Pasquale has had a profound impact on the repertoire and perception of the instrument. The dedicatee of the 25th International Viola Congress, which honored his revolutionary contributions to the field of viola performance, he holds a 50-year combined record as principal violist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra. His signature rendition of Berlioz's Harold in Italy has become a reference work for students of the piece. And heading a distinguished musical family, he is violist of the De Pasquale String Quartet, joining with family members William and Robert, violinists, and Gloria, cellist - all members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Mr. De Pasquale's years with the Boston Symphony spanned the tenures of conductors Koussevitsky, by whom he was appointed principal violist, Munch and Leinsdorf; during that time he premiered the Piston Viola Concerto, which had been written for him, and those of Walton and Milhaud. As principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy, Muti and Sawallisch, he performed virtually every major viola concerto, premiering Martinu's Rhapsody Concerto, Bruch's Romanze, Shulman's Theme and Variations, and Hummel's Potpourri. He has performed and recorded with such celebrated artists as violinist Jascha Heifetz and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. Since 1990, he has been performing and recording exclusively with pianist Angelin Chang. A graduate of the Curtis Institute, where he studied with Louis Bally, Max Aronoff and William Primrose, he has served on the faculties of Indiana University and New England Conservatory and currently teaches at Curtis. His students hold positions in major orchestras worldwide.

Merrie Siegel Parmley has been hailed by the U.S. and Mexican press as “magnificent, jovial and radiant, with purity of tone and great technical command of the instrument” and “superb… [with] a rich, well-controlled tone, and her technical facility is stunning.” She has recorded on the Albany, Beauport Classical, Capstone, and Sony labels.

In great demand as a recitalist and teacher, she has been a member of music faculties throughout the U.S. and Mexico, and has appeared as a recitalist, collaborative musician, orchestral flutist and guest artist throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Merrie divides her summers between Michoacán and Guerrero, México, and Bad Neustadt, Germany, as Artistic Director and Artist/Performer with the international musical consortium, Cruzando Fronteras. In 2023 she, along with the international collaboration of flutists from Germany, Poland, and Mexico, performed the world premiere of Dr. Sarah Bassingthwaighte’s flute quartet “Nightsong” at an ancient archeological site in Tingambato, Michoacán.

A resident of the Seattle area, Merrie has appeared as Principal Flute with the Northwest Symphony. With NSO, she performed the world premiere of the concerto “House of Doors,” dedicated to her by Bassingthwaighte. About to enter her 15th season as Flute Choir Conductor with Bellevue Youth Symphony Orchestra, Merrie is passionate about creating chamber music as well as working with the talented flutists in her private studio.

Charles Vernon joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1986 as bass trombonist, coming from the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he had served in that same position since 1981. Prior to that he held identical posts with the Baltimore Symphony (1971 to 1980) and the San Francisco Symphony (1980-1981). A native of Asheville, North Carolina, Mr. Vernon attended Brevard College and Georgia State University. His principal teachers were Edward Kleinhammer (bass trombone) and Arnold Jacobs (tuba), both former members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He has served on the faculties of Catholic University (1972-1980) and the Brevard Music center (1972-1981), he also taught at the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts and the Curtis Institute of Music. He is currently on the faculties of DePaul, Northwestern and Roosevelt Universities. A clinician for the Selmer Instrument Company and a frequent guest artist for the International Trombone Association, Mr. Vernon has made numerous appearances as a soloist throughout the world. He performs on a New York Bach 50 bass trombone. In April 1991, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim, he gave the world premiere of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Concerto for Bass Trombone, which was commissioned by the Orchestra for its centennial.

Madeleine Shapiro is a recognized figure in the field of contemporary music as a cellist, producer of chamber music concerts, and as a teacher. She has appeared as a solo recitalist throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America. She has a strong commitment to performing works by living composers and has a repertoire of over 40 solo works by composers from the Americas, as well as Europe and Asia. The chamber ensemble ModernWorks, founded by Madeleine in 1997, presents an annual New York City concert series and has been heard yearly on the New York Consortium for New Music's prestigious Sonic Boom Festival and at other New York venues, including a series at the Museum of Arts and Design, as well as on NPR. She teaches at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, where she directs the Contemporary Music Ensemble and teaches classes in the performance practice of contemporary music. She writes: "My love for electro-acoustic works began as an undergraduate at The State University of New York at Stony Brook where it was suggested by the eminent violinist Paul Zukofsky that I learn Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms No. 3, my first experience with a work by a living composer. My subsequent performance of this piece led to a life-long commitment to both works by living composers, and the electro-acoustic medium. The pieces on this CD were chosen for their wide range of musical expression, and for the variety of electronic technology they employ. Since 1964, when the Davidovsky was written, the developments in technology have been astounding. As a performer, I have found this revolution exhilarating, and embrace the expressive and coloristic possibilities that such technology has afforded us."

Bodil Rorbech was born in Denmark in 1967. She debuted as a soloist in 1990 at Tivoli Concert Hall in Copenhagen where she played Alban Berg's Violin Concerto. The following year, she also had her official debut from the soloist class at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. She has also studied in Germany and in the USA with Joseph Silverstein. She performs regularly as a soloist in Denmark and abroad, often premiering new works. For the last five years, she has also been a member of Ensemble Ars Nova, based in Malmo, Sweden. In the summer of 1995, she received a scholarship for an intensive course in new performance technologies at the Center of New Music and Audio technologies in Berkeley, California. Inspired by the possibilities, she then began giving recitals featuring interactive performance with electronics. She has received the Jacob Gade Prize, the Music Critic's Award, the Bolero Prize from the Danish Broadcasting Company and the Composers Union's Musician Prize of Honor.

Peter Kairoff writes: "The music of George Whitefield Chadwick is not nearly as well known as it ought to be. Although widely respected and admired in his lifetime, his music fell into relative obscurity after his death, and is only recently performed once more with any frequency. His piano music, in particular, has suffered from neglect: very few of the pieces on this disc have ever been recorded before. Why this should be so remains something of a mystery, for many of Chadwick's piano works display the same inventiveness, charm and craftsmanship found in his orchestral and chamber works. The title of this disc - American Character - reflects the fact that all of Chadwick's piano music is written in the style of the 'Character Piece': brief, memorable evocations of one particular mood or image. Chadwick was certainly able to craft large-scale forms when he wanted to, as he did in his symphonies and chamber works to great effect. But his piano works are all on a smaller scale, like Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, Grieg's Lyric Pieces, and so many other piano pieces of the nineteenth century. And like those models. Chadwick's piano music often evokes the world of Art Song, that wonderful and evocative fusion of poetry and music which was so popular in the nineteenth century. Like Art Song, these piano pieces capture a single vivid mood or visual image: a rushing stream, an aspen tree shuddering in the breeze, or even a group of noisy frogs. At his death in 1931, Chadwick was hailed by the influential critic Olin Downes in The New York Times as the composer who "represents most completely the body of serious American music." Taste shifted, of course, and all too soon Chadwick's music was forgotten, or dismissed as old fashioned. But now taste seems to be shifting back, and we are better able to appreciate the creativity, craftsmanship, and charm of a composer who himself was something of an American Character."

The pianist Olga Solovieva writes about the piano music of Boris Tchaikovsky. "If I were to formulate what is most important to me in this music, I would say: sincere, straightforward, and simplicity in expressing ideas, feelings and states of mind that are far from being simple, unambiguous or superficial. A remarkable feature of his works is their saying just what is needed to be said, without any regard for the conventions of music." Once Boris Tchaikovsky was asked about his favorite composer. Having a chance to avoid the question, he nevertheless answered: "If I had to choose, I would choose Mussorgsky." Olga Solovieva graduated from the Russian Academy of Music named after Gnessins (Moscow) in 1998 and took a post-graduate course in the same Academy as an assistant to Professor Leonid Blok in 1998-2000. At the XII International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2002, she won a special prize and was awarded a special diploma "The Best Accompanist" (accompaniment to cello). Currently she teaches at the Gnessins Musical College and works at the Moscow Conservatory.