Catalog

Irwin Bazelon's percussion writing is known and performed by percussionists the world over and is truly unique. With this recording, Albany Records continues its commitment to present Bazelon's works (the sixth since his death) and the first to be devoted solely to chamber works with percussion being the binding element.

This CD of recent piano music by Allen Shawn provides the opportunity for repeated consideration of his very personal, confessional approach to the piano, as well as the sequel to musical topics more implicit than explicit in his first piano solo recording on Albany Records. Shawn's music reveals a unique and complete musical universe, the result of perfect fusion of the musical sensibility of the composer and the intellectual image of the work. Shawn's rare gift is his ability to confide his innermost thoughts and feelings through music that is at once well-crafted and emotionally accessible.

Hailed as "one of the foremost performers and teachers of trumpet in the U.S.," Richard Stoelzel maintains an active career as an international soloist, chamber and orchestral musician. He began his career as solo cornet with the U.S. Coast Guard Band. As a soloist he has performed throughout the U.S. and abroad including three tours of China and has been named Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Shen Yang Conservatory of Music. This is his second recording for Albany Records.

Mathias Wexler comments in the notes that "Perhaps a musician's greatest responsibility is finding and championing important new works, forging an ongoing relationship with the music of his time and expanding the repertoire for future generations. If he is very lucky, the work is a great pleasure both artistically and personally. In certain extraordinary circumstances, the music also speaks profoundly to him and allows him to shine as a performer..." This is certainly true in the case of these five new works for solo cello.

Born in New York City, Alan Seidler studied at The Juilliard School, but after leaving Juilliard, his career took a left turn and he soon became one of the pioneers of the Blues and Ragtime revival of the 1970s. The most successful of his recordings from this era was The Duke of Ook, which became and still remains a cult classic. In the late 1980s he returned to composition and in the past decade, he has focused primarily on vocal and choral works.

Brian Hulse says in his notes on the music: "If the music on this recording is "for" anything, besides simply being for itself, it is for remembering the quirky, the impure, the rogue, and the ambulant of music. It is for a vision of music as a theater of sound-sensation in which what happens is not determined in advance and not bound by neat categories." Hulse, a PhD in composition from Harvard is currently assistant professor of music at the College of William & Mary. Among his compositions are numerous chamber and choral works, film scores and several chamber operas.

This recording is a joint effort between American composers with ties to the Midwestern states and Russian performers associated with the Moscow Conservatory Studio for New Music, and as such represents a unique collaboration meant to deepen artistic and cultural bonds between the two nations in this early portion of the 21st century.

For her third recording on Albany Records, Lisa comments: "This album presents a number of songs I wrote both on my own and in partnership with some terrific musicians with whom I have performed over many years..." New songs written for this album include Manhattan Under the Paris Moon, In the Shadow of a Crow and I Don't Believe in Romance. Kirchner performs an international jazz repertoire embracing American standards, French classics and Brazilian music. She is a singer, songwriter and actress equally at home in clubs and in theatre.

The 11 works on this compact disc represent four generations of American composers and a compositional time span of eight decades. In the ensemble repertoire for voice and flute, only Corigliano's Three Irish Folksong Settings and Copland's As It Fell Upon a Day enjoy wide recognition; the remaining works are relatively unknown and deserving of a broader audience. The artists comment: "In selecting music for this disc we sought works that define skillful text setting and showcase contrasting compositional styles. Just as American "character" defies definition because of its rich cultural blend, the American musical "style" comprises myriad voices--each distinct in its conviction." Five of these compositions are world premiere recordings Ñ Martin Amlin's Two Songs on Poems of Anne Fessenden; Kenneth Gaburo's Cantilena One for solo soprano; Braxton Blake's Three Songs on Poems by Marianne Moore; Ralph Shapey's Lullaby; Scott Gendel's Patterns; and Kurt Stallmann's Lumina II for solo flute.

Dominick Argento, considered by many to be America's pre-eminent composer of lyric opera, was born in 1927. He studied at Peabody and the Eastman School of Music. He is professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, where he taught for 40 years. Although Argento's instrumental works have received consistent praise, the great majority of his music is vocal. This emphasis on the human voice is a facet of the powerful dramatic impulse that drives nearly all of his music.

George Enescu was an extraordinary musician. One of the most acclaimed violinists of the last century, he was also an accomplished pianist, conductor, and composer. As a composer he is still too little known and his music too little analyzed outside his native Romania. His music exhibits a very personal blend of time-honored procedures, forward-thinking techniques, and ethnic intimations. The works on this recording belong to the last period of his career and show a rare maturity and depth that contribute to a unique and sometimes difficult to define language.

The origin of this project lies in a grant obtained by flutist Asako Arai for commissioning and performing four new works. After the pieces were performed, Arai conceived the idea of making a recording and presenting a wide panorama of music for flute from both sides of the border. Moreover, there are no strict borders as far as musical languages and chronology are concerned with the six works. Not only is there a time frame of almost half a century between the earliest and the latest of these pieces, but there is also a wide spectrum of technical and expressive means.

Lee Hoiby is widely recognized as one of the most significant composers in the genre of the American art song -- a genre to which he has been contributing for more than half a century. His affinity for setting texts of great literary value, and of considerable variety, is evident in the songs recorded here. From the haunting melodies of Winter Song to the tongue-in-cheek drama of Jabberwocky; from the biting ironies of The Message to the sweet simplicity of The Shepherd; and from the densely chromatic textures of Evening to the charming humor of The Serpent -- Hoiby's prodigious gifts for lyricism, atmosphere, and characterization as a song composer are much in evidence in this collection. Exquisitely performed by Ursula Kleinecke-Boyer and Maria Perez-Goodman, this is the only recording available dedicated exclusively to Hoiby's songs.

Jerome Kern wrote The Cabaret Girl at the suggestion of London producer George Grossmith who, teaming with famed literary figure P.G. Wodehouse, provided the book and lyrics. The show opened at London's Winter Garden theater on September 18, 1922. The show ran for 361 performances and showcases both the unparalleled wit and sentimentality of Wodehouse and the inexhaustible melodic genius of Jerome Kern.

The release of So Many Journeys marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare's sonnets. This recording, performed by members of The Shakespeare Concerts, contains two of the 26 sonnets set by composer Joseph Summer, an unabashed Oxfordian, as well as pieces from his opera Hamlet. The Sonata is a set of variations based on a baritone aria from Summer's opera Courting Disaster.

First performed in 1986 by the Des Moines Opera with Jacque Trussel as Caliban, the opera has come full circle with this recording of the Purchase Opera where Jacque Trussel served as director. Hoiby, born in Wisconsin in 1926, was infused with operatic ambitions during his studies at Curtis with Gian Carlo Menotti. He has written a number of operas, including several on Albany Records (A Month in the Country, Bon Appetit!, and This Is the Rill Speaking).

A stunning program of works for soloists with wind ensemble is presented in this recording made by the University of Arizona Wind Ensemble. Acclaimed saxophonist Timothy McAllister performs a work by Daniel McCarthy inspired by the funk-horn band, Tower of Power. Brian Luce, a superlative flutist, performs in one of a handful of works written for flute with wind ensemble, while the great Jonathan Haas is joined by timpanist Gary Cook in performing Glass' work for 14 timpani with wind ensemble, creating a new sound out of the incredibly large sonorities.

John Musto's one-act opera, Later The Same Evening is set in Manhattan in the 1950s and was inspired by a series of paintings by Edward Hopper. Later the Same Evening enjoyed a New York premiere at the Manhattan School of Music. The New York Times lauded "Mr. Musto's musical-theater-like score, which features recurring marimba riffs, chromatic interludes, fugal passages and hints of blues and jazz." Musto's music displays a rare and creative integration of all the idioms available to the 21st century composer.

Viva Concertante! showcases works for chamber orchestra involving soloistic display, and features the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Conservatory Studio for New Music, as well as the University of Iowa's Center for New Music Ensemble. The compositions were either written or revised in the last dozen years. And just as old- and new-world connections are forged by means of the performing groups, a like situation extends to the ethnicity of the composers, with Italian, German, and English contributors as well as Chinese-, German-, Macedonian- and Welsh-Americans.

Five works for solo piano plus a sonata for two pianos by the distinguished American composer Adolphus Hailstork are performed by Andrey Kasparov and Oksana Lutsyshyn. Sharing the honors on the solo piano pieces, they join forces for the Sonata for Two Pianos. Hailing from Armenian and Ukrainian families, these musicians were educated at the Moscow State Conservatory and came to the United States in the 1990s. They presently teach at Old Dominion University where they are colleagues of the composer.

The performers, Mary Nessinger, mezzo-soprano and Jeanne Golan, piano asked ten American composers from a variety of backgrounds to write songs in response to the ten individual songs that make up two visionary cycles from the cusp of the last century, Claude Debussy's Trois Chansons de Bilitis and Alban Berg's Sieben Frühe Lieder. The juxtapositions between the commissioned songs range from natural progressions to shocks of contrast in a way that the performers had not imagined, but that honor the pacing of the original cycles to an uncanny extent.

Peter Child is Professor of Music and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT. A graduate of Reed College and Brandeis University, Child has received fellowships and commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and the Harvard Musical Association, among others. His compositions have been awarded prizes from Tanglewood, East and West Artists, WGBH Radio, and New England Conservatory, to mention just a few. Child is presently composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic and his music was featured at the Lontano Festival of American Music in London in 2006 and 2008.

Gary Smart notes: The three duo sonatas on this recording are "hot" in that they flow out of the American jazz tradition, "sonatas" in that they utilize classical sonata form and its associated developmental techniques. Composer Gunther Schuller coined the term "third-stream music" to label the musical fusion of the jazz and classical musical traditions. I like his term. I think it suits these sonatas of mine better than most other labels."

With sparkling articulation, pianist Pola Baytelman probes deeply to the heart of whatever music she plays. Born in Chile, Baytelman made her debut with the Chilean Symphony Orchestra at age 17, and has since played with numerous orchestras. She studied at the University of Chile's National Conservatory as well as at New England Conservatory and the University of Texas, Austin. Baytelman is an active recitalist and particularly enjoys playing music by women and by Spanish and Latin American composers, as this beautiful recording so clearly demonstrates.

Called a "composer to watch" by Opera News, Elena Ruehr's music has been performed by the Borremeo String Quartet, the Shanghai String Quartet, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (where she was composer in residence from 2000-2005), and the Cincinnati Symphony, among others. Dr. Ruehr was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute in 2009 and she teaches in the music department at MIT.

Lori Laitman, one of America's most prolific and widely performed composers of art song comments: "The songs on this CD are for solo voice and piano, and all have been composed since 2000, making them 21st century art song. The poems were written between 1612 and 2008...My goal is to create dramatic music to express and magnify the meaning of the poem...Each song becomes my musical interpretation of the poem."

The extraordinary pianist Donna Amato presents a disc of the piano music of Arnold Rosner that includes five world premiere recordings. Born in 1945 Arnold Rosner has pursued a conservative but highly individual style, and his works have been widely performed, recorded, and reviewed. His music is known for it's gorgeous, long-breathed tunes and its powerful emotional appeal.

A singular figure in today's new music scene, Janet Maguire was the recipient of the 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship. Distinguished by her arrangement of the Finale of Giacomo Puccini's Turandot and by her own opera, Hérésie, Maguire has worked in a wide variety of genres. Maguire was music critic for the Paris Herald Tribune and founded a new music ensemble in Venice, Musica in Divenire.

Although still in his early thirties, the Thai-born composer Narong Prangcharoen has established an international reputation and is recognized as one of Thailand's leading composers. He has received many international prizes, including the Alexander Zemlinsky International Composition Competition Prize. Prangcharoen's earliest composition studies were in Thailand. He later studied at Illinois State University and at the University of Missouri in Kansas City with Chen Yi. This recording contains his better-known works and offers a snapshot of this young composer's gift.

This second recording on Albany Records of the music of the distinguished American-born Canadian composer Michael Horwood features his music for percussion. The inspiration for the series of Piece Percussioniques, as well as the impetus for composing for percussion ensemble, came from two influential sources for the teen-aged Horwood: the innovative programming of Lukas Foss during his tenure with the Buffalo Philharmonic and from Horwood's exposure to the music of Edgard Varèse. These works for percussion ensemble span Horwood's compositional career: Piece No. 1 was written when he was 17 and Piece No. 6 is his most recent and final composition.

Pianist Jeffrey Middleton, a champion of Joseph Fennimore's music, received his DMA from Yale. His career has included chamber music, vocal coaching and accompanying, solo performances and teaching. Of the music, Phillip Kennicott notes: "Fennimore's insistence on his right to work within a tradition, even if out of fashion, was pioneering. But his compositional style has undergone continual metamorphosis, and today the percussive aspects of the piano are more integral to his music."

John Melby's musical development has followed a circuitous path that might not have been expected to lead to music for digital computer. Trained as an orchestral musician, he spent many years in the trombone section listening. He trained at Princeton in composition after graduating from Curtis. He was intrigued with Babbitt's exploitation of live performance coupled with synthesized accompaniments and before too long, found himself drawn to an electronically-synthesized orchestra. He has written a series of concerti for live instruments and computer, with three of them represented on this recording.