Catalog

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

Here's some music that proves that it's okay to write in a recognizably American style that's reminiscent of the recent past and fresh at the same time. Many of Zaimont's works have won prizes; she composes in all media; and is one of the most recognizable among today's composers. Her chamber and symphonic works have been widely recorded, and her orchestral works have been performed by the orchestras of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Jacksonville, Mississippi and groups in Europe. As she writes about this collection, "...I've been fortunate throughout my teaching career to have experienced performance collaborations with a good number of top-rate faculty colleagues-including the past fourteen years at the University of Minnesota...This disc celebrates several mostly "Minnesota" collaborations, centering on more recent solo works. Several of these pieces received their premieres in vital interpretations by the same artists heard here."

During the past 50 years, the marimba has gradually found its place in the concert hall as a solo concert instrument. Through this process, the instrument has experienced a series of major innovations and as a result, there has been a great need for new marimba works that fully capture the musical and technical possibilities of the instrument. The music on this recording is the result of Juan Álamo's ongoing efforts to contribute to the growth and advancement of the marimba as a solo concert instrument. Throughout his career, he has commissioned works for the marimba as well as writing for the instrument himself, so this collection of his music as well as others vibrantly demonstrates the beauty and warmth of this ancient instrument. Juan Álamo, on the faculty at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill is an internationally known performer, composer, and educator. A graduate of Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and the University of North Texas, he has presented solo recitals at universities and percussion and jazz festivals throughout the United States, Europe, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. He is the author of Four Mallet Music for the Modern Marimba Player and

Saxophonist Adam Estes is on the faculty at the University of Mississippi, where he teaches saxophone and bassoon, coaches woodwind chamber ensembles, and teaches woodwinds methods courses. He is a founding member of the Assembly Quartet and maintains an active performance schedule as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician. His performing career has taken him to venues in Scotland, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, France, and Belgium. His colleague, Stacy Rodgers is professor of music at the University of Mississippi where he is head of keyboard studies. Estes and Rodgers perform a program of contemporary works for saxophone and piano. The oldest work on the recording is Paul Creston's Sonata, written in 1939. Baljinder Sekhon's Sonata of Puzzles was commissioned by more than 50 saxophonists from 16 countries as part of the inaugural Global Premiere Consortium Commissioning Project and written in 2015. John Leszczynski's Almost Out of the Sky is also a commissioned work, which was written in 2011 at the behest of a consortium of 30 saxophonists. John Anthony Lennon's Distances Within Me was composed in 1979, while Lawson Lunde's Sonata, Op. 12 was written in 1959.

Armand Qualliotine was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of seven he started his instructions in Jazz Guitar and Electric Bass as well as Music Theory. In 1967 he began his studies of Classical Guitar and Music Theory at Hofstra University. After earning degrees in composition and theory from the Hartt College of Music, SUNY at Stony Brook and Brandeis University, his post-doctoral activities included studying with Pierre Boulez and Milton Babbitt. He has taught guitar, theory, history and composition at Stony Brook, Northeastern University, Brandeis and the Berklee College of Music where is now an Associate Professor of Composition. Awards in his field have included residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Composers Conference and the Tanglewood Music Center where he was the Leonard Bernstein fellow in composition. He also received the C.D. Jackson Award for outstanding achievement as a composer, First Prize in the Boston ISCM Composition Competition, commissions from Harvard's Fromm Music Foundation, the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players and a 1988 Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2004 he was nominated to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Harpist Elisabeth Remy Johnson offers works for harp by women composers from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. In her introduction, Remy Johnson points out that the title, Quest, is drawn from the composition, Quest by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, whose inspiration for her piece perfectly fit the mission of this recording, which is to expand the harp repertoire by finding and arranging works by women. Principal harpist of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for more than 20 years, Ms. Remy Johnson is acclaimed by critics and audiences for her "complete mastery of the harp and its secrets." In addition to her orchestral works, Ms. Remy Johnson has an active career as a soloist and chamber musician, performing across North America and throughout the world. The recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including first place in the American Harp Society and American String Teachers Association competitions, she is a graduate of Harvard.

This compact disc presents six world premiere recordings of works commissioned by Duo XXI. Each of these pieces introduces an innovative compositional approach to the relatively unexplored genre of the string duo. Both members of Duo XXI -- Anna Cromwell, violin and Mira Frisch, cello -- are passionate string professors who reach a diverse audience through concerts, conference presentations and outreach workshops. Ms. Cromwell is on the faculty at Eastern Illinois University while Ms. Frisch teaches cello at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

A cycle based on folk material for flute and guitar by Robert Beaser, a commissioned song cycle by David Liptak based on the poetry of Homero Aridjis for soprano, flute and guitar, plus the ever popular Histoire du Tango by Astor Piazzolla are given exquisite performances by flutist Bonita Boyd and guitarist Nicholas Goluses with Kathryn Lewek, soprano on this recording of Songs & Dances of the Americas. The Boyd/Goluses Duo has received much acclaim, the two members breathing new fire into a rich repertoire for flute and guitar, as well as an artistic vision that embraces support for new repertoire.

A native of Hong Kong, composer Stephen Yip now lives in the U.S. He studied at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and received his D.M.A. from Rice University. His music has been performed by noted new music ensembles in the U.S. and abroad including the New York New Music Ensemble, Little Giant Chinese Orchestra, Singapore Chinese Orchestra, and the Moscow New Music Ensemble. His discography includes recordings on the Albany, ERM-Media, Parma, Capstone, ATMA, and Beauport labels. He is on the faculty at Houston Community College. This recording of his chamber music includes performances by the [Switch~ Ensemble], the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, pianist Shelley Ng, and flutists Pei-San Chiu and Chen-Yu Wu.

Beth Anderson is a composer of new romantic music, text-sound works, and musical theater. Born in Kentucky, she studied primarily in California with John Cage, Terry Riley, Robert Ashley, and Larry Austin at Mills College and the University of California at Davis. She lives in Brooklyn and produces Women's Work, a concert series that enjoyed its premiere season in February 2004. Kyle Gann writes: There's an aspect of late 20th-, early 21st-century music that I half-kiddingly refer to as 'the simulation of normalcy.' Let me explain. The guiding principle of modernist music had been Ezra Pound's 'make it new.' Mid-century composers tried to make music that sounded crazy, strange, like nothing you'd ever heard before. The one-upmanship involved in that quest eventually got out of hand - or, at least, it left audiences behind, who gave up looking for recognizable features or points of entry into increasingly abstract and complex sound-structures. And so the generation that came of age in the 1970s inherited a logical double-bind worthy of a Zen koan. On one hand they had the same need to express originality and personality as their forebears. On the other, they needed to write music attractive enough, communicative enough, to kickstart a new new-music audience again pretty much from scratch, the traditional classical audience having more or less abandoned interest in anything outside the standard repertoire. What the best of these composers came up with is often a music that wears its originality on the inside: a music whose tonalities and textural consistency are not all that foreign from popular or classical music you're already used to, but whose underlying quirks make it a more challenging experience than you first think. All this is especially true of the aspect of Beth Anderson's music found on this disc. We have an extended piano solo; some songs; some piece for violin and piano. Nothing strange about any of that (though I'll admit, the concluding Cleveland Swale may be the only piece ever written for piano and two double basses). The music is mostly tonal. It is generally pretty, even lyrical. It even uses humorous poems and nursery rhymes. The pieces conform to genre, more or less. Your first impression may be that it's pretty simple stuff, possibly even nanve. But on close listening, such impressions turn out to be misleading...This is not 'normal' music. But on a certain level it sure stimulates normalcy."

There is nothing quite like the British composer Peter Dickinson's witty musical parody, with its humor at various levels. Who else would make a rag and a set of blues out of hymn tunes? Or turn the main themes of his Piano Concerto (TROY160) into a rag, which is actually played during the course of that work on an upright piano at the back of the orchestra? Or make a blues setting of Byron's "So we'll go no more a-roving" using a chord progression from Ravel and turn the whole thing into an Organ Concerto (TROY160)? Or have an offstage pianist piecing together fragments of a piano rag during his String Quartet No. 2 ? Or make a blues version of Edward MacDowell's salon classic, To a Wild Rose, calling it Blue Rose and consequently climaxing on Scriabin's mystic chord? And following this with a Wild Rose Rag? This CD is a collection to be enjoyed: five piano rags, five blues, three reworkings of Satie, two blues songs and two sets of songs, all presented as a complete program in the immediately attractive manner of all Dickinson's recitals, broadcasts and other recordings.

The Dutch composer, Willem van Otterloo, composed his Serenade in 1944. It is in a post romantic style and runs the gamut from charming to brilliant to reflective. It is loosely based on the wind serenades of the 18th and 19th centuries and consists of four movements - March, Nocturne, Scherzo and Hymn. As the titles suggest, this music is meant to be accessible to the listener and appropriate for concert as well as occasional performances. George Perle has been celebrated as both a composer and theorist of extraordinary accomplishments. He is a favorite son of the DePaul School of Music, where he earned his BA in 1938. The Concertino for Piano, Winds and Timpani was composed between September 24, 1978 and February 20, 1979, on a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation. It was premiered in Chicago in April 1979 with Ralph Shapey conducting. Ned Rorem's Sinfonia was written as the first commission for the American Wind Symphony Orchestra and its conductor, Robert Boudreau. It is cast in four brief sections, two of which are lyrical and reflective, and two of which are full of energy. The work is short, but possesses both wit and charm. Thom Ritter-George grew up in Detroit, Michigan. Today he is a Professor of Music in Idaho State University's Department of Music. His Concerto for Flute was written in early 1966 on commission from the music publisher, P. Litchard Toland. Mr. Toland requested two special features for the new work. The first was that the solo part should be written with optional scoring for piccolo in certain passages. The second was that there should be three versions of the accompaniment - orchestra, piano and wind ensemble. In his role as Orchestra Librarian for the Eastman School of Music, Mr. Toland had seen many situations where accompaniment alternatives were needed. Hans Werner Henze's Ragtimes and Habaneras was originally written for brass band and was re-scored for wind orchestra by his pupil Marcel Wengler. The work consists of eleven short dance movements reminiscent of ragtime dances like the Charleston and the Foxtrot, and Latin American dances such as the tango, Son and Rumba. The final movement is a kind of cross between a ragtime and a march. While the harmonic materials are modern and each form a kind of short parody, the music is full of humor and fun.

The composer writes: "Somerset Maugham's short story Rain was suggested to me for an opera by Bob Brewer, who had been the stage director for the premieres of two of my operas in New York, Mary Dyer and Abigail Adams in which my wife Lynn had sung the title roles. Bob knew what kind of a dramatic story I would be attracted to and what Lynn's vocal and dramatic gifts would bring to the role of Sadie Thompson. I was fortunate to have been invited in the early 1990s to participate in an ASCAP four-week film scoring workshop in Los Angeles, getting insight into the focus and condensation of musical effects that later the Rain libretto demanded. I was also writing this opera for my wife who has vast operatic experience around the world, and had sung Minnie, the miners' saloon keeper in Puccini's Girl of the Golden West at the Metropolitan and elsewhere, a perfect background for her to give life to Sadie Thompson who struggles to extricate herself from her barroom world. The premiere of this opera took place in Alice Tully Hall in February, 2003."

John Schlenck was born in Indianapolis and graduated at the age of 21 from the Eastman School. He then moved to New York City where he soon discovered his affinity with Indian thought and joined the Vedanta Society of New York. Serving as its music director since 1961, Schlenck has composed many songs and a number of larger works with Vedantic and other spiritual texts. Hindu texts have inspired Western composers from at least the time of Gustav Holst - Hymns from the Rig Veda (1908-1912) - and John Alden Carpenter - Gitanjali (Song Offerings) (1914), based on the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore's poetry. The entire libretto of Philip Glass' opera Satyagraha (1980) was taken from the Bhagavad Gita, in the original Sanskrit. Likewise John Schlenck's Raise the Self by the Self, composed in 1986, is set to a text adapted from the Bhagavad Gita by William A. Conrad, Erik Johns and John Schlenck and Life of All Lives composed in 2000 is based on a text from the Bhagavad Gita translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood.

This recording features clarinet works with an electronic or electroacoustic component. D. Edward Davis’ Raised Structures is the first work, inviting the listener into an experience where the pacing, sound world, and form may be challenging and hopefully pique the listener’s curiosity. Additional works are by Thea Musgrave, Alejandro Rutty, Doina Rotaru, and Aleks Sternfeld-Dunn. Anthony Taylor is Associate Professor of Clarinet at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is also principal clarinet of the Winston-Salem Symphony. A graduate of Washington State University, Florida State University and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Taylor has recorded for Steinway Live Recordings, Potenza, and Centaur Records.

David Owens, pianist and composer, has long experience as an organist, conductor and accompanist as well. He has appeared as soloist, in addition to working as a collaborative artist with hundreds of singers and instrumentalists. A graduate of Eastman, where he studied composition, his compositions have been played and sung by chamber ensembles, orchestras, choruses, and soloists throughout the United States. Owens is also a widely read music journalist, having received the Deems Taylor Award for Distinguished Music Criticism. This recording, devoted to his chamber music, includes an older work written in 1985 (Fantasy on a Celtic Carol), as well as two recent works (Sonata for Two Pianos, written in 2010 and Raking the Snow, written in 2008).

Shulamit Ran, probably the most significant Israeli composer since her teacher Paul Ben-Haim to receive wide, international recognition, came to this country in her teens and continued her studies with Norman Dello-Joio. In 1973 she joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. From 1990-1997 she was composer-in-residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. At this time she won the Pulitzer Prize for her Symphony (1990). Her music is marked by a strong sense of lyricism underpinned by dramatic, colorful contrasts and powerful orchestration. "Legends" was written in celebration of the twin centennials of the University of Chicago and the Chicago Symphony, and Albany Records is proud to present this live performance by this great orchestra. The Violin Concerto, as she puts it, "explores certain facets of what, for me, is the violin's complex personality, or 'soul'." It was written for the performer on this disc, Israeli violinist Ittai Shapira.

Randy Bauer (b. 1975) is a composer and jazz musician based in Minneapolis. His music has been performed across a range of cities and venues from Austin to Zagreb by the Brentano String Quartet, eighth blackbird, Nash Ensemble of London and many other distinguished new music ensembles. He was named a 2013-14 McKnight Foundation Fellow by the McKnight Foundation of Minnesota. He has also received recognition from DownBeat, and the Jazz Composers Alliance. Bauer has won the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer's Award as well as three ASCAP/Morton Gould Awards. On the faculty at Macalester College, he studied at Peabody, and Princeton. This disc contains three of his recent works (the oldest written in 2010). One can hear a range of influences and a sort of hybridity between the genres of jazz and classical music. His compositions are imbued with considerable lyricism, while also experimenting with hybrid forms and complex narratives.

Major critics have praised Erica Muhl's music, describing it as "strong and poetic," "ravishingly beautiful," "haunting," even "fearless". Paul Hertelendy, one of America's most esteemed writers on music, wrote, "Muhl has a fine ear and an iridescent palette...[Her work] is a contemporary foray into impressionism, mysticism, veiled allure and the shimmering colors of a concert orchestra". She was born and raised in Los Angeles, where her father, Edward, was head of production for Universal Pictures and her mother, Barbara, an author and opera singer. Her parents associated with such musical figures as Stravinsky, Schnabel, Stokowski, Andre Previn and Henry Mancini. As may have been expected in this musical milieu, Muhl was trained both as a composer and conductor, with much of that training completed in Europe. At age sixteen she was invited to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. After returning to California to earn her B.M., she traveled again to Europe for graduate studies at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, studying with the great Italian composer Franco Donatoni. In 1991, she completed her Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Southern California. She studied conducting with Walter Cataldi-Tassoni, a student of Mascagni and Fritz Zweig, a student of Humperdinck and a close colleague of Richard Strauss and Otto Klemperer. Muhl has served as Assistant Conductor for Los Angeles Opera Theater, Seattle Opera and the Pacific Northwest Wagner Festival's complete Ring. Erica Muhl is Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music and resides in Los Angeles.

Raphael Hillyer's distinguished career as a co-founder of the Juilliard String Quartet, soloist, teacher, and guiding light of the formation of the Tokyo String Quartet has made him one of the most respected musicians in the United States. Born in Ithaca, N.Y. he studied in Berlin and Leningrad, where he also took theory lessons with a young Dmitri Shostakovich. He later attended Curtis and graduated from Dartmouth. He did his graduate work at Harvard where he studied with Walter Piston. He made his debut as a soloist in Budapest, Hungary. Mr. Hillyer appeared frequently in recital with such artists as Leonard Bernstein, Nadia Boulanger and Ruth Laredo and he played with the Boston Symphony under Koussevitzky and the NBC Symphony under Toscanini. He was also a member of the Stradivarius and NBC String Quartets. In 1946, William Schuman, President of the Juilliard School, invited Mr. Hillyer to co-found the Juilliard String Quartet. This quartet went on to concertize throughout the world in thousands of concerts and broadcasts, becoming the quartet-in-residence at the Library of Congress, and making numerous recordings for Columbia and RCA Victor. In 1969, he resigned from the Quartet to pursue his own solo career. In this capacity, he has appeared all over the world. Mr. Hillyer has taught at the Juilliard School, Yale University School of Music, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival and many other centers of learning around the world. He was visiting professor in chamber music performance at Harvard and is on the faculty of Boston University.

Sigurd Rascher's influence on the development of a body of music suitable for performance by saxophonists is truly international. He is a man with a mission. For nearly fifty years he traveled the globe as a concert artist appearing as soloist with both major and provincial Orchestras, and as a recitalist in concert venues large and small. During his years as a frequent traveler, he was constantly on the lookout for promising young composers whom he encouraged to create fresh new works for the saxophone. These efforts have resulted in a large percentage of the best music yet composed for the instrument. In addition to encouraging the creation of original music for the saxophone, Rascher transcribed a number of preexisting compositions, both classical and traditional, so that they could be performed and enjoyed by saxophonists and their audiences. He did so much to establish the saxophone as a viable medium for serious artistic expression, and through his example and teaching encouraged numerous other saxophonists to continue on the same path he blazed. All of the music recorded on this disc has some association with the great man himself. Lawrence Gwozdz, a former student of Rascher, is Professor of Saxophone at the University of Southern Mississippi. He concertizes extensively throughout the United States and Europe.

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

Born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Raymond Wojcik is a composer, conductor and educator. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver, his composition teachers were David Schiff and Donald Keats. His conducting studies were with George Manahan, Michael Charry and Harold Farberman. His music is emotionally direct and spontaneous, with elements of jazz in the Dance Symphony and a keen understanding of the creativity of young children in The Art Spirit, in which the composer was given the task of creating symphonic movements in response to students' artwork. Akin to Fire reflects a musical kinship the composer felt to Beethoven's Grosse Fugue, Op. 133 which he reexamined while in the middle of writing the work. But his comments about Jubilee, commissioned by the New Jersey Youth Symphony, best sum up his aesthetic: "My inspiration for this overture came from the young musicians themselves who possessed a wonderful level of energy, dedication, and love of music. I also could not help but notice a "love" of cell phones, video games and chatting when not engrossed in music making. As a result, I incorporated musical ideas that suggest those things into the compositional fabric."

Peter Ré studied at Juilliard and the Yale University School of Music, where he studied with Paul Hindemith, and received a Bachelor of Music degree in 1948 and at Columbia University for a Master of Arts Degree in 1950. In his 33 year career at Colby College, Professor Emeritus Ré taught courses in music theory and composition, music history and conducting. Ré has received commissions for works from the Portland and Bangor Symphony Orchestras and the Portland String Quartet (the String Quartet No. 3). He has received awards from the Maine State Commission on the Arts and Humanities for his work as Conductor and Music Director of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. His twelve-year tenure in that position brought about major changes in the constituency, size and performing ability of the orchestra, which transformed it into a major cultural resource for Maine and which attracted guest artists of international reputation. The works on this recording have been performed by, among others, the Juilliard, Hungarian, Bay Chamber, Vaghy and Portland Quartets. The founding members of the Portland String Quartet have been together since 1969 and have performed in all the major venues of the world. They have received particular attention for their complete cycles of the chamber music of Bloch, Chadwick and Piston.

Gardner Read writes: "As a longtime, committed composer of art songs and of choral music, I have always been drawn to poetry that is rich in vivid imagery - "where sheep lie down to wait for morning's dew," for instance, or "when moonlight falls on the water," or "while envious fireflies spoil the twinkling dew," and "eager people, banners dreaming, marble gleaming"- all evoke positive musical response to the poem's compelling imagery. On the other hand, poetry that is heavily philosophical in tone, is basically narrative-oriented, or is motivated by social protest, for example, seldom stirs the creative juices for me. Stylistically, my vocal music here recorded ranges from overt romanticism, to various degrees of impressionism, to an almost folklike simplicity, even naiveté. These different vocal styles, however, are not the result of calculated choice but are determined only by the perceived musical potentialities of the poetic text. A clearly defined melodic line and a varied and apt accompanimental support are the twin basic criteria that have always shaped my vocal writing."

The five works on the first disc are by two of the sons of J.S. Bach, and all are examples of what were known at the time as trios. Yet they are a diverse group, reflecting not only the distinct styles of their two composers by also the various types of sonatas written by them. The works on the second disc illuminate the crucial role played by C.P.E. Bach in the shift from the Baroque to the Rococo style and the tremendous artistic value of his work. On the faculty at Duke University, flutist Rebecca Troxler specializes in the music of J.S. Bach's sons and other Rococo composers and this repertoire shows off her warm tone, stylish phrasing and brilliant technique. A graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts and Juilliard, she was a founding member of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra. Her colleagues are all noted specialists in Baroque music.

Albany Records in cooperation with the Center for Black Music Research is initiating a series undertaking to document the musics of the African diaspora. This first volume features two orchestral works Ñ one by Mary Watkins, who is an eclectic composer and pianist of the classical and jazz traditions and the other by Olly Wilson, one of the most distinguished composers of his generation. Watkins' work swings, grooves, and hearkens to the roots of African-American musical expression. Elements of jazz, traditional African music and popular forms are merged with contemporary techniques and colorful orchestrations. A veritable tour de force, Wilson's multimovement song cycle features three vocal soloists and a chamber ensemble that highlights extensive percussion. Drawing from sources such as spirituals and African-American poets, Wilson uses musical and textual emblems from African-American poetry in inventive ways that both surprise and entice.

“We like to sing about what we would like to be, and we must sing about what we are. The songs of a culture speak for themselves. That is what this recording is all about – the contrasting sides of our national character as reflected in our diverse musical heritage. More importantly, it is in part a look at today’s America through yesterday’s songs.,” so say Bill Crofut and Chris Brubeck in the notes for this recording of folk and popular songs. The surprise on this recording is the Jew’s harp playing of Peter Madcat Ruth. Crofut and Brubeck continue: “As you will hear, Madcat’s musical gifts are apparent throughout this recorded concert. His technique, his “time,” his soulfulness, and his taste are superior. We also must explain why the audience is laughing so hysterically not only at Madcat’s lead vocal and ridiculous traditional lyrics but also at his harp solo on Old Joe Clark. Every sound you hear in his solo after the second verse is made only by Madcat. There are no overdubs and somehow he does the following, in sequence, punctuated by the crowd’s amazed outbursts: chugs along on the harp and adds a duck call to the corner of his mouth plus various vocal hoots; replaces the duck call with a siren whistle; whips out a toothbrush and brushes on the microphone for one bar; pounds his chest in rhythm with a plastic hammer toy; squeaks a rubber frog; fits a party favor into each corner of his mouth and in alternating quarter notes blows them while still flying on the harp; breaks into a polyrhythmic “hootin” frenzy while lifting a bass harmonica to play with his nostrils; and plays the melody while the audience sits in stunned anticipation of God knows what might come next!”

In his introduction, James Adler says that Reflections is “an image, a return of light or energy, a sign or result, even a thought. This album is a celebration for and a reflection upon special friends, composers, and specific works that are close to my heart.” A Curtis Reflection, commissioned by The Curtis Institute of Music for their Centenary Commissioning Initiative, is a celebration of Adler’s years of study at Curtis. Judith Clurman, conductor of Essential Voices USA said “I enjoyed hearing ‘A Curtis Reflection’ and look forward to hearing it again.” Works by Henco Espag and Paul Turok represent his friends and the Debussy and Schumann Kinderszenen are works from his heart. James Adler is a pianist who “can create whatever type of music he wants at the keyboard” (Chicago Sun-Times) and a composer who writes “with uncommon imagination” (Atlanta Journal). As a performer and composer, Adler can be heard on the Albany Records, Capstone, Navona, and Ravello record labels. He is on the faculty at Saint Peter’s University and is the recipient of the 2017 Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.

This recording of music for flute and piano contains three works by Canadian composers in addition to works by Liszt, Franck and Ibert, taking the program into new and interesting listening experiences. William David Smith is a Trappist monk, while Larysa Kuzmenko is a Juno-Awards nominated composer and composer-in-residence with the Toronto Symphony and Reeves Medaglia-Miller is on the faculty of George Brown College in Toronto. Pianist Yaroslav Senyshyn has an impressive career with his performances winning critical acclaim in the major concert halls of the U.S., Russia and Canada. His wife, flutist Susan O'Neill-Senyshyn, has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in England and Canada. Dr. O'Neill has a PhD. In Psychology and has held faculty positions at Simon Fraser University and the Don Wright Faculty of Music at the University of Western Ontario.

Here is a real feast for lovers of contemporary American orchestral music. All three works contained on this CD are world premieres. The Northwest Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1987. In the last five years, it has performed 27 different works by 19 different northwest American composers. This disc is a great example of their work. About The Raven Speaks Mr. Short writes: "It is a suite for orchestra based on songs of northwest Native American cultures living along the coast of northwest Washington, Canada and southern Alaska." Mr. Short received his doctorate from the University of Oregon. His interest in ethnic music and incorporating ethnic music and culture in his compositions has been documented in more than 300 compositions written in the last 30 years. In 1923, George McKay received the first composition degree ever granted at Eastman. Shortly thereafter he became a professor at the University of Washington where he remained for more than 40 years. IN 1925, a competition was held by the Rochester Philharmonic to perform American music. George McKay was selected as one of the composers, along with Aaron Copland and Bernard Rogers. William Bergsma was educated at Stanford University and the Eastman School. He joined the faculty of Juilliard in 1946. He became associate dean in 1961. In 1963, he became director of the School of Music at the University of Washington in Seattle. The subtitle of his Serenade is "Because, of course, she might not come." The moon referred to in his piece is the moon of lovers, not astronauts. The music therefore is a restless nocturne, full of longing, anticipation and uncertainty.

Robert Schulslaper, a writer for Fanfare Magazine stated: "Reflections is a large-scale work in seven movements and Walwyn has the concentration, intensity and technique to focus attention on its every phrase and transformation. A large dynamic range, excellent pacing, attention to detail, and fleet-fingered dexterity serve her vision with grace and nobility...Walwyn has written music that will surely resonate with listeners' own reflections on 9/11. In my case, at least, it's left a lasting impression."