Catalog

For their fourth recording on Albany Records, the Rawlins Piano Trio has once again uncovered gems of the American repertoire including three world premiere recordings of the Grasse, Risher and Wilson and a commissioned work from the brilliant young composer Daniel Bernard Roumain. Founded in 1987 the Rawlins Piano Trio performs regularly throughout the United States and abroad. They have formed a reputation as a preeminent interpreter of 19th and early 20th century American music.

The highlight of this exceptional program of American piano music is the first complete recording of Dane Rudhyar's Third Pentagram. Its fourth movement, "Stars," is a great American nocturne. Rudhyar lived a fascinating life studying philosophy, Buddhism, alchemy and Asian music. He painted (the cover image of the booklet is one of his works), wrote poetry, science fiction and books on astrology. The disc showcases landmark works by four composers who had contact with each other during the 1920s. Richard Zimdars, a professor of music at the University of Georgia, has performed the works on this compact disc to critical acclaim: "He conjured the mythology of clusters with two "Irish Legends" of Cowell... in Copland's Variations of 1930 he compressed a chiseling technique up to heroic force." --Rhein-Neckar Zeitung, Heidelberg "The most valuable contribution came after intermission with the First Piano Sonata of Ives. Confident performances of this big and difficult work are not common, and Mr. Zimdars gave one." --New York Times

The Atlanta Chamber Winds led by Robert J. Ambrose, offer a sparkling concert of music for wind ensemble by composers who lived and worked in Paris. All but one (the Pierné) are world premiere recordings and offer a substantial addition to the wind ensemble discography. Perhaps most interesting is Francis Chagrin who was born in Bucharest as Alexander Paucker but moved to Paris in 1928 and changed his name. He was most famous for his film music but he also wrote chamber music, two symphonies and songs.

This third recording of the Argentinian composer Florencio Asenjo's music to appear on Albany Records can be described as predominantly "night music," a meditative kind suitable to the dreamy tales selected from The Thousand and One Nights and Don Quijote, with the Sinfonia Concertante as an appropriate nocturnal interlude. Asenjo's music is written in the maximalist style Ñ meaning that his compositions are based on the creation of sequences of themes that, taken in succession, are each a development of the preceding music.

Composer Michael Dellaira and librettist Susan Yankowitz have written Chéri, a musical drama based on the novel by Colette. This recording consists of selections from The Actors Studio Workshop production in 2005. Dellaira chose his favorite musical passages without regard to whether they tell an abridged version of the story but listening to the selections gives one an accurate picture. Dellaira is currently composer-in-residence at The Center for Contemporary Opera and is at work on an opera based on Joseph Conrad's novel, The Secret Agent, with a libretto by J.D. McClatchy.

The major work on this recording of music for wind ensemble by David Maslanka is Unending Stream of Life. Inspired by the hymn tune, All Creatures of Our God and King, Unending Stream of Life consists of seven "songs" for wind ensemble, each embodying the original tune, or relating to it in some way. The title comes from the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh.

The music of the young Iraqi-American composer Karim Al-Zand has been called "strong and startlingly lovely" by the Boston Globe. His compositions are wide-ranging, from settings of classical Arabic poetry to scores for dance and pieces for young audiences. Many of his works explore connections between music and other arts. He holds degrees from Harvard and McGill Universities and is currently on the faculty of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. This recording, his first for Albany Records, shows his love for chamber music and small instrumental ensembles.

Once again, the enterprising Illinois State University Wind Symphony offers two world premiere recordings of the music of the distinguished American composer, David Maslanka. Written as a memorial for flutist Christine Capote, the orchestration for the Trombone Concerto contains one solo cello, representing Capote's cellist husband. Maslanka began the composition process for Symphony No. 8 with meditation and was shown scenes of widespread devastation, but the music is a celebration of life -- new life, continuity from the past to the future, hope, faith, joy, ecstatic vision and fierce determination.

The extraordinary tubist Timothy Buzbee presents a program of new works by American composers for tuba and orchestra. The oldest work was written in 1978 (Broughton) and the most recent in 2004 (York). Buzbee has held principal tuba positions with the Acapulco Philharmonic, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the Gavle Symphony and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. He has toured throughout the United States, Europe, Mexico, Japan and most of Asia giving master classes and performing recitals. He has recorded for BIS, Chandos, Naxos, Sony and Albany Records.

This disc marks the first commercial recording of the music of Donald Sur -- one that is long overdue. Donald Sur was born in Honolulu of Korean parentage. He studied at UCLA, Princeton and Harvard. He resided in the Boston area, teaching occasionally at Harvard, M.I.T. and Tufts. Among contemporary composers in New England, Donald Sur was one of the best known and best loved. His colleagues and friends have universally respected his eclectic style, which reflects a variety of interests but remains unmistakably personal. His music is permeated with a quiet, sometimes bemused expressivity, and simultaneously a structural firmness quite unlike anyone else's today.

Born in Illinois, conductor/composer James Bolle studied at Harvard, Aspen, Antioch and Northwestern University. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by both Franklin Pierce and Notre Dame Colleges. Bolle studied composition with Darius Milhaud and conducting with Richard Lert. His music has been performed in the United States, Israel and Canada. He founded Monadnock Music in 1966 and was music director of the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra for 28 years. He has recorded for Musical Heritage, Monitor, Titanic, Serenus, CRI, Gasparo, Koch International and Albany Records.

Robert Xavier Rodríguez is one of the most significant and often-performed American composers of his generation. His music has been described as "Romantically dramatic" and "richly lyrical" by the press. He first gained international recognition in 1971 when he was awarded the Prix de Composition Musicale Prince Pierre de Monaco for his Trio I heard on this recording. A student of Nadia Boulanger, Rodríguez also studied composition with Jacob Druckman, Bruno Maderna and Elliott Carter. He holds the Endowed Chair of University Professor at The University of Texas at Dallas. His music has been performed all over the world by orchestras and at chamber music festivals. This recording offers a much-welcomed survey of his chamber music.

Shamayim, a film by Elliot Caplan (filmmaker) and David Felder, (composer) began with Felder's work with Nicholas Isherwood on a piece for voice and electronic sounds and Caplan's interest in a series of images having to do with nature. Shamayim uses Hebrew letters as the base structure for the music, while Caplan uses the numeric values of these letters as inspiration for the images. In some cases, Caplan attempted to be as close to the sound as possible in creating the images and in others Felder would compose based on the images.

Violinist Scott Conklin and pianist Alan Huckleberry have assembled an impressive group of new American compositions for violin and piano, which, with the exception of the Bolcom and Sheng, are world premiere recordings. Scott Conklin is Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Iowa School of Music. He appears regularly as a recitalist, soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player and teaching clinician throughout the United States and abroad. He was named the 2008 Iowa String Teachers Studio Teacher of the year and was a featured artist at the 2004 Music Teachers National Association Conference. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, Conklin earned his D.M.A. from the University of Michigan School of Music.

The 99 Beautiful Names of God are the names by which Muslims regard God. Composer J. Mark Scearce was inspired to interpret these names into music from a desire to heal. He created 99 Beautiful Names in order to help a pianist friend, ill from cancer, by giving her a set of small pieces that she could play to bring her back to her instrument and through it, back to health. Pianist John Cheek comments that "Mark's nobilissima visione for solo piano aims to heal and give the listener some soul time: Intimate, respectful ruminations on the Godhead or visions of Almighty Power."

Argentine pianist Rosa Antonelli enjoys an active and varied performance career. Hailed by critics as a leading exponent of Spanish and Latin American music, Ms. Antonelli has premiered the works of important Latin American composers including Piazzolla, Ugarte, Gianneo, and Guastavino, among others. She has performed extensively in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas with orchestras, in recital and as a chamber musician. She served as chairwoman of the piano department at the Provincial Conservatory of Music Alberto Ginestera and was professor of piano at the National University of La Plata in Buenos Aires. She currently teaches at Adelphi University.

Originally from Texas, Turner has resided in Luxembourg for more than 25 years. He is a member of the world-famous American Horn Quartet and a member of the Luxembourg Philharmonic. Turner has been composing since the age of 10. His principal successes as a composer have been in the chamber music genre, more specifically for brass. The works recorded here were all composed by Kerry Turner in the mid-1990s and represent four of his major works Ñ in gorgeous surround sound.

Touch: The Toccata Project is a collection of post-1900 piano toccatas written by American composers. The distinguished pianist Philip Amalong has uncovered many unknown gems of the genre. Amalong is known for his intelligent, passionate interpretations and diverse and challenging repertoire. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Mr. Amalong is an active recitalist and chamber music performer.

The texts for this magnificent oratorio, The Revelations of Divine Love, are adapted primarily from the writings of Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-1416); an excerpt from the Book of Margery Kempe; two poems by Robert Herrick and one by Elizabeth Kirschner. The primary concept underlying this oratorio is the presence of two distinct discourses. One is a sequence taken from Julian's religious visions and the other is a "sonic geography" of Nantucket Island.

Highlighting this recording is the chamber opera, The Birth of Something on a libretto by Will Eno. Commissioned by Da Camera of Houston, The Birth of Something represents an important, elegant, and highly personal contribution to the genre. An associate professor of composition at Rice University, composer Anthony Brandt earned his degrees from the California Institute of the Arts and Harvard. Among his many honors and awards are a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New England Foundation for the Arts. He is co-founder and artistic director of the Houston-based contemporary music ensemble Musiqa.

Composer Tom Cipullo's works have been heard at major concert halls on four continents, from San Francisco to Tel Aviv, from Stockholm to La Paz. He has received numerous commissions and awards including fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony and the Copland House, among many others. He was honored for his contributions to the American art song repertoire with a retrospective concert given by Joy in Singing in 2000. The works on this disc span almost two decades with the first, The Land of Nod, being written in 1993.

By the time composer Victor Herbert began work in 1905 on his comic opera Mlle. Modiste, he already had 14 Broadway shows to his credit and a reputation as America's most prominent composer of stage music. With Metropolitan Opera star Fritzi Scheff in the title role of Fifi, the hatgirl with dreams of a stage career, Mlle. Modiste opened on Christmas Day of 1905 and ran for 202 performances. Herbert's musical score remains one of the supreme gems in the American operetta canon and it is fitting that the Ohio Light Opera celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth with this delightful operetta.

The eminent violinist Andrés Cárdenes offers a world premiere recording of David Stock's Violin Concerto, written for and premiered by him, as well as Aaron Copland's Violin Sonata arranged by Gerald Elias for violin and chamber orchestra along with a staple of the repertoire, Barber's violin concerto. Mr. Cárdenes holds the Rachel Mellon Walton Endowed Concertmaster Chair of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, teaches at Indiana University and maintains an active career as a soloist.

So, what is Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines? Is it an opera? Yes, it is, but more specifically it is "A Romantic Comedy in Music." Based on the play by Clyde Fitch, Sheldon Harnick wrote the libretto for this opera that was first performed in 1975 by the Kansas City Lyric Theatre. Born in 1921, Jack Beeson became interested in opera after listening to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and as a teenager wrote a five-act libretto. His interest in opera revived while teaching at Columbia University and he has gone on to write 11 operas as well as works for orchestra, concert band, vocal and choral groups and solo and chamber music. He is the MacDowell Professor Emeritus of Music at Columbia. This recording, originally issued on Columbia and long out of print, brings this delightful opera back to the catalog.

Composer Mary Lee Taylor Kinosian is also the violinist for the Upton Trio. Her music draws on and celebrates the American experience. The Upton Trio was formed in 1989 to present chamber music concerts for schools in South Carolina. The Trio has performed at Weill Recital Hall in New York City, at the Kennedy Center, and has been featured on NBC Nightly News. The Trio maintains an active commissioning program and has recorded several compact discs. The Upton Trio is permanent artist-in-residence at the Nickelodeon Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina.

This most recent recording from the ever-adventurous Illinois State University Wind Symphony includes a new work by David Maslanka using poems by Illinois native Carl Sandburg. The 11 poems tell both an American, and a very deep human story. Maslanka brought folk songs from the Ruth Crawford Seeger collection into the music enhancing the American spirit of the work. The other major work, Symphony No. 3, is by Kimberly Archer, a former student of Maslanka's and currently am assistant professor of composition at Southern Illinois University.

The four compositions here might seem very disparate: a string quartet; a piece for unaccompanied choir; a sextet with electronic ambience; and finally a trombone solo in which the electronic interventions come right into the foreground. On listening, however, the differences begin to dissolve, leaving behind them the outlines of a distinct creative personality. One feature they share is fearlessness; another is their rhythmic dynamism and another is the containment of rhythmic and harmonic tensions in small motifs. The composer, David Felder, has long been recognized as a leader in his generation of American composers. His works have been featured at many of the leading international festivals for new music and he earns continuing recognition through performance and commissioning programs.

Jeanne Golan gives us performances of music by American composer-pianists who understand and write beautifully for the piano, making a collection that ranges from the virtuosic to the introspective. With American Hand Stands, pianist Jeanne Golan continues her active involvement in the fostering of works by new composers and discovering relatively unknown musical treasures.

Laderman comments, "This ninth cd with Albany Records brings me to the end of a musical exploration started October 1, 2000. This culminating cd, the final three string quartets I will ever compose represent the most recent evolution of my compositional esthetic...The excitement, the fun, the joy that composing has afforded me is due in no small measure to the unknown path traveled each morning as I sit before the blank sheet of music paper. It's a great way to spend a life. I recommend it without reservation."

New remastering and annotation distinguish this reissue of a 1992 release on CRI with the addition of historic private recordings made by Gunnar Johansen of Collins' music. This adds to the existing seven volumes previously released by Albany Records of this Chicago composer's music.

William Kraft (b.1923) has had a long and active career as composer, conductor, timpanist/percussionist and teacher. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara and was a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 26 years, where he also served as composer-in-residence. His music has been performed by major orchestras throughout the United States and he has been commissioned by many distinguished ensembles. This is the sixth disc devoted to his music on Albany Records.

Donald Wheelock is the Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor of Music at Smith College, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1974. His works include five string quartets, several pieces for solo instruments, eleven song cycles, and many larger ensemble and orchestral works. Among his awards are a first prize in a competition sponsored by the Hartford Symphony, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the Guggenheim Foundation. This compact disc, a retrospective recording of Wheelock's music, offers a wide-ranging survey of his music for chamber ensembles.