Catalog

American composer Byron O'Keefe's second recording for Albany Records is a disc of his music for piano. The composer says that "These pieces, with one exception, were composed over a ten year period between 2009 and 2019. While they obviously show the influence of Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, and other composers of that era, I would hope that a certain quality peers through them so that the listener, whether hearing them with 19th century ears, or through more modern sensibilities, would tend to want to say something along the lines of ‘that sounds American'." The pianist is Kateryna Ulezko, a 2007 graduate of the Tchaikovsky National Academy in Kiev.

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.

The wonderful draw of this album, besides the music of Samuel Adler is the great artistry of the various musicians involved in this project. What talent lies in American Orchestras! This disc proves it beyond question. Samuel Adler was born in Mannheim, Germany in 1928 and came to the United States in 1939. He holds a B.M. from Boston University and an M.A. from Harvard University. During his tenure in the U.S. Army, he founded and conducted the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra and because of the Orchestra's great psychological and musical impact on the European cultural scene, he was awarded the Army's Medal of Honor. His catalogue includes more than 400 published works in all media. He has also published three books. From 1966 to 1994 he was professor of composition at the Eastman School. He was the chairman of the department since 1974. He is currently on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music. The pieces on this disc were all composed at the request of and for all the friends Dr. Adler has made in America's Orchestras over the years.

Carver Blanchard is the former lutenist for the Smithsonian Institution and now teaches guitar and lute at Wesleyan University. He has divided this recording into three sections. The first, Audubon, is a tone poem for solo lute by Blanchard inspired by a poem of Robert Penn Warren by the same name. The second section, Heartsongs, is a recreation of a late 19th-early 20th century home musicale and the third is a group of hymns from the 1940 Episcopal hymnal arranged by Blanchard for solo lute.

Composer Matt Cataldi first conceived of these 24 Preludes as live improvisations. Teaching during COVID, he used the Op. 28 Preludes as the basis for a class on improvisation. In the weeks that followed he decided to formally plan a composition and over the next two years, he arranged and recorded them. His goal was to create unique and innovative pieces that would stand on their own while still being related and inspired by Chopin's Preludes. Dr. Matthew Cataldi enjoys a versatile career as a soloist, collaborative artist, conductor, composer, and educator. He studied at Florida State University as well as Indiana University. He currently is on the faculty at Radford University, where he is the director of piano studies.

Over the last four decades as a composer, Robert Sirota has developed a distinctive voice, clearly discernable in all of his work. The New York Times has described his style as "fashioned with the clean angular melodies, tart harmonies, lively sncopations and punchy accents of American Neo-Classicism." His music has garnered praise from audiences and critics alike throughout the United States and Abroad and he is the recipient of numerous commissions and awards. A graduate of Juilliard, Oberlin, and Harvard, Sirota studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. He served as Director of The Johns Hopkins University's Peabody Institute, Director of Boston University's School of Music and most recently as President of Manhattan School of Music. Married to the noted organist Victoria Sirota, Sirota has collaborated over the years with her in creating a body of work for organ, as well as liturgical and concert works for organ with choir, orchestra, and chamber ensembles. All the works on this recording were composed for, and are performed by Ms. Sirota.

James Yannatos was born and educated in New York City. His teachers were Boulanger, Dallapiccola, Milhaud and Hindemith in composition and William Steinberg and Leonard Bernstein for conducting. He has been Music Director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra since 1964. A word now about the soloists who appear on this recording. Martha Babcock is the principal cellist of the Boston Symphony, Edwin Barker the principal doublebass with the Boston Symphony and for many years Doriot Anthony Dwyer was the principal flute for the same Orchestra. Eric Ruske was named Associate Principal Horn of the Cleveland Orchestra when he was only 20.

Renowned harpist Emily Mitchell has long championed the music of Gary Schocker. To date, Schocker has written more than 125 pieces for the harp, so it becomes a challenge to choose which to record. Each is unique and beautifully written. Schocker, a flutist/composer, is an outstanding musician of outstanding versatility. He enjoys an international career as a flute soloist, and his compositions include sonatas and chamber works for most instruments of the orchestra. He has also written several musicals and is now studying to be a harpist. Harpist Emily Mitchell has been heard worldwide to critical acclaim as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. She has been profiled on The Today Show and Good Morning America, among many others. After performing and teaching in New York City for 30 years, she relocated to Texas, where she is now on the faculties of Stephen F. Austin State and Sam Houston State Universities. Her discography includes her popular Celtic harp recordings for RCA Victor as well as four recordings on Albany Records of the music of Gary Schocker.

The programmatic character of the First Sonata for Piano by Charles Ives according to John Kirkpatrick, has “the family together in the 1st and 5th movements; the boy is sowing his oats in the ragtimes (2nd and 4th movements; and there is parental anxiety in the third movement. The hymns quoted in each specific movement strengthen the programmatic aspect of the sonata and structure the composition as a large overall five-part arch form. The First Sonata is a landmark of American piano literature, although less well known than Ives’ Concord Sonata. John Noel Roberts has demonstrated his interpretive skills, technical ability, and wide-ranging piano repertoire in solo and concerto performances around the world. A graduate of Eastman and Yale, he was formerly artist in residence and head of music at the Western Australian Conservatorim of Music. He has also served on the faculties at Furman, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Mercer University, Stephen F. Austin University, and Concordia College. He currently serves on the faculty at Our Lady of the Lake University.

Like all of Wuorinen's music from the past three decades, the duos on this recording take the long view of musical history and align themselves not only with its expressive traditions, but much more importantly, with its secure and sustained future. The spare utterance of those works of the great European tradition that are composed for only two musicians, leave no margin for error: all is exposed when writing for two contrasting instruments. These duos, spanning slightly more than a quarter century of Wuorinen's oeuvre, never lapse in their intensity and invention. They display an impressive fecundity of sources and outward forms.

Pianist Mirian Conti reflects on the joys of her own childhood and her reasons for making this recording of music written about children: "As we travel around the world, the sounds, images, colors, smells, and first emotions are experienced by children pretty much in the same way in every corner of the planet. The composers represented in this recording, coming from six different countries, no doubt experienced their lives as children, and also looked back at that life as adults. The compositions here are about children, not for, children Their music is about remembering those first feelings of awe, wonder, fear, desire, and the many doubts about the immediate future the sounds of our music are strongly engraved in our genetic makeup -- the lullabies, the popular songs of our times, or the songs at school The collective songs and dances of a culture learned as a child are part of that child's musical DNA." Born in Argentina, Mirian Conti is a graduate of Juilliard and a Yamaha Artist. She has served on the Faculty of the Evening Division at The Juilliard School since 2007. She is a prolific recording artist who has recordings on the Island, Albany, Koch, Toccata, XLNT, Parnassus, and Steinway labels. As a soloist, she has appeared around the world with many orchestras and is a much sought after juror for international competitions. Among her most recent awards is the Isaac Albeniz Medal.

The Scott/Garrison Duo, clarinetist Shannon Scott and flutist Leonard Garrison, has performed together since 1988, with a long commitment to contemporary American music. They have been featured at many national conferences of the National Flute Association, College Music Society, and National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors. Scott is on the faculty at Washington State University and is principal clarinet of the Walla Walla Symphony and the Eastern Music Festival, while Garrison teaches at the University of Idaho, is flutist in the Northwest Wind Quintet and principal flute of the Walla Walla Symphony. In this, their third recording for Albany Records, the duo performs works by American composers.

Christopher O'Riley combines a piano technique of remorseless brilliance with a fastidious musical intelligence. He has asserted himself as one of the most formidable and best-loved pianists of his generation. He appears throughout the United States and Europe as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra, and chamber musician. His repertory encompasses the literature of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. O'Riley, who was born in Chicago and reared in Pittsburgh, launched his career by winning prizes in the major international piano competitions. A pianist in the grand manner, he especially favors the colorful, large-scale works of the uniquely pianistic master composers like Chopin, Liszt, Ravel, Scriabin, and Schumann. O'Riley's playing is, of course, the product of his distinct personality. But there can be little doubt that his profile as an artist is also the result of the dramatic tension between the stern conservatism of his musical training and the sensuous flamboyance of his own innate temperament. He is at once architect, dramatist, colorist, and dancing master; he is the intellectual's hedonist.

Faculty colleagues at Georgia State University, saxophonist Jan Berry Baker and clarinetist Kenneth Long perform a program of contemporary American compositions, the oldest of which by Lee Hyla was written in 1992. Works by Nickitas Demos, Lansing McLoskey and Perry Goldstein were all completed in 2011 and Gregory Wanamaker's Duo Sonata was written in 2002. Ms. Baker has won top prizes in numerous competitions including the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the North American Saxophone Alliance Concerto Competition and the Johann Strauss Society competition. She has been featured as a concerto soloist with several orchestras in Canada and the United States and with the National Symphony of the Ukraine. An advocate of new music, Baker is Co-Artistic Director and saxophonist with the Atlanta-based new music ensemble Bent Frequency. Clarinetist Kenneth Long enjoys a multifaceted performing career including orchestral, chamber music and solo engagements. He is a member of the clarinet section of the Utah Festival Opera Orchestra and has performed with many of the Southeast's preeminent ensembles including the Atlanta, Sarasota and Charleston symphonies. Principal clarinet of Bent Frequency, Long also is principal clarinetist of the Atlanta Chamber Winds.

The program for Close to Home began when clarinetist Michael Rowlett met two composers whose music intrigued him — Valerie Coleman and Eric Mandat. He gathered works by other American composers, finding similarities among the diverse pieces with inspiration for the compositions coming from a particular place, a moment or a memory. Michael Rowlett is on the faculty at the University of Mississippi and was a semi-finalist in the ICA's 1998 Young Artist competition. He has appeared as a concerto soloist with orchestras in Tennessee, North Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi and at the conventions of the International Clarinet Association. He studied at Florida State University where he received his D.M, the University of Iowa and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His collaborator on this recording, pianist Stacy Rodgers is on the faculty at the University of Mississippi.

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.

What a pleasure it is for Albany to be able to bring these wonderful pieces to the musical public. Bolcom tells this story: “One day in the fall of 1967 I had lunch with Norman Lloyd, then head of the music division for the Rockefeller Foundation, who mentioned having heard of a ragtime opera by Scott Joplin. Who is that? I asked – few people in 1967 knew the name Scott Joplin – and Norman told me Joplin was the composer of the “Maple Leaf Rag’ but that his opera existed only in legend. For some reason I immediately went on the trail of Treemonisha, only to find that no one even at the Library of Congress, Lincoln Center, or the Schomburg Collection had it. That is, until I asked my colleague Rudi Blesh at Queens College; we had barely ever said hello before as we rushed in and out of the same office on the way to teaching, but one week I asked him if he knew where I could find a copy of the opera, as all the usual suspects had nothing. When he said, “I have a copy of the vocal score. Shall I bring it next week?” I almost fell off my chair. From this happy event came an exploration of Joplin’s rags (courtesy of Rudi’s friend Max Morath) as well as the whole field of turn-of-the last-century piano ragtime. Soon after, Joshua Rifkin recorded the Joplin rags and Gunther Schuller laid the period instrumentations of Joplin onto disc; Joplin’s obscurity would be no more. What may be less well known is that from about 1968 on a whole group of young American composers, Peter Winkler, William Albright and several others, joined me in writing new traditional style rags. Bill Albright and I would send each other rags by mail like chess problems. It was all delightful for us (playing these new-old pieces in concert elicited warm responses from audiences), but I think we all felt the real impetus from our picking up a dropped thread of our emerging American tradition. Few of us would continue to write rags after about 1975, but the Ragtime Revival was certainly the beginning of American composers’ serious absorption of our own popular sources into our music in an unself-conscious way.” This wonderful two CD set should find a large audience.

Debra Torok is the recognized authority on Dello Joio's piano music. She has talked extensively with the composer on how his music should be performed and is currently compiling and editing Dello Joio's complete piano music. Dello Joio's distinguished musical career began at the age of 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, he was born on January 24, 1913 in New York. 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 musicians and music in his home. In 1939, he was accepted as a scholarship student at Juilliard, where he studied with Bernard Wagenaar. In 1941, he went to study with Paul Hindemith who told him that "your music is lyrical by nature, don't ever forget that." In the latter part of the forties, Dello Joio was considered one of America's leading composers and by the fifties had gained international recognition. He won the Pulitzer in 1957 for his Meditations on Ecclesiastes and an Emmy Award for his music for 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. In 1999, at the age of 86, he continues to compose with no signs of retiring. He is frequently being commissioned, as his music remains in constant demand. There is some wonderful music on this disc.

Paul Ramsier was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and showed promise as a pianist at the age of five and began composing at the age of nine. At 16 he entered the University of Louisville School of Music and then went to Juilliard where he studied piano with Beveridge Webster. At Florida State University he studied composition with Ernst von Dohnanyi. In his early career in New York City, he was a staff pianist with the New York City Ballet where he was influenced by Balanchine and Stravinsky. During this period he studied composition with Alexei Haieff. He is a composer of Orchestral, opera and choral works, but his chief contribution to 20th century music is a body of work for the double bass. On this disc we have his four major works for this instrument gathered on one CD, including one of the most requested works from the back Louisville catalog, The Road to Hamelin, a most popular work for children, which, with more exposure will become as popular as Peter and The Wolf. Please note that two of the compositions are performed by the great double bassist, Gary Karr.

For more than 40 years, Lynn Klock has been an enthusiastic participant in new music for the saxophone. He has premiered more than 50 compositions written for and dedicated to him and this cd of world premiere recordings highlights this aspect of his career. All of the compositions on the cd are the result of friendships and musical collaborations between the composer and Mr. Klock and were written specifically for Klock or one of his students.

Olivier Messiaen was one of the most influential teachers of the 20th century. He taught an international group of students who would go on to become influential composers and musical leaders, including William Bolcom, Karlheinz Stockhausn, Peter Maxwell Davies, Oliver Knussen, Iannis Xenakis, Quincy Jones, and the three composers on this recording. Pianist Matthew Odell demonstrates the importance of Messiaen's teaching contrasting his music with three of Messiaen's students. Matthew Odell has won acclaim for performances of a wide range of repertoire as a solo recitalist, soloist with orchestra, and chamber musician. In addition to performances in Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Merkin Hall, Mr. Odell has appeared at major venues around the world, including Paris, London, Moscow, and Helsinki, among many others. Mr. Odell served on the coaching faculty of the Académie internationale d'été in Nice, France.

Neil Thornock's Cosmology is a set of seven movements, each with a title and scriptural epigraph, but with no pauses to separate them, and a metaphysical program to unite them. That program depicts a soul's cosmic journey via a set of metaphors. Neil Thornock, on the faculty at the Brigham Young University School of Music, has composed works for chamber and orchestral ensembles, electronic media, and a variety of keyboard instruments. His music has been performed in recitals and conferences throughout the United States and Europe. Pianist Hilary Demske has received widespread critical acclaim for her performances. She is regularly invited to perform in prestigious venues across multiple continents and has performed in China annually since 2011, appearing in more than 30 cities on multiple tours. An avid performer of contemporary music, Demske is on the faculty at Utah Valley University.

The saxophone has been an active participant in new developments in classical, jazz and popular music, especially in the past half-century. Equally at home in Classical music and jazz, Noah Getz explores the mixture of these two genres from the classical perspective. Crosscurrents is a diverse exploration of contemporary classical repertoire containing a variety of jazz elements.

Morris Rosenzweig was born in New Orleans, where he grew up among the tailors, merchants and strong-willed women of an extended family which has lived in southern Louisiana since the mid 1890s. His works have been widely presented throughout the United States, as well as in South America, Europe, Mexico and Israel. His catalog of works includes pieces for orchestra, various chamber ensembles, compositions for live instruments and electronics, two song cycles, two piano cycles, solo pieces and one opera. He was educated at the Eastman School of Music, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Points and Tales is a cyclic composition for piano in 12 movements. What is striking about the work is the overall austerity of its language: its searching, spare and unadorned expression. The listener is invited to savor the beauty of harmonies exquisitely voiced, the play of simple, unhurried melodies, and the pure tones of the piano. A Certain Round of Events, based on original, Italian and Chinese texts and words of Rilke, consists of nine songs plus a prelude, interlude and postlude, and Rosenzweig conceives of the texts in terms of three concurrent "senses of time": subjective, seasonal and unchanging.

The significance of this four-volume recording project is its celebration of 20th century compositions for piano and some Chamber works written by Americans of African descent that have never been recorded or have had limited recorded performance. The contributions of the American composer of African descent to classical music is rarely addressed, and as a result, this music remains virtually unknown. Of the estimated 300 American composers of African descent listed in Readings in Black American Music: A Biographical Dictionary, few are known by most musicians, and little of their music is heard in concerts or on radio today. Furthermore, recordings of their classical music are difficult to locate because so very little of the music is available on compact disc. This compilation of works will be vital in addressing this problem. The works presented on this disc include a unique historical content and a variety of styles both quoted and extracted from the various traditional idioms of the composer's heritage. The selected works presented in this first volume are representative of many 20th century styles and compositional ideas; the 12-tone serial techniques of Hale Smith, the multimetric and asymmetrical writings of Adolphus Hailstork, the Neo-Classic style of Roger Dickerson, the polymetric writings of Jeffrey Mumford, and the Cuban-African traditions of Tania Leon.

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

A program of transcriptions and original works for trombone of fantasies is performed by Rick Stout. Rick has a distinguished performing career both as a member of The Cleveland Orchestra and through his many solo and chamber music performances. He is on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music where he directs brass chamber music and is a graduate of The Curtis Institute. He is joined by pianist Christina Dahl who is director of chamber music for Stony Brook University. The two collaborators commissioned Caleb Burhans' Phantasie for this recording in honor of their first recorded collaboration.

Horn soloist Bernhard Scully has been described as among the elite musicians of his generation, both as a performer and a pedagogue. Equally at home with solo, orchestral, and chamber music, his diverse performance experience includes positions as horn player with the Canadian Brass, principal horn with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and horn player with the Summit Brass. Among his many awards are top honors at numerous competitions, most notably becoming the first classical brass player to win a McKnight Fellowship for Performing Musicians. A horn professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Scully studied at Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He and colleague Joanne Minnetti perform French masterpieces for horn and piano.

Violinist and composer Michelle Ross is unique as both a solo artist and collaborative visionary. In 2013, she had her Carnegie Hall debut with Maestro Harry Bicket, and her European debut as both soloist and conductor with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris as part of Play/Direct, in Cité de la Musique. She is the recipient of the 2012 Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund for the Performing and Visual Arts. A noted soloist and chamber musician, Ross is also in demand as guest concertmaster around the world with recent highlights including appearances with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre National du Capitol de Toulouse and the Orchestre d'Auvergne. Ross is the Artistic Director and Founder of Music in the Mountains. A graduate of Juilliard and Columbia, her teachers include Dorothy DeLay and Itzhak Perlman. Ross says that "As a performer, my moments of greatest joy occur when I play Bach. I love to bring this music into unusual settings, allowing an intersection between countless strangers and this infinite plane of beauty Every moment with this music, I learn something new about myself as an artist. One must be completely honest in front of Bach, and bring courage and love to this music."

In this collection of piano works, the composers have figuratively entered the world of a scenic painting. With the mixture of new and old, the textures, techniques, and sonic worlds of these pieces speak to one another in a unique continuum. Praised by the New York Times as a "fiery musician" whose playing is "vigorous and passionate," Qing Jiang is a versatile musician who is equally known as a performer, teacher, and as an advocate of contemporary music. She has appeared in major concert halls in the U.S. and the U.K. and collaborated with ensembles such as the Juilliard, Shanghai, and Left Bank string quartets. Born in China, she studied at Arizona State University, Juilliard, and the New England Conservatory. She is on the faculty at Bucknell University.

A superlative program of piano music by American composers is offered by pianist Heidi Williams. The oldest work on the program dates from 1988 (William Bolcom) and the most recent was written in 2009 (Daniel Crozier), giving us a snapshot of what American composers have been writing for piano in the past 25 years. Praised by New York critic Harris Goldsmith for her ¨dazzling performances¨ and ¨impeccable solistic authority,¨ American pianist Heidi Louise Williams has appeared in performances across the United States and internationally. Her concert schedule has included solo and chamber music recitals at the Kennedy Center, the Chicago Cultural Center, Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Brevard Summer Music Festival, the Peabody Conservatory of Music and a debut recital in St. Louis as winner of its 2000 Artist Presentation Society Auditions, as well as concerto appearances with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the Oregon Symphony, and others. Williams is on the piano faculty at the Florida State University College of Music. She completed her BM, MM, and DMA degrees at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Maryland.

Like volume one of East Meets West, this recording is a collection of new music for clarinet by Chinese composers who have lived, studied, and worked overseas. The compositions combine Chinese cultural elements with Western art music to create a unique intersection of cultures through the use of tone colors produced by the combination of clarinet with Chinese instruments, sound effects created with the use of both Chinese and Western musical forms and harmonic language, and a blend of classical and contemporary musical idioms. All the music on this recording was written or arranged for clarinetist Jun Qian. On the music faculty at Baylor University, Jun Qian is principal clarinetist of the Waco Symphony. Previously he was principal clarinetist of the Shanghai Philharmonic and studied at the Shanghai Conservatory and Eastman. He has concertized throughout China, and has performed and taught in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Canada.