Catalog

Born in Breslau (now Wroclaw), Silesia, Frank Lewin emmigrated to the United States in 1940. His easily recognizable lean and spare instrumental style has been showcased on several Albany releases in recent years; the 2-CD set of film music (TROY866/67) gave a good indication of his work for various ensembles. This is the first release of his purely orchestral work. The Concerto on Silesian Themes is born of material that is obviously close to the composer's heart and mind. The Concerto Armonico has an interesting history: originally composed for the harmonica of the late John Sebastian, the work was never performed. Then it was revised for the present viola soloist, Brett Deubner. The final work was written for the tenth anniversary of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra in 1960.

Arnold Rosner is a prolific American composer whose music has been performed in the United States and Israel. His works exceed 100 in number and steer clear, generally, of both the post-serial avant-garde movement of the 1960's and the minimalist movement which followed it. His treatment of harmony and counterpoint, along with the occasional recourse to an ethnic, Middle Eastern flavor, places his music in the esthetic milieu of Paul Hindemith, Ernest Bloch, and Alan Hovhaness. Rosner is currently on the faculty of Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, where he teaches both standard and ethnic music. Having composed since the age of nine, he received advanced degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo while studying with Leo Smit, Allen Sapp, Henri Pousseur and Lejaren Hiller, from all of whom, in his own words, "I learned practically nothing."

David Baker is a native of Indianapolis and currently holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music and Chairman of the Jazz Department at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington. A virtuosic performer on multiple instruments and top in his field in several disciplines, Mr. Baker has taught and performed throughout the United States and abroad. He is also the conductor and artistic director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. He studied with J.J. Johnson, Janos Starker, William Russo, Bernard Heiden and Gunther Schuller among others. Paul Freeman writes: "For many years it has been my pleasure to perform the music of the distinguished composer David N. Baker. I was first introduced to his creative talent during the mid-1970s when we included his music in the historic Black Composers Series released by Columbia. I have always been impressed by the breadth and scope of his talent and the extraordinary range of his tonal palette." The booklet notes about the music are by the composer.

Edward MacDowell was the first American composer of stature who incorporated native elements into his music and depicted, in Romantic colors, the landscape of America. He composed two Orchestral suites, both in five movements, both structured fast-slow-fast-slow-fast, with each movement being a self-contained, miniature tone poem. The first suite was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on September 24, 1891 and in keeping with the spirit of many of his works it evokes pictures of the outdoors - In a haunted forest, Summer Idyll, In October, The Shepherdess' Song and Forest Spirits. His use of native elements is especially evident in his second suite for Orchestra, which was also premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1895. Subtitled Indian Suite, all of the themes are derived from native American Indian melodies. It may also be significant that Dvorak's New York Symphony had appeared two years earlier. MacDowell composed his Sea Pieces in 1885 for solo piano. On this disc, receiving their premiere performance in a version Orchestrated by Charles Johnson, we have six of the eight pieces presented for Orchestra. Charles Johnson graduated with degrees in music from UCLA. From 1967 to 1978, he was on the faculty of Sam Houston State University where he taught music history and theory and conducted the Orchestra. Since 1973, he has pursued a dual career as a conductor and violist. This is the first digital recording of this lovely, romantic music by one of America's finest composers.

Here is a disc that makes a fine introduction to the music of an American composer whose name is most likely unfamiliar to you. Fisher Tull is as American as apple pie. He was born in Waco, Texas and died in Huntsville, Texas. After a brief sojourn with a traveling dance band, he entered the University of North Texas and earned three degrees; B. Mus. In music education, M. Mus. In music theory and a Ph.D. in composition having studied with Samuel Adler. He joined the music faculty at Sam Houston State University in 1957 and was appointed Chair of the Department in 1965, a position he held for 17 years. Most of his music is generally conservative and fairly traditional by contemporary standards, maintaining a clear tonal center spiced by carefully controlled dissonances. His Symphonic Treatise for Orchestra was conceived as a celebration for the 100-year alliance between the City of Waco and Baylor University and the silver anniversary of the Waco Symphony Orchestra. The Overture for a Legacy was commissioned by the Houston Symphony Orchestra and first performed on the Stokowski Legacy Series of concerts. The Capriccio was commissioned by the Houston Chamber Symphony and was first heard during the 1966-67 season. The Trumpet Concerto No. 1 received its first complete performance with James Austin, trumpet and Lawrence Foster conducting the Houston Symphony. "Doc" Severinsen later commissioned a Second Trumpet Concerto from Fisher Tull in 1974. This disc will be enjoyed by anyone who finds mainstream American music appealing.

Born in Paris of Czech parents, Tomas Svoboda spent the years of World War II in Boston where he began his musical education on the piano. Showing a early talent for composing, Svoboda completed his first opus, now published, at the age of 9. After his family's return to Prague in 1946, he continued his music studies entering the Prague Conservatory in 1954 as its youngest student. The premiere of the First Symphony (recorded on this CD) in 1957, performed by the Prague Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vaclav Smetacek, caused a sensation, for until Svoboda walked onto the stage to acknowledge the applause, many in the audience had not realized the 36-minute symphony had been composed by a 16 year old boy not yet even formally schooled in composition or orchestration. In 1962, after graduating from the Prague Conservatory with degrees in percussion, composition and conducting, Svoboda entered the Academy of Music in Prague. By this time, performances and radio broadcasts of his orchestral works had brought him national recognition, clearly establishing him as one of the finest young composers of his generation. In 1964, his family escaped communist-ruled Czechoslovakia and settled in the United States where Svoboda enrolled in the University of Southern California as a graduate student in 1966. His skills were already so far advanced that the department allowed him to forego the usual courses and study privately with Ingolf Dahl and Halsey Stevens, the Chairman of the Department, a composer and Bartok scholar. Stevens has written: "It was almost embarrassing to have him come to lessons with his work so completely and satisfactorily realized that it needed almost nothing in the way of criticism." After receiving a master's degree in 1969, Tomas Svoboda accepted a teaching position at Portland State University in Oregon where he taught composition and music theory. He retired from active teaching duties in June 1999.

With this handful of works by composers with Oregon connections, the Portland Youth Philharmonic re-enters the lists of Northwest recording orchestras - among whom it was the first. In the '60s and '70s the Philharmonic recorded 10 works by eight composers on the CRI label - to good press and public reception. Six of those pieces had been commissioned by the Philharmonic under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The rationale at the time was that young musicians could be the best proponents for new music except that often it was beyond their reach technically. To meet this problem, the Philharmonic invited composers to produce works that were a little less difficult but still true to their own style. This recording was made to celebrate the Philharmonic's 70th Anniversary and continue the commitment to contemporary music. Composers whose works receive world premiere recordings on this disc are Salvador Brotons, Kevin Walczyk, John Van Buren, Bryan Johanson and Jacob Avshalomov.

Ned Rorem writes about his Organ music: "Fantasy and Toccata, the first and briefest of my eight Organ works, is an heirloom. Composed in 1946 as a gift to my erstwhile mentor, Leo Sowerby, it sank without a trace. I had quite forgotten the piece when in the summer of 1987 Eileen Hunt, hunting through the archives of E. Power Biggs, recovered a copy. The following May, Leonard Raver performed the world premiere at New York's Church of Saint Matthew & Saint Timothy. Organbook I was commissioned by Leslie Spelman; Organbook II and Organbook III by Eileen Hunt, specifically to be premiered on the 150-year-old Goodrich instrument of Nantucket's Unitarian Church, the only Organ by that maker still existing on its original site. Together, the Organbooks contain 16 pieces, and their object, I suppose, is simplicity. The previous works have all been hard; it seemed time to write something more technically plain. These pieces are nonetheless gradated from very easy to quite thorny. Played consecutively they form a sort of Pilgrim's Progress of 40-odd minutes. But the three books can be dipped into as well, like jewel boxes, offering what's useful for this or that occasion. In a little more than three weeks, I composed and Orchestrated and copied my Symphony No. 1. The second movement was an Andantino in the lilting 6-8 meter I was overexploiting at the time. I made a transcription of the Andantino movement for Organ solo and called it Pastorale for Organ. Six Pieces for Organ was commissioned by the American Guild of Organists for Eileen Hunt to launch at the national convention in Denver. The premiere took place on June 29, 1998."

Ori Barel is an inquisitive composer who works in a variety of mediums and styles. Barel works extensively with electronics, specializing in both electro-acoustic and electronic music. His electronic works combine algorithmic technique with an intuitie musical approach. He is a graduate of UCLA, the California Institute of the Arts and the University of California. Centrifugal Force is inspired primarily by robotic art. Barel has created a piece that explores aspects of our culture using elements of traditional and free jazz as well as silent film music, culminating in a musical fusion of today's technological world with pieces of the past. The use of a player piano means that rhythms and tempos can be used that would be impossible to be played accurately by a performer.

William Moylan was born in Virginia, Minnesota. His early musical experiences were centered on the violin and guitar, and later on the double bass. He graduated from Ball State University and the Peabody Conservatory. Today he is Chairperson of the Department of Music, and Professor of Music and Sound Recording Technology, at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. About this recording Moylan writes: "Origins is about returning to beginnings. In many ways Origins represents the closing of a circle that brings me back to the beginnings of my musical career and my first compositions. I remember discovering that writing music could emerge from the center of one's core, early in my career. During the process of maturing, learning one's craft, and engaging the conscious mind's desire to forge a unique musical voice, the tendency to look inward and engage one's innate musicality can easily be lost. I have returned to a way of writing that flows comfortably and naturally, and speaks from a voice deep within. It now contains styles and languages enhanced by so many experiences along my career, with something familiar to my earliest works. The compositions also speak to beginnings: to the first sunrise and the beginning of the new day; to childhood and human innocence, and to ancient beliefs and spiritual origins; to the origins of life in the sea, nature and the Earth, and to the original human connection to nature. All three of the compositions on this disc were written for the home listening environment. They are Chamber music for today's Chamber, written to exploit the intimacy and immediacy of the living room, and the unique sound qualities and sound relationships available through recording playback, especially the spatial relationships of stereo."

An acclaimed performer and teacher, Johanna Cox Pennington has been oboe professor at Louisiana State University School of Music since 2011 and a member of the Breckenridge Music Festival Orchestra since 2002. A graduate of Northwestern and Eastman, Pennington was chosen for Eastman's Freiburg Exchange Program that took her to Germany for advanced studies. She has performed with many orchestras including the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She travels to Europe, South America, Asia and throughout the United States performing as a recitalist, chamber musician, and clinician. She has selected five world premieres for this recording, including a recording of Brett William Dietz's Voodoo Spells and Gris-gris. Pennington is joined on this recording by pianist Willis Delony, violinist Lenora Cox Leggatt, Brett William Dietz performing on the vibraphone, cellist Daniel Lelchuk and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto.

Since its first appearance in 1975, Zhurbin's rock opera Orpheus and Eurydice has been the focus of enormous interest and attention. The reaction from the Soviet Communist Press and the official propaganda "apparatchiks" was negative and even scandalous. Somehow the work managed to survive all this - mostly because general audiences disregarded the "directives" from the Central Committee. There is an old Russian proverb which goes "people vote with their feet," which means the audience either comes to the performance or it doesn't. In the case of Orpheus the response was incredible. In some cities it was performed twice in one day, two weeks in a row at the sports arena with six to seven thousand tickets sold at every performance. One group gave it 2500 performances all over the Soviet Union and Europe. This two CD set is a remastering of the original cast album made in 1977 by the St. Petersburg Theater Rock Opera Group. About the Two Portraits, the composer writes: "My love for the great poetry of the two Russian poets from the first half of the 20th century - Marina Tsvetayeva and Velemir Khlebnikov - inspired me to write this music in an attempt to create some kind of "Musical Portraits." This set should have broad appeal to a wide group of listeners. It is really a "crossover" album.

Growing up in Buenos Aires, Pablo Ortiz took piano lessons from his mother and learned Gregorian Chant at the Universidad Catolica Argentina, where he also studied composition with Gerardo Gandini. At the age of 27 he came to the United States where he studied under Mario Davidovsky. After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1994 he developed a particular fascination with Mexican culture, eventually employing texts by the famous Chicano poet and Mission artist, Francisco Alarcon for a collection of children's songs and the title work on this disc, Oscuro. Ortiz's output, comprising chamber music, vocal, orchestral and electronic works, has received international recognition and performances by the Arditti Quartet, Speculum Musicae, Les Percussions de Strasbourg and Continuum. During the early 1990s, Ortiz embarked on a series of works that find a connection between tango and memory. Although this exploration represents only one of many strands within his varied oeuvre - one that is well represented on this CD - Ortiz's association with the tango is apt, for he shares its Argentinean roots, its thoroughly cosmopolitan history, and its ability to mirror social interactions with controlled, dramatic flair.

The title of this recording, Ostinato Fantastico, is obviously taken from the title of Blas Atehortua's work. It has a kind of double meaning in the context of the series of recordings the DePaul Wind Ensemble has created with Albany Records. An ostinato is a variation form in which a theme or pattern is repeated throughout the piece, while the musical material around it is changed or varied. In a similar way the DePaul/Albany recordings have a consistent theme of presenting works for winds of two types: First, we have tried to offer seldom or never-recorded music by important composers, music that we don't want to lose from the repertoire. Second, we have presented solo works with wind accompaniment, played by excellent soloists. As the important repertoire for winds develops and is defined over the next decades, we will need to establish and perform the emerging "canon" of wind music. Nobody knows what pieces will be important 100 years from now, but we do need to seek out the best music and insure that it doesn't fall by the wayside because it has been ignored. It is also important to provide a repertoire of excellent solo pieces with original and well-transcribed wind accompaniments. These two themes represent the ostinato of the DePaul Albany series.

Music for flute and piano is very popular these days, not only for performers to study but for serious listeners who are drawn to the sensuous sounds of that instrument. American music for this combination is remarkably popular, if you just look at the record listings. This new release not only features two premiere recordings (the Schocker and Warner) but a particular theme common to all four: the influence of jazz. Each of the composers embraces this form from a remarkably different perspective. For one, it is the use of direct lyric and rhythmic quotes; another employs jazz "licks" to create an echo of jazz. Occasionally, subtle references to major jazz players are brought into the mix. Sometimes the choice is to retain the "sound and feel" of jazz while remaining entirely original. This recording is a voyage with jazz as the reference point. The joy of this recording is participating in this journey, encountering the humorous, introspective, reckless, poignant, eclectic and alluring personalities that inhabit the jazz spirit. (It's interesting to note that these composers were all born within the period that jazz had its strongest hold on the public-especially the late 1950's.)

Edmund Campion completed his doctoral work at Columbia University with Mario Davidovsky before attending the Paris Conservatory to study composition with Gérard Grissey. He has explained his approach to composition in an interview with the Computer Music Journal: "Emerging technologies have been the generative source for most of my musical explorations...There is nothing new here. For Chopin, it was the modern piano, and for Schaeffer, it was the tape recorder. Finally, there is no distinction between acoustic sound, natural sound, or electronic sound. Everything is integrated with the full spectrum of all possibly sounds...I hope I am coming full circle, back to the essential musical material, it music that is made just for hearing."

Soprano Tanya Kruse Ruck and her colleague, pianist Elena Abend present a program of songs by three women composers: Elsa Respighi, Modesta Bor, and Lori Laitman. Else Respighi, who died in 1996, was musically precocious, studied with Ottorino Respighi, her future husband, who submitted her songs to the publisher Ricordi. All but two of her songs were written before her marriage, after which she turned her attention to her career as a singer. Modesta Bor, who died in 1998 was a well-known Venezuelan composer, musicologist and choral conductor. Lori Laitman, born in 1955 is one of America's most prolific and widely performed composers of vocal music. Tanya Ruck maintains a career singing oratorio, art song, and opera and serves on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The complete recordings of these works on Albany with the Ohio Light Opera have been a delight to all and we're happy to present this CD featuring their outstanding orchestra performing the wonderful melodies from these classic operettas.

The young piano virtuoso Christopher Janwong McKiggan commissioned seven composers from many different cultural backgrounds (American, Canadian, Thai, Chinese, Korean and Middle Eastern) to write a work for piano based on Paganini's 24th Caprice for solo violin. The variety of the compositions that resulted is fascinating and links multiple national traditions around a central theme, while maintaining uniqueness. Born in England, McKiggan grew up in Thailand. He has studied at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Rice University, where he is now pursuing a DMA in piano performance. A recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Gold Medal in the Seattle International Piano Competition, McKiggan is committed to contemporary music and has performed numerous world premieres, including the Asian premiere of Robert Beaser's Piano Concerto at the 2012 Beijing Modern Music Festival.

Stephen Scott writes: "Sounding Landscapes is a kind of song-cycle fantasy celebrating various landscapes, both physical and imagined, both natural and cultural, of Lanzarote, eastern-most of the Canary Islands. I was inspired to make this work not only as a personal manifestation of my affection for Lanzarote, which I have visited three times, but also in response to two other sources: the evocative visual art of painter/photographer Ildefonso Aguilar, Founder and Director of the Visual Music festival of Lanzarote, whose recent series of paintings, Paisajes Audibles, provides my title and the cover paintings; and works by various writers, including Plato, Lorca and Agustin Espinosa, who have examined ideas of landscape and the humans who are shaped by it and shape it in turn. My work for the past 25 years has centered on the bowed piano, a medium primarily of my own devising but influenced also by the discoveries of other experimentalists such as Henry Cowell, John Cage and Curtis Curtis-Smith. Most of the sounds are made directly on the strings of one open grand piano by ten players using a variety of materials and tools; among these are nylon fish line, horsehair, guitar picks and fingernails, piano hammers, percussion mallets and specially-designed piano mutes. The music also owes a huge stylistic debt to the thinking of Terry Riley and Steve Reich, as well as to various world musics, especially West African music, jazz and flamenco. Paisajes Audibles/Sounding Landscapes is my first major work to integrate the human voice with the Bowed Piano Ensemble. The texts sung and spoken by the soprano (and occasionally by the players) are in English, Spanish and French and most are self-explanatory. The work was composed on commission from Meet the Composer Commissioning Music USA, for San Francisco's Other Minds Festival. It is dedicated to the Festival's director, Charles Amirkhanian, and to Ildefonso Aguilar, two of contemporary music's most visionary presenters; Aguilar's work has given life to Harry Partch's dictum that "the eye explains to the ear and the ear fulfills the vision"; and Amirkhanian has for decades been teaching Americans, musicians and listeners alike, much of what we need to know about our own contemporary music and about each other."

Composer Pamela Decker writes that "Haven: Songs of Mystery and of Memory for mezzo-soprano and piano, is a cycle of 16 songs for which all music and texts are original compositions. The cycle draws inspiration and influences from a variety of styles: Impressionism, Argentine tango; flamenco modes, South American rhythms, classical art song, jazz, pop, cabaret, and blues." Pamela Decker is Professor of Organ/Music Theory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. As both organ recitalist and composer, Decker has been active in the United States, Europe, the Baltic Region, and Canada. She has been a featured recitalist at many conventions and festivals and her compositions have been performed in 19 countries. Her discography includes recordings on the Albany Records, Loft, Gothic, ReZound, Arkay, and Arktos labels. She holds a D.M.A. degree from Stanford and studied both organ and composition as a Fulbright Scholar in Germany.

Luigi Mancinelli was a noted Italian composer of works for the stage, concert hall and church as well as for the early cinema. After studying in Florence, he served as an orchestral cellist before becoming a conductor at the Teatro Morlocchi in Perugia. As if to anticipate the celebrated rise to fame of Arturo Toscanini, Mancinelli stepped from his role as cellist to the podium to conduct Verdi's Aida, a feat which earned him an engagement as conductor at the Teatro Apollo in Rome where he appeared until 1881. Subsequently, his growing fame took him for conducting engagements to Paris, Milan, Bologna, Venice, London, Madrid and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. During his nine seasons as conductor there he led the first Met performances of Werther, Falstaff, Samson and Dalilah, Le Cid, The Magic Flute, La Boheme, Don Giovanni and Ernani, as well as his own opera Ero and Leandro. He also conducted in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Lisbon - where he committed suicide in the aftermath of a bankruptcy. His works for the stage reflect a dramatic temperament. His first opera Isora di Provenza succeeded in Bologna in 1884, but failed in Naples in 1886. His next opera, Ero and Leandro, brought him international attention via premieres in London and New York, its libretto by the admiring composer and librettist, Arrigo Boito. Paolo and Francesca from 1907 failed - in part due to the unfashionable idealism and classicism of its libretto in an era when the ideals of verismo opera, championed by Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Puccini, were exciting audiences every where. However, the music of Paolo and Francesca is both rich in texture and has moments of real inspiration.

Stephen Shewan's music is both melodic and accessible, at times propelled by catchy rhythms flavored with jazz and pop idioms. In Shewan's music we hear a fresh voice at work, demonstrating a talent for ingratiating melody, infectious rhythm and a command of colorful orchestration. Stephen Shewan was born in Warsaw, New York. Currently he teaches music and directs the bands at Williamsville East High School, near Buffalo, New York. He is a graduate of Roberts Wesleyan College and Ithaca College, and is completing his DMA from the Eastman School where he studied composition with Samuel Adler. For a young composer, he has composed in every medium but opera. A previous release on Albany Records (TROY149) contains his Magnificat, Feast of Carols and String Quartet No. 1. His most recent work is Hymn for Spring (1999) for Chorus and Orchestra.

Paradiso, an oratorio composed by Robert Kyr on Robin Kirkpatrick's poetic libretto based on Dante's Commedia was commissioned by the Notre Dame Vocale and Carmen-Helena Téllez. As a musical work, Paradiso is an oratorio in 17 scenes, whose text is a lyrical meditation and profound reflection on Dante's version of heaven. While Dante is the source of the libretto, Kyr's musical setting arises from a variety of sources that are interwoven throughout the work. Composer Robert Kyr has been a member of the music faculty at the University of Oregon since 1990 and is director of the renowned Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium. He has been engaged for a long time with the themes of spiritual renewal, peace and environmentalism, through a style that partakes of both early and contemporary techniques. Librettist Robin Kirkpatrick is a poet and internationally renowned Dante scholar and is a fellow of Robinson College at Cambridge. Called a "quiet force behind contemporary music in America today," conductor Carmen-Helena Téllez is music director of the Notre Dame Vocale, Kosmologia Interdisciplinary Project, Aquava New Music Studio, and Indiana University's Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and has commissioned, premiered, and recorded many landmark works.

All of the music presented here, beautiful in its own right, is suitable for intermediate-level flutists to play. None have been widely recorded, so this recording offers performance models for younger students. These are lovely concert pieces by French composers written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Flutist Leonard Garrison teaches at the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho and is principal flute of the Walla Walla Symphony. He has been flutist in the Chicago Symphony and Tulsa Philharmonic as well as president of the National Flute Association. His other recordings on Albany Records include works for flute and piano by American composers and two recordings of the Scott/Garrison Duo performing American works for clarinet and flute. His colleague at the University of Idaho, Roger McVey is the pianist on this recording.

The eight early works of Haydn featured on this recording, though variously titled partita and divertimento, are sonatas in all but name. They are committed to the new sonata style of the mid-eighteenth century, most often comprising three movements, the dance elements of the suite and partita having receded to a secondary role. At the time of their composition, probably between 17545 and 1765, Haydn was Kapellmeister to Count Morzin. He entered the service of the Esterhazy family as Vice-Kapellmeister in 1761. Beyond this, and the speculation that they may have been performed by the composer at court or used as teaching pieces, it is impossible to reconstruct their biographical and social context. Unpublished in the composer's lifetime, the works survive in manuscript copies bearing attribution only to Haydn. Only a single work, Hob.XVI-6 survives in an autograph manuscript and this is undated.

It is the supreme love of memorable seminal melodic ideas placed in contrapuntal settings and immersed in warm harmonies inspired from popular, blues, and jazz genres that characterize the piano pieces of Alec Wilder. His short piano works, of which this recording consists, are most often conceived in ternary, binary or rondo forms, and sets of these smaller pieces are combined in suites to create a larger musical form. Pianist John Noel Roberts has collected many of Wilder's short works for piano in this second volume of his works for solo piano. Roberts studied at Eastman and Yale and has an impressive career as an orchestral soloist and recitalist, having appeared at major venues around the world. Currently on the faculty at Our Lady of the Lake University, Roberts has served on music faculties at Furman, UNC-Charlotte, Mercer, Concordia College, Stephen F. Austin State University, and the Western Australian Conservatorium of Music.

Thomas Pasatieri has proven over the past 30 years, starting while he was still a Juilliard student, to be one of America's most significant opera composers. Among the many works to his credit are The Seagull, available on TROY579/80, and a collection entitled Divas of a Certain Age on TROY841. By 1984 he had had many operatic triumphs in this country. "But I was weary of the enormous effort it took to create a new stage work only to have it premiered and then not performed again," he writes. Around that time he left for the West Coast, working as an orchestrator for film scores, with many fascinating stories to tell of his experiences. Just the same, Pasatieri has made it clear that his true calling has been as an opera composer. With such an interest in writing for the voice, he has composed lieder and song cycles such as the ones on this disc. The cycles span some thirty years, and we both performed and dedicated to important singers for whom he has written his operas, and who recognized his superb gifts. Three Poems of James Agee "are dark and both poetry and music reflect the fearful prospects the innocent faced in the oppressive Cold War epoch. Yet the works are passionate, somehow romantic. The Oscar Wilde Poems were chosen by Pasatieri for their introspective atmosphere. A Rustling of Angels "displays innocence, optimism and simplicity, and perhaps a suggestion of divine inspiration." Six other solo songs, including the popular comic piece I Just Love My Voice, close out the program, performed by a group of singers with whom the composer has long worked. These are all works in which the composer reveals his soul, his inspirations and his love.

Flutist Julie Thornton and horn player Michael Thornton have recorded an intriguing disc of music for their instruments including three contemporary works with three by Franz Doppler. Their collaborators include Susan Grace, piano; Paul Basler, piano; and Yumi Hwang-Williams, violin. Julie Thornton is a member of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and on the faculty at the Lamont School of Music. She has performed extensively with the New York Philharmonic, the Saint Louis Symphony, the Oregon Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Houston Symphony. She studied at Eastman and Northwestern University as well as Shepherd School of Music. The winnere of numerous competitions, she can be heard on the London, Teldec, Naxos, and Koch International labels. Michael Thornton enjoys a distinguished and varied careeer as an orchestral performer, chamber musician, soloist and pedagogue and has performed on six continents. He is principal horn with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Colorado Symphony. He has been a featured performer at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Mainly Mozart, Spoleto, and Moab Music, among many others. He is on the faculty of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Internationally acclaimed and award-winning flutist, composer, and producer Burak Beşir was born in Cyprus. He graduated with distinction from the Ankara State Conservatory, then attended The Royal Scottlish Academy where he received his master's degree. He was the recipient of a 2003 United Kingdom Young Concert Artist Award, which gave him the opportunity to perform at concerts and festivals, including a concert at Wigmore Hall. He has performed as principal flutist of the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet. Beşir came to the U.S. in 2008 to study at the Berklee College of Music, where he received the Arif Mardin Achievement and Best Concerto Performer Awards. He is a frequent performer at the National Flute Association Conventions, where he has performed his own compositions and arrangements. Beşir wished for his debut album to reflect his playing, his music and his passions in life. The recording showcases rich and diverse masterpieces from the flute repertoire, as well as Beşir's virtuosic playing.

Marthanne Verbit comments: "We are now such a long way from the optimism, excitement, intellectual ferment and urge to experiment prevalent at the outset of the nineteenth century that it is difficult to believe all this really existed. The various movements that flourished during this era - impressionism, expressionism, futurism, cubism and neo-classicism, to name just a few - brought about a flood tide of music for the piano, this as diverse as the "movements" that inspired it. Perhaps at this point, we can listen with fresh ears to two of these earliest trend-setters, Cyril Scott and Leo Ornstein."