Catalog

For three decades, the multi-gifted Anthony Newman has been in the public eye as one of America's leading organists and harpsichordists, and as a Bach specialist, composer, teacher, and scholar. About this world premiere recording Mr. Newman says, "The work is dedicated to the memory of Nicole Brown Simpson, and written as a statement against the spousal abuse of women. From the mountain of trial transcripts, as well as books and articles written about Nicole and O.J. Simpson, Raoul Cansino and I have written a libretto in 2 acts: the first tragic, the second comic. The individual songs are introduced by a speaker /reciter, accompanied by timpani, much in the manner of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. The recording presents a chamber version of this work, with the trial scene curtailed to accommodate the time constraints of a single CD." And the brilliant American composer, Lukas Foss has commented: "Nicole, an amazing musical in the Baroque style! No one recreates the Baroque with Mr. Newman's ease and musicality, modernizing it at the same time. A stunning creative achievement, and the perfect cross-over to the 21st century. Bravo!"

The works on this recording by Richard Toensing are of the highest order for both the wind ensemble and the soloists. Toensing's muse is an ambitious and generous one, requiring extreme competence of musicianship, mastery of varieties of style and great sensitivity. He shows himself to be a master of all the sonic possibilities available to him. A graduate of St. Olaf College and the University of Michigan, Toensing is on the faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has won numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim and the Joseph H. Bearnes Prize from Columbia University. Mezzo-soprano Erica Washburn is director of choral activities at the New England Conservatory. Soprano Bethany Worrell is the soprano artist-in-residence with the Metropolitan Chorale of Brookline. William Drury is New England Conservatory's associate conductor of wind ensembles and the conductor of the Southern New Hampshire University Orchestra. As a conductor, he has commissioned and premiered works by numerous American composers, including Richard Toensing.

Violist George Taylor and guitarist Nicholas Goluses, both faculty members at the Eastman School of Music, offer a lovely program of music for viola and guitar. The recording leads us through the various phases and moods of night from the first shadow to darkness to the sounds of night. The performers capture all the moods and colors, the timbre and sonority of the viola and guitar blending and interweaving beautifully. Their interpretations of these works are characterized by elegance, grace, warmth and humor.

In his tragically short career (he died at age 18), Aliosha Nikolaev (1959-1977) wrote not only piano music but two Romances based on texts of Pushkin, a quintet for two violins, one viola, and two cellos, a trio for two flutes and cello, and in 1984 a suite for oboe and piano. Many of Aliosha Nikolaev's compositions present to a large extent, vivid and colorful interpretations of Russian folk fairy tales, of which The Tin Kingdom is an example. The Cat's Hut is based on a play written for the children by Russian poet Samuel Marshak. Boris Tishchenko was born in Leningrad in 1939 and is a graduate of the Leningrad Conservatory. His list of credit sis in keeping with his status of one of the geatest composers of our time. He is a recipient of hte title People's Artist of Russia and of the Russian Federation's prestgious Glinka Award. He is a master of the large forms, having written one opera, one operetta, three ballets.

Violins of Hope is an artistic and educational project composed of instruments that were owned by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust. Violins in the collection were played in the concentration camps and ghettos, providing a source of comfort for some and a means of survival for others. Above all, the instruments represented strength and optimism for the future during mankind's darkest hour. The project was founded by Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein, Israeli luthiers who collect and refurbish the instruments and bring them to communities around the world. Violinist Niv Ashkenazi was invited to join other musicians performing on instruments from this collection and now holds one of the instruments on a long-term loan. This violin, made between 1900-1929 in Eastern Europe or Germany, was used by Ashkenazi for this recording. Ashkenazi has chosen Jewish repertoire from throughout the lifetime of the violin. Like the instruments in the Violins of Hope collection, most of these composers were affected by the Holocaust. Virtuoso violinist Niv Ashkenazi has captivated audiences with his heartfelt musicianship and emotional performances. An accomplished soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician, he has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School. Pianist Matthew Graybil has performed throughout the United States and Canada since making his orchestral debut at age 14. The recipient of numerous awards and prizes, he is a graduate of The Juilliard School.

By the latter part of the forties, Norman Dello Joio was considered one of America's leading composers, and by the fifties he had gained international recognition. In 1948 and again in 1962 he won the New York Music Critic's Circle Award and in 1957 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Meditations on Ecclesiastes for string orchestra. The same year he also won an Emmy Award for his score to the television special Scenes from the Louvre. Debra Torok first spoke with Norman Dello Joio about this recording project in the beginning of May, 1997. Their initial meeting had been anticipated by the artist who, through research and performance, saw a need to make the public aware of these wonderful piano pieces. They began working together on interpretation and to correct the scores. This two volume set of the solo piano music is the first recording of the complete piano works of Dello Joio; a composer whose life achievements and compositions have enriched the landscape of American music. (Volume One is TROY344.)

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).

Alva Henderson contributes wonderful recollections of his youth collecting classical and opera recordings in the 1950's, leading to comparisons and contrasts of studio and live recordings of operas. These annotations more than explain how Mr. Henderson came to love modern opera and how his creative path was chosen. This fascinating new release presents his and librettist Dana Gioia's interpretation of the classic 1922 F. W. Murnau silent film Nosferatu, probably still the most haunting and certainly most expressionistic vampire story in motion picture history. Though Henderson entered San Francisco State College in the 1960's for drama studies, he changed to music and studied under Wayne Peterson and Robert Sheldon. While supporting himself as a member of the San Francisco Opera Chorus, he completed his first opera, Medea. The 1972 San Diego Production brought him national attention. In the years that followed came the operas The Last of the Mohicans, The Tempest, The Last Leaf, The Room Across the Hall and Achilles. Dana Oland of the Idaho Statesman wrote, "The opera...is a success and a stunning addition to the world of contemporary opera. Henderson composed rich, luscious melodies to meld with Gioia's delicious poetry, written in English...an opera than can make English a poetic, operatic language. Henderson deserves acclaim for his brilliant and sweeping score." Here is a modern opera that is romantic and passionate with beautiful vocal writing.

The Moores School (University of Houston) Percussion Ensemble was established in 1997 and is directed by Blake Wilkins. The Ensemble's selection as a Winner in the 2003 Percussive Arts Society Percussion Ensemble Competition and is appearance at the International Convention established its reputation as a leader in percussion performance. The Ensemble was again selected as a Winner for 2006. Under Wilkin's leadership, the Ensemble has emerged as a leader in the promotion and performance of new music. In 2002 a commissioning series was begun to encourage new works for the medium. Since the inception of this project, the Ensemble has commissioned six composers, some of whose works are heard on this recording -- the second made by the Ensemble for Albany Records.

Dora Ohrenstein in her notes for this disc writes: "At its best Thomson's music achieves an eloquence all the more moving because it is done with such seemingly simple means. And in no genre is this more true than in his vocal music, where his outstanding literary skills came into play. Thomson was a gifted writer of prose, and he had an unerring ear and feel for language. When these talents were put to use in the setting of a text the results are exemplary - indeed, his achievements here are seldom disputed. That recognition has focused primarily on his fidelity to the natural rhythms and cadences of speech and for Thomson this was an enduring concern. Writing about his first song settings of poems by Gertrude Stein, he says: "My hope in putting Gertrude Stein to music had been to break, crack open, and solve for all time anything still waiting to be solved, which was almost everything, about English musical declamation. My theory was that if a text is set correctly for the sound of it, the meaning will take care of itself...I had no sooner put to music...one short Stein text than I knew I had opened a door. I had never had any doubts about Stein's poetry; from then on I had none about my ability to handle it in music. His text settings are models of clarity, but closer examination reveals that there is far more to admire in Thomson's handling of poetry. Time and time again, he finds ingenious ways to reveal a poem's structure, enhance and amplify its meaning, and underline the potent word or image." Here we have a wonderful selection of songs by this fine American composer who composed so well for the voice.

This recording covers more than 60 years of compositions and contains some of the very best French music for bassoon and piano. All but two of the composers were born in France and the two that were not (Tansman and Mihalovici) were profoundly influenced by French music and lived the majority of their lives in France. Bassooist Timothy McGovern is on the faculty at the University of Illinois, in addition to serviing as principal basson of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, Illinois Chamber Orchestra, Champaign-Urbana Sympony Orchestra, as well as being a member of the Prairie Winds Woodwind Quintet. The receipient of numerous awards and honors, McGovern's discography includes more than 30 recordings of orchestral, chamber music, and solo repertoire. Pianist Cara Chowning is on the faculty at Ball State University and has a very active career as a pianist and music director.

The distinctive character and originality of Bernard Rands' music have been variously described as "plangent lyricism: with a "dramatic intensity" and a "musicality and clarity of idea allied to a sophisticated and elegant technical mastery." Through more than 100 published works and many recordings, Rands has been firmly established as a major figure in contemporary music. The recording include "now again" -- fragments from Sappho, a work commissioned for the Network for New Music, the brilliant ensemble based in Philadelphia with a 25 year history of adventurous and innovative programming.

French composer Charles-Marie Widor is best known for his works for organ, but he also wrote operas, a sizable body of ballet music, and various other vocal and orchestral works. This recording highlights some of his forgotten songs, performed by soprano Rebecca Wascoe Hays, bass Allen Saunders, soprano Nicole Leupp Hanig, and pianist Susan McDaniel. Ms. Hays, who champions American composers in her performances, is on the faculty at Texas Tech University and is artistic director of Music in the Marche, an opera training program for young singers located in Mondavio, Italy. Saunders, in addition to his active performance schedule, is on the faculty at Northern Arizona University School of Music. Ms. Hanig has performed in the U.S., as well as Europe and Japan, and now is artistic director of Opera on the Bluff and on the faculty at the University of Portland. McDaniel, also on the faculty at the University of Portland, has appeared widely as a solo and collaborative pianist.

Two world premiere recordings are offered on this most recent recording by the Illinois State University Wind Symphony -- David Maslanka's O Earth, O Stars, a double concerto for flute and cello -- and a work commissioned by the Wind Symphony from Latin Grammy Award Winner, Carlos Franzetti -- his Symphony No. 3. Born in Argentina, Carlos Franzetti studied there, in Mexico and at Juilliard. From symphonies to big band jazz, from chamber works to Latin American music and film scores Ñ he has no limits as a composer. Especially well known for his music for wind ensemble, composer David Maslanka has also written a wide variety of chamber, orchestral and choral works.

A sonata by Roger Sessions, pieces by Todd Brief, Robert Helps, and John Adams: a thread connects this recital of American piano music written over the past half century or so. Each piece exemplifies a distinctly American treatment of a traditional form or style of composing for the piano. The Sessions sonata is a one-movement work whose infrastructure reveals a three-movement sonata format that Haydn himself might recognize. Robert Helps uses the theme-and-variations form to pay homage to Fauré's lustrous chromaticism. John Adams's two minimalist studies recall the toccata, one of the oldest styles for exploiting the keyboard's capacity for demonstrating varieties of touch, texture, and speed. In Nightsong, which Todd Brief began by improvising at the piano, the composer reminds us of the historic link between composers like J.S. Bach and Chopin, virtuosos who like to improvise at the keyboard, and jazz composers, whose performances consist almost entirely of virtuoso improvisation.

This recording explores societal attitudes and misconceptions about life in Eastern cultures through Western classical and popular music of the 19th and 20th centuries. Fascinated by the East, Western composers of opera, operetta, musical theater, art song and popular dance-inspired tunes were influenced by a trend now known as Orientalism; the construction of a mythic Eastern stereotype through music, visual art, poetry, and other cultural texts. Soprano Carole FitzPatrick, baritone Robert Barefield and pianist Russell Ryan have collaborated in discovering, performing and now recording these songs that reflect Western society's fascination, ambivalence and misconceptions of the East.

Composer Neil Rolnick pioneered the use of computers in musical performance, beginning in the late 1970s. His music has been performed worldwide and appears on 21 recordings. The recipient of numerous awards, residencies, and commissions, his music often explores combinations of digital sampling, interactive multimedia, and acoustic vocal, chamber, and orchestral ensembles. He developed the first integrated electronic arts graduate and undergraduate programs in the US at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's iEAR Studios, where he was a professor for 32 years. The three works on this recording include one for string quartet with computer; a work for piano and laptop computer; and a work for violin, piano, and laptop computer.

Octagon is the new music ensemble of the University of California. It offers an important opportunity to young composers and performers in the UC system. The group creates a pre-professional opportunity to explore a large body of new literature from composers at the University of California. The works chosen for performances represent a broad spectrum of styles from the most experimental to the most traditional. The ensemble tours annually throughout the University of California system and elsewhere.

Octagon is the new music ensemble of the University of California. It offers an important opportunity to young composers and performers in the UC system. The group creates a pre-professional opportunity to explore a large body of new literature from composers at the University of California. The works chosen for performances represent a broad spectrum of styles from the most experimental to the most traditional. The ensemble tours annually throughout the University of California system and elsewhere.

A collaboration of East and West, Ode To Nature contains a Blu-Ray disc of the performance along with an audio cd. The story is of Blossom, a beautiful and talented young woman with a boundless future. Her artistic gift was dancing and playing the Chinese single-string lute. At age 17, bone cancer struck and Blossom's life was saved by an ampuation. Life that was so promising now is left with only despair. Ode To Nature is about the transformation of the human spirit. It is about Blossom's power over life achieved by combining the five Chinese virtues (righteousness, order, benevolence, wisdom, trust) and the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire, earth). It is her journey to find light admidst darkness and to gain victory from defeat.

Music by Greek and Greek-American composers is featured on this recording, offering an overview of compositions from several generations. Theodore Antoniou, born 1935 in Greece, maintains affiliations with universities and contemporary music ensembles in the United States and Greece. Nickitas Demos, born in 1962, is the youngest of the composers represented. He studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Indiana University and the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is founder and artistic director of the neoPhonia New Music Ensemble at Georgia State University, where he is also a professor of composition. Christos Samaras, born in 1956, studied at the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki, the University of Music and Fine Arts in Vienna and the University of Fine Arts in Berlin. He now teaches composition at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki. George Tsontakis, born in 1951, studied at Juilliard and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He has received two Grammy nominations and the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for his Violin Concerto No. 2. Many of the performers are on the faculty at George State University and conservatories in Thessaloniki and Macedonia.

Today George Enescu's name means one thing to most listeners: The Romanian Rhapsodies, those stalwarts of symphonic "pops" albums since the days of 78's. But Enescu was much more: in addition to a large chamber and orchestral output that included three large Symphonies, he was considered one of the foremost violinists of the 20th century and a conductor important enough to be considered as Toscanini's successor at the New York Philharmonic. Important Romanian musicians such as Clara Haskil and Dinu Lipatti benefited from his encouragement. As evidence of his skills, we present this new performance of Enescu's Oedipe. Influenced by a 1909 performance of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos, he worked on the opera sporadically from 1910 until the final orchestration of 1931. Edmond Fleg's libretto concentrates Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonos in the last two acts of the opera and precedes them with two more acts. Enescu considered himself a Wagnerian who also admired the music of Brahms. Along with a prevailing chromaticism one can also find here similarities with the music of his French teachers and colleagues. Oedipe was premiered in March 1936 at the Grand Opera in Paris to the great acclaim of most critics. Here is a remarkable opera that will shed a fascinating light on a composer too few people really know in depth.

The creation of Carlisle Floyd's Of Mice and Men was a long, rocky process - no other opera in this composer-writer's canon so exemplifies his almost mystical belief that its final form seemed to exist long before he uncovered it. "I never revised an opera more," Carlisle Floyd recalled as Of Mice and Men was enjoying a flurry of revivals at the turn of the new century, three decades after its premiere in Seattle in 1970. "I played the first act for Kurt Adler at the San Francisco Opera. He turned it down, for reasons I never understood, but I also completely rewrote the first act after that. Two years' work gone. I completely started over. New libretto, new music. It's the only time I ever did that. One thinks one knows what makes a workable libretto, and then it's clear that nothing works. In the next three years, I was able to salvage some of that original music. Maybe 25% of it found its way back into the completed score." Coherent revision is possible only within a musical language that fully reveals its composer's confidence. Remember, he was writing during the high tide of American serialism and academic snobbishness. His music was none of that. His rhythms evoke an agrarian life and his musical textures imply open space. Wide intervals sing of loneliness, and his tart instrumentation throws edgy shadows around any suggestion of joy or hopefulness. That music tantalizes with its rich references. But reference to what? No true folk tunes have been adapted; no real country dances echo in the background. Yet the music implies all that while finding its own way between traditional songs of the American earth and those craftily composed to incorporate the essence of native music. Carlisle Floyd's Of Mice and Men stands as complete and whole as a crystal sphere - seamless, polished, able to reflect inner and outer color. The intriguing creative process that went so wrong at the outset, found that perfect sphere and left us Of Mice and Men.

Joseph Waters writes, "I find this juxtaposition of contemporary electro-acoustic ephemera with a collection of musical instruments and a performance practice that predates the age of technology to be simultaneously anachronistic and engaging. It is my goal to create strong and deep tie lines that connect the present surface to the ancient seabed miles below. This is my celebratory reaction to our current milieu, which juxtaposes Mozart one minute with rap music the next. There are many connections between them, which I find fascinating and exhilarating." This music bears tribute to Debussy and Messiaen (Ocean Eyes), explores Afro-Cuban influences (Witches of the Unconscious) and the worlds of seabirds and exotic marine life (Ghosts and Aloiloi) as well as the phenomenon of intense fright when suddenly awakening from a deep sleep (Kanashibari) and the onset of morning (Loneliness). Born in 1952, Waters is Associate Professor of Music Composition and Director of Electro-Acoustic and Media Composition at San Diego State University. His first musical experiences included playing in a rock band, and the myriad influences of the world and its music figure in his own compositions.

This recording was conceived by pianist Matthew McCright by pairing music from two periods of Olivier Messiaen's compositional life that are linked by the pianist Yvonne Loriod. Messiaen heard Loriod perform the Préludes, and she became his muse for countless compositions, including Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jésus, which was dedicated to her, and later, his second wife. McCright has performed extensively throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia and the South Pacific as a piano soloist and chamber musician. A member of the piano faculty of Carleton College, McCright has premiered numerous new pieces, many written for him, and has collaborated with such composers as Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Augusta Read Thomas, and Paul Dresher, among many others. He studied at Westminster College, the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Minnesota.

The works from On Course represent a broad cross section of sonic and stylistic moments created over an almost 24 year period by composer Laurie Altman. The generative links between all the pieces seem to be an overarching lyrical sentiment coupled with the interplay of animation, dance and drama. Laurie Altman attended Mannes, studying with Lester Trimble and William Sydeman. Influences abound with Altman: The Village Vanguard (Bill Evans), the Five Spot (Monk and Trane); the Chicago Symphony, jazz performances at The Blue Note and Soundscape -- a joining of classical and jazz.

Bucknell University, rated one of the 30 best liberal arts colleges in America in the 1995 edition of U.S. World and News Report's college guide, offers a professional music program within an outstanding liberal arts environment. The Bucknell Music Department has an internationally recognized faculty whose members have gained recognition as performers, conductors, composers, authors and lecturers. The Rooke Chapel Choir, under the direction of William Payn, has gained international recognition in performances of some of the most significant works in the twentieth century American sacred repertoire. Its select members represent every major field of study at Bucknell, including the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, business administration, education and engineering. The Rooke Chapel Ringers were formed in 1983. They consist of 12 players who are selected by audition. Mezzo-soprano D'Anna Fortunato graduated from Bucknell in 1967. She has charmed critics and audiences alike with her recital, symphony orchestra and opera appearances in the United States and abroad.

"This CD is a crossover adventure - a musical cocktail of classic jazz standards with a dash of continental, a Latin twist and a splash of the blues. This eclectic atmosphere has always been my home. My father, a contemporary classical composer (Leon Kirchner, Pulitzer Prize 1967), conductor and pianist, took me to see Ray Charles, played and analyzed Duke Ellington songs with me and pointed out the brilliance of a young guitarist named Jimmy Hendrix as we discussed Mozart, Bach, and Schoenberg. My mother was a coloratura soprano who had performed classical lieder and show tunes in New York supper clubs. I myself have moved from classical, folk and pop music to musical theater and ultimately to jazz." Thus writes Lisa Kirchner as she describes this new album.

Award-winning soprano Marcía Porter offers a program of songs by contemporary American composers. An active recitalist, Ms. Porter made her Weill Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall) debut in 2005. She has performed in venues throughout the United States, Italy, Brazil and the Czech Republic. Porter has appeared at international festivals including the Prague Proms, the Ravinia Festival and Piccolo Spoleto Festival and sung with orchestras such as the Czech National Symphony and the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Porter was a 2011-12 Fulbright Scholar based in Brazil where she was a visiting artist and professor at the Universidade de Sâo Paulo. On the faculty at The Florida State University College of Music, she is a graduate of Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. Collaborating with Ms. Porter is acclaimed pianist and fellow faculty member Valerie M. Trujillo, whose experience in song literature and opera make her a much sought after accompanist, coach and teacher of masterclasses.

Angelo Musolino has been an educator for more than 40 years, both as private instructor and as a college professor at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Empire State College and Adelphi University where he directs the Pop Ensemble for which he still writes music.

The music by David Felder and Andrew Rindfleisch on this disc couldn't be more different in concept or atmosphere. What these artful composers share is an abiding curiosity for aural imagery—how color both of instrumental and electronic persuasion melds with programmatic ideas to produce compelling, challenging and forceful narratives. Felder and Rindfleisch have spent their careers delving into the unknown while retaining connections with the near and distant pasts. The influences in the scores performed here are numerous, with nods to jazz and myriad 20th-century techniques. But most important is the way each piece inhabits a distinctive sonic world through novel performing forces that open up the expressive potential of the topics at hand. In revealing the salient qualities in each score, the music making of the Slee Sinfonietta tells us much about the complementary creativity of Felder and Rindfleisch even as it renders the pairing of these composers something on the order of ideal.

This recording is, in many respects, a unique and creatively conceived kaleidoscope of American culture presented through the expressions and influences of African Americans. Moses and Floyd offer exceptionally convincing interpretations of each song, with clear understanding of the nature and unique message contained in each. The diverse genres, art songs by African American composers and artful settings of spirituals, also include works written by other Americans who use idiomatically African American musical resources, and whose creative energies have been powerfully influenced by African American folk life. This is a delightful tapestry of works that comprise a cross section of musical personalities and compelling lyrical content.