Catalog

This CD presents songs by some of America's reigning composers, many known for their cross-genre writing, including jazz, pop, classical, folk and art songs written with distinguished authors for concert, theatre and film venues. The elements are universal--melody, groove, harmony, story and imagery--the musical passport to a chapter in The Great American Songbook. Lisa Kirchner is joined by a group of world-class performers in jazz and classical genres. They offer a unique take on these gorgeous songs crossing the borders of musical genre.

Donald Crockett is dedicated to creating music inspired by the musicians who perform it and this recording is no exception. It represents works composed across a span of about a dozen years and Xtet, the Los Angeles-based new music ensemble, with its highly variable instrumentation and composer/performer ethos, was the ideal vehicle to undertake the performance of this music. Donald Crockett was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006 and has also received the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, and an Aaron Copland Award, among many other honors. Also known as a conductor, Crockett has presented many world, national and regional premieres with Xtet. He has also been active over the years as a composer and conductor with the venerable and famed Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles. Donald Crockett is on the faculty of the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music and serves as Senior Composer-in-Residence with the Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East.

The internationally acclaimed flutist Marya Martin, assisted by musicians from the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, offer a program of Eric Ewazen's music for flute. The Flute Sonata and the Bridgehampton Suite were both written specifically for Ms. Martin, a long-time friend of the composer's; the SeaSkye Songs were inspired by the poetry of Karen Wagner, written as a tribute to a friend who had committed suicide; and Mosaics was composed for another flutist friend. Composer Ewazen says that he was completely influenced by Martin's lovely golden tone and her spectacular technical agility. This compact disc of world premiere recordings offers beautiful performances of Eric Ewazen's music for flute, and adds immensely to the chamber music repertoire.

This is a world premiere recording of Lee Hoiby's 1971 two-act opera, with libretto by Lanford Wilson, based on the play by Tennessee Williams. Lee Hoiby, who died on April 8, 2011, was best known as a composer of operas and songs, although he was a child prodigy as a pianist, studying at the University of Wisconsin with Gunnar Johansen and Egon Petri. But on the verge of a career as a concert pianist, he received a scholarship to study composition with Gian Carlo Menotti. His immense contribution to American music, particularly opera and song repertoire is recognized by American singers everywhere. His style is an elegant and unobvious bridging of the lyrical works of Verdi and Gershwin.

Born in the German spa town of Honnef am Rhein, Boris Papandopulo (1906-91) has emerged as one of the most significant Croatian musicians of the 20th century. Son of the Greek nobleman Konstantin Papandopulo and the famous Croatian opera singer Maja Strozzi-Pecic, he arrived in Zagreb in 1910. He studied conducting in Vienna and composition at the Zagreb Music Academy. He was an extremely prolific composer, with several hundred works in his catalog. His distinctive stylistic pluralism is evident in his solo piano music. His style is marked by its eclecticism and the artful manner in which various music idioms are brought together. This recording, performed by the distinguished pianist Nicholas Phillips, is the first devoted to Papandopulo's music.

This disc includes a premiere recording made in 1992 with Leon Kirchner conducting his Music for Orchestra with the orchestra he founded at Harvard along with two historic releases from the SONY Columbia catalog, both featuring Leon Kirchner, as a pianist in his Piano Concerto No. 1 with Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting, recorded 1956 and as a conductor in Lily (for soprano and chamber ensemble), recorded 1973. Leon Kirchner (1919-2009), composer, conductor, and virtuoso pianist, was recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in 2009, and an Honorary Doctorate at Harvard in 2001. He received the New York Music Critics Circle award, the Naumburg Award, Pulitzer Prize, and the Freidheim Award, and commissions from the Ford, Fromm, and Koussevitzky Foundations, the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Symphony, Spoleto and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festivals, the Boston Symphony, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Kirchner studied with Arnold Schoenberg, Roger Sessions, and Ernest Bloch. He was composer-in-residence and a performer at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Tanglewood Music Center, Tokyo Music Today (Takemitsu Festival), and the Spoleto, Charleston, Aldeburgh, and Marlboro Music Festivals.

Saxophone virtuoso Noah Getz explains: "Still Life represents a snapshot of the music that I have been performing and enjoying over the last several years. This recording is an eclectic mix of works, most of which were written for me, from a number of trusted composer friends and colleagues." Based in Washington, DC, Noah Getz has performed at major venues throughout the United States. He has commissioned and premiered numerous works for the saxophone, including collaborations with Aaron Jay Kernis and Lewis Spratlan. He maintains an active schedule performing jazz as well as presenting masterclasses, recitals and lectures at universities across the country. He is the Saxophone Musician-in-Residence at American University.

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.

Two works for voice by the internationally recognized composer C. Curtis-Smith are offered on this recording. The first -- Gold Are My Flowers -- is a cantata/melodrama for soprano, baritone and chamber group. The work tells the story of the coming of European civilization to the wildernesses of the world using poetry by the Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan, portions of the Navajo Night Chant, excerpts from Columbus' Log and Book of Prophecies and Biblical passages quoted by Columbus in his Log. A Civil War Song Cycle, the second vocal work, follows the emotional and chronological sequence of the Civil War. C. Curtis-Smith is the recipient of more than 100 grants, awards and commissions. He was the youngest faculty member ever awarded the Western Michigan University's Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award. His Twelve Etudes for Piano were selected for the repertoire list for the Eleventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2001. His music has been performed throughout the United States, Germany and Japan.

These five works for cello by noted Cuban-American composer Jorge Martín were written between 1997 and 2010 -- most of them having some association with his vocal music. Martín studied at Yale and Columbia University and has received awards and grants from a number of prestigious institutions including the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Cintas Foundation, among others. Cellist Yehuda Hanani has performed with such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra and is a guest at many international festivals. His pioneering recording of the monumental Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination. A soloist, chamber musician, recitalist and teacher, Mr. Hanani also has a weekly broadcast called Classical Music According to Yehuda.

The four compositions on this disc effectively portray both sides of William Schuman's musical personality -- from the spirited energy of American Festival Overture and the uninhibited patriotic fervor of A Free Song to the much darker character of Prelude and the profoundly moving On Freedom's Ground. One of the 20th century America's most important composers and arts administrators, William Schuman (1910-1992) went from being a Tin Pan Alley song plugger to professor at Sarah Lawrence to president of Juilliard and finally, to president of Lincoln Center. With the exception of the oft-recorded American Festival Overture, these are world premiere recordings and represent the many sides of this extraordinarily creative musical mind. Joseph Polisi, the current president of Juilliard and author of American Muse: The Life and Times of William Schuman has provided the notes.

Lines, the title of this imaginative program, beguilingly performed, links pupils to teachers in three principal strands: Bloch-Sessions-Harbison; Lutoslawski-Stucky-Waggoner and Weesner; and Boulanger-Carter. While it is difficult to overestimate the influence of a powerful mentor, not all mentor relationships develop in formal arrangements. Carter was deeply influenced by Sessions, and was close with him, without having enrolled as his student. Both Waggoner and Weesner forged close relationships with Harbison, and in different works reveal Harbison's influence as much as Stucky's. While in his early works Harbison often exhibited Sessions' influence, his baroque sensibilities have more in common with the neoclassical predispositions of Bloch, his "grand-teacher." The criss-crossing of the lines hints at the wealth and variety of music influence and tradition. Acclaimed cellist Caroline Stinson offers magnificent performances of this repertoire, two of which are world premiere recordings (Andrew Waggoner's Le Nom and Anna Weesner's Possible Stories). Noted for her vibrant lyricism and fresh interpretations, Ms. Stinson is on the faculty of The Juilliard School.

This is a recording for low brass lovers! Eruptions not only displays a good starting point for learning the excerpts on this recording, but it is also a fun listen for anyone who enjoys getting into the trenches of the job and sweating it out with your fellow colleagues. These five internationally acclaimed brass players join together in stunning performances of the acclaimed moments for brass in the orchestral repertoire.

Composer John Aylward has been awarded a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Grant and First Prize from the International Society for Contemporary Music, among many other honors. His music has been praised for its rhythmic vitality, rigorous formal qualities and its lyricism and is performed in the US and abroad. He is on the faculty at Clark University and is the founder of the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble and the Etchings Festival. This recording offers some of his best chamber works including a song cycle based on the poetry of Louise Gluck, a piece for violin and cello and a large chamber ensemble work titled Stillness and Change.

Tania León was born and raised in Cuba but her ancestry spans Europe, Africa, and Asia as well as the Americas. In the music she has been composing for the past four decades, she has absorbed all of these influences and transformed them into a vibrant synergistic totality that foreshadows the omnivorous polystylism of the early 21st century. More than 35 years separate Haiku (1973) and Inura (2009), and they conjure up wildly different sonic universes. Haiku, created during León's tenure as composer-in-residence and music director for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, is an aphoristic and almost otherworldly re-imagining of seventeen classical Japanese haiku poems, which somehow form a cohesive and unified whole. The holistic approach León took with Haiku would however be anathema for Inura, a celebration of contradictions created for DanceBrazil that is inspired by Candomblé. Candomblé, like Santer'a in the Caribbean, is a syncretism of traditional African animism and European Catholicism that has been practiced for centuries.

Since their first performance in Carnegie Hall in 2007, saxophonist Christopher Creviston and pianist Hannah Gruber have been guests on series and festivals across the United States. Active proponents of new music, they have commissioned works by Katherine Hoover, John Fitz Rogers and Gregory Wanamaker, among others. A former New York freelancer, Christopher Creviston is on the faculty of the Crane School of Music. He has appeared in venues ranging from Carnegie and Merkin to Paisley Park and the Apollo Theatre. In addition to his work with Hannah Gruber, Creviston performs regularly with the Capitol Quartet.

A unique musician, composer-pianist Gary Smart composes and improvises a music that reflects an abiding interest in Americana, world musics and jazz, as well as the Western classical tradition. He is a professor of music at the University of North Florida. This recording is unedited abstract improvisations. Though the collection is unified stylistically, it features considerable conceptual variety. Some of the improvisations stress gestural and textural material, while others emphasize motor rhythms and still others are harmonically inspired. Two pieces are for piano and radio Ñ improvisations with "found sound materials" on the radio.

Composer Paul Osterfield was born in 1973. He composed and performed as a cellist throughout middle school and high school. He won first prize as a student in the U.S. Copyright Office and Library of Congress Young Creators' Contest and the work was subsequently performed by the Cleveland Orchestra. Since then, his compositions have received performances internationally and throughout the United States. He is on the faculty at Middle Tennessee State University. A graduate of Cornell, Indiana University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, Osterfield's primary composition teachers include Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra. This first commercial recording of his music offers an overview of his chamber and vocal music.

Pianist Ryan Fogg is on the faculty at Carson-Newman College. He studied at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Houston and East Texas Baptist University. Fogg has chosen works by composers from around the country for this program of contemporary American piano music. What is particularly interesting is the range of expression and unique compositional style displayed by these composers who are contemporaries.

While the first piano made its appearance in China in the late 19th century, Chinese piano composition did not begin until the 1930s. The common thread with the music on this compact disc is the use of traditional Chinese elements and their manifestation of a Chinese spirit. The music selected, spanning the period from the 1930s to 2007, traces the formation and development of a true Chinese style of piano writing. Pianist Tianshu Wang has been acclaimed by the press as a "superbly talented pianist" who plays with "prodigious technique and eloquent phrasing." A Steinway artist, Ms. Wang has performed across the U.S., China, Mexico, Singapore, Thailand, and Taiwan. She is on the faculty of Capital University's Conservatory of Music as well as the Shenyang Conservatory of Music in China.

Composer Paul Chihara comments that “This cd is a labor of love. It represents my activities in concert, ballet, movies and Broadway — and is unabashedly personal and romantic.” One can think of Paul Chihara as several different composers: the Chihara of exquisite instrumental color; the Chihara of the theatre; and the Chihara of American popular music. Premiering throughout the U.S. and Europe for more than five decades, Chihara’s prize-winning concert works have earned him both domestic and international recognition. He was composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Ballet, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Marlboro Festival. He has composed scores for more than 100 motion pictures and television series. Active on Broadway, he was musical consultant and arranger for Sophisticated Ladies.

Written in commemoration of September 11, Reflections upon a September morn sets two poems by Walt Whitman. Performed by Kate Maroney, mezzo-soprano, Virginia Brewer, English horn and oboe, and James Adler, piano, this is a poignant tribute to our national tragedy. Available only as a digital download through our online digital store.

The pieces collected on this compact disc all hold personal significance for trumpeter Terry Everson, which form the unifying theme of the program. This virtual recital demonstrates, among other things, that new music can be accessible and serious at the same time. Terry Everson is an internationally renowned soloist, educator, composer/arranger, conductor and church musician. He first gained international acclaim in 1988, winning both the Baroque/Classical and Twentieth Century categories of the inaugural Ellsworth Smith International Trumpet Solo Competition. He has served on the faculties of Boston University and is principal trumpet of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. His collaborator, pianist Shiela Kibbe is on the faculty of Boston University. She holds two Master of Music degrees from Temple University and has been a fellow in vocal accompanying at the Tanglewood Music Center.

Violinist Tami Lee Hughes offers a survey of violin music by African-American composers that begins with a work written in 1820 by Francis Johnson and continues with music written in 1947, 1979, 2000 and ends with a work by Chad Hughes written in 2009. Ms. Hughes has appeared with symphony orchestras across the United States and is active as a recitalist and chamber musician as well. She is on the faculty of the University of Kansas. Collaborating with Ms. Hughes is fellow faculty member Ellen Bottorff, who has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. This recording is the second of the series devoted to music of the African Diaspora, a collaboration between Albany Records and the Center for Black Music Research.

Unlike much of his other chamber music, Alec Wilder's solo piano works are miniatures, delicately balanced, and succinct. More than half the pieces and movements are under a minute in length as Wilder chose brevity in his expression, making his musical points in concise and contrasting musical statements. Given the rich, grand repertory for solo piano, Wilder never presumed that he could add to the huge output of the grand masters. Instead, he created little gems that challenge the artistry of the performer. The music on this CD, beautifully and elegantly performed and interpreted by pianist John Noel Roberts, marks the debut recording of many of Wilder's solo piano works. They are a treat to hear. John Noel Roberts is a consummate pianist and teacher who has demonstrated his interpretive skills, technical ability and his wide-ranging repertoire in solo and concerto performances in Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Italy, Great Britain, Canada and the United States. Formerly Artist in Residence and Head of Music at the Western Australian Conservatorium of Music, Roberts has also served on the faculties at Furman University, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Mercer University. Currently he is Professor of Piano and Director of the School of Music at Stephen F. Austin State University.

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Florence B. Price (1887-1953) studied at the New England Conservatory, the Chicago Musical College and the American Conservatory. Price composed throughout her life, producing as many as 300 compositions. In the 1930s and early 1940s some of her longer works were performed by music groups sponsored by the WPA in Illinois and Michigan. Price was highly visible as a teacher, performer and organizer in Chicago’s concert and church music spheres. Her Concerto in One Movement for piano was premiered in Chicago in 1934 with Price herself as pianist. There is no evidence of the piece being performed after the 1930s and there are no copies of the composer’s manuscript of the orchestral score. Composer Trevor Weston was commissioned to reconstruct the concerto’s orchestration in order to revive this deserving work. Price’s groundbreaking Symphony in E Minor was the first prize winner of the 1932 Rodman Wanamaker Music Contest and was premiered in 1933 by Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It is the first work by a black woman to be performed by a major symphony orchestra in the United States.

This world premiere recording of Río de Sangre, a new opera by composer Don Davis and librettist Kate Gale, presents fictional characters and situations that offer a more general comment on political and historical events, aiming for a degree of universality. The action takes place in an unnamed country in the "Southern hemisphere" and the text is sung in Spanish, but the characters and events clearly echo conditions and crises from any place and any time. Commissioned by the Florentine Opera Company, Río de Sangre received its world premiere performance by the company in 2010. Composer Don Davis has enjoyed a successful and widely varied musical career, not only as a seminal and prolific composer of contemporary orchestral and chamber works for the concert stage, but also as a versatile dramatic composer and conductor of film and television music, including the feature film trilogy The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.

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.

Cruzar La Cara de la Luna/To Cross the Face of the Moon is the world's first opera composed for mariachi. Exploring the fusion of opera and mariachi has taken both art forms in new directions. Commissioned in celebration of the Mexican anniversaries of independence and revolution, Cruzar brought together composer José "Pepe" Martinez, the music director of the storied Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, and eminent Broadway stage director and writer Leonard Foglia. Together they have created an emotional and compelling work that remains true to its Mariachi culture and tells a story that resonates with all. This is a recording of the world premiere performance, which brought this glorious new piece of music theater to life with unforgettable virtuosity, energy and passion.

Composer William Hill writes in the notes that his "Symphony No. 2 is subtitled Beethoven 7.1 due to its numerous references to Beethoven's great 7th symphony, and is designed as a companion piece for that symphony." The brainchild of conductor Lawrence Golan, the "Point-One Series" is an ongoing project consisting of the commissioning and recording of contemporary compositions that are musically linked to great masterpieces of the orchestral repertoire. The objective is to help create a body of high quality contemporary works whose chances for a viable future are increased by the natural place within orchestral concert programming that they have. The first release in this series included Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 and Peter Boyer's Tchaikovsky 6.1 (TROY1027).

Four world premieres highlight this second recording by Movses Pogossian for Albany Records, including works by the esteemed Hungarian composer György Kurtág and Tigran Mansurian, who is acknowledged as the greatest living Armenian composer. Recorded in Armenia, this was a very personal project for violinist Movses Pogossian as he spent the first 20 years of his life there. Pogossian is a prizewinner of the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Competition and the 1985 USSR National Violin Competition. A committed proponent of new music, Movses Pogossian has premiered more than 40 works. He is the recipient of the 2011 Forte Award from Jacaranda, given for outstanding contributions to the promotion of new music and modern music. Active as a chamber musician, recitalist and soloist, Pogossian made his debut at the Darmstadt Festival in Germany in 2008 and has performed with the Boston Pops, the Tucson Symphony and the Halle Orchestra in Germany, among others.

A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Emma Lou Diemer received her degrees in music composition from the Yale School of Music (B.M., M.M.) and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D.). She studied further in Brussels on a Fulbright Scholarship and at Tanglewood. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she taught composition and theory from 1971 to 1991. She has been composer-in-residence with the Santa Barbara Symphony, and is organist emerita at First Presbyterian Church in Santa Barbara. This recording offers some of her recent chamber works including a work for string trio and a work for brass and piano, both written in 2001.