Catalog

The youngest of eight children raised by a widowed mother, Lawrence Dillon grew up in Summit, New Jersey, just outside of New York City. In 1985, he became the youngest composer to earn a doctorate at the Juilliard School, winning the coveted Gretchaninoff Prize upon graduation. He studied privately with Vincent Persichetti, and in classes with Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, David Diamond and Roger Sessions. Upon graduation, he was appointed to the Juilliard faculty. In 1990, he was offered the position of Assistant Dean at the North Carolina School of the Arts where he is now Composer-in-Residence and conductor of the contemporary music ensemble. "The three compositions on this album grew out of my increasing dissatisfaction with post-modernist techniques. Connected to so many surfaces, I found myself longing for depths. I began composing works that contained clear connections with Western musical tradition, both because of my love and respect for the greatest accomplishments of Western music and because I felt a growing number of people had lost touch with that amazing heritage. The result was a series of works that combined Western music traditions and popular idioms in nontraditional ways. Unlike the shocking disjunctions of postmodernism, however, the works on this recording aim for a seamless fusion, a common ground between genres where similarities convey specific meanings, and distinctions become irrelevant."

The chamber music repertoire for horn may not be vast, but it can boast of exceptional works that employ the instrument in myriad intriguing ways as so elegantly demonstrated by Richard King on this recording. King, principal horn of the Cleveland Orchestra since 1997, has been featured numerous times as soloist with Cleveland as well as with the Tokyo Symphony and Auckland Philharmonia. A graduate of Curtis, King was a member of the Center City Brass Quintet. He is on the faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music. King is joined on this disc by his colleagues from the Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Institute.

The composer writes: "Attracted I guess to the Dvorak Sextet and the two by Brahms, I ventured in 1970 to write a Sextet of my own. From the outset, I wanted the added symphonic richness afforded by six parts, but with each of the players having plenty of developmental and contrapuntal linear activity. The Lutheran hymn, Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland stimulated me, much more in the mid-Baroque setting by Praetorius than in the fully-tonal (and thus predictable if better known) J.S. Bach version. I decided to make this tune the crown of the Sextet. My Spanish Songs Besos sin Cuento resulted from two motivations, and it should be admitted from the outset that I have absolutely no knowledge of the Spanish language other than certain culinary terminology. For some time, I was drawn to the remarkable songs in the Sephardic tradition more than 500 years old and my motivation was to find some poetry of this heritage that had not yet been musically set. As I have felt driven to compose songs in as many languages as possible, I have also wanted to write sonatas or concertos for all the standard orchestral instruments. Over many years, I realized I had come fairly close, and decided in the mid 90s to fill in the gaps, at that time clarinet, bassoon, trombone and double bass. As of this writing (2002) only bassoon and double bass remain. The power and nobility of the trombone cannot and should not be denied, and my sonata, therefore, is rather

All the performances on this disc are world premieres. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was born and educated in Florence. He studied composition with Ildebrando Pizzetti and was noticed by Alfredo Casella when he was still a young man. He worked as a pianist and freelance composer until 1939. Then, sensing the approaching danger of the Second World War, he fled fascist Italy and settled in Beverly Hills, California, where he lived and worked until his death in 1968. His early music, with its distinctive use of Italian lyricism combined with the techniques of French impressionism, made him a welcome member of the Italian progressive school. He found his greatest sources of inspiration in the Bible, his Jewish heritage and in his native Tuscany. He was a great melodist and continued to compose right up until the end of his life. Towards the end he also composed music for films. His music was performed by Toscanini, Heifetz, Segovia and Piatagorsky.

Professor of Composition and Chair of the Composition Department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, David Conte serves on the faculty of the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, the board of the American Composers Forum and as Composer in Residence with Cappella SF as well. A graduate of Bowling Green State University and Cornell, Conte studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, where he was one of her last students. He has composed more than 80 works, including six operas and has received commissions and performances of his music from many noted performing ensembles in the United States. In recent years, he has turned his attention to instrumental music and this recording of three of these represent his longest and most ambitious essays in this form. The performances by distinguished new music performers in San Francisco reveal dramatic and lyrical melodies.

In 1927, Bernard Herrmann was a sixteen year old student at DeWitt Clinton High School in New York. Bored by his instructors, he eagerly sought out other rebellious spirits among his peers, and found one - a fellow composer, no less - in his German class: 14 year old Jerome Moross. A close friendship began, and for the next several years the two friends explored the musical by-ways of New York together, attending concerts and seeking out such composers as Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, George Gershwin and Morton Gould. In the early 1930s, as members of the Young Composers Group - a small band of New York composers modeled after the Russian Five, and led by Copland, Herrmann and Moross gave the first public performances of their music. Both composers were inspired by the vigorous American idiom of Ives, Copland and others; but while Herrmann's music was increasingly shaped by European models, Moross was most drawn to American folk music and other popular forms. Now, all these years later, here these two friends are joined in their music on this delightful disc.

Ted Hoyle, the cellist on this recording that includes two sonatas for cello and piano observes: "Of the four chamber works by Joseph Fennimore on this recording, two are programmatically linked to Marcel Proust's monumental Remembrance of Things Past. For half of the 1970s, Fennimore was obsessed with the work, and viewed the world through Proust-colored glasses. His first composition to reflect its input was the Quartet (after Vinteuil)...Swann in Love is the second homage to Proust. A sonata in one movement, there are two theme groups in the tonic and dominant respectively, development of this material, and a restatement of these themes in the tonic. Fennimore's First Sonata for Cello and Piano is full of epithets as to its interpretation. Both have four movements and modify traditional forms...Dominated by the piano, The Second Sonata with its Spanish cast, is a more complex work. The composer considers the four movements to be elements of a large-scale sonata form in which 'moods, melodic fragments - even keys themselves - are returned to for the sake of their peculiar color.'"

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

Peter G. Davis writes: "Spanning the years 1978 to 2001, the music on this disc gives a useful overview of the musical aims and stylistic development of a prominent, productive, and often provocative American composer between the ages of 17 and 40. It is a useful mini-survey and a revealing one as well. All five works are written for small instrumental combinations, an exposed medium in which no composer has ever found an easy place to hide. In chamber music every note counts, and the composer must make the performer as well as the listener feel actively engaged with the music's substance and forward progress at all times, if the piece is to emerge as a fully satisfying listening experience. Anyone who listens closely to Lowell Liebermann's scores has to be impressed by their ability to do precisely this in music notable for its clarity and textural lucidity. Some will be tempted to call these works neo-romantic, neo-classical, post-modern, or any number of other fashionable terms, most of them not very helpful. Labels are often misleading, but one thing is certain; Liebermann is not concerned with startling his audiences by experimenting with radical new structures, never-before-heard musical sounds, or extended instrumental techniques. Indeed, he adopts a more conservative stance that apparently stings certain critics for whom novelty is absolutely essential if a new work is to be considered artistically valid. So much the worse for them. Liebermann is too busy composing to enter into such aesthetic arguments. The title of each piece on this disc honestly describes what it is, and in terms that composers as far back as Haydn and Mozart would recognize. Liebermann's music falls gratefully upon the ear, but it is filtered through the sensibility of a composer who clearly lives in our time and is fully aware of the tumultuous musical upheavals of the past century, even as he consciously makes the choice to offer us something that rises above the fray. Liebermann writes music that above all strives for balance and beauty - and braininess as well, for all those who care to dig beneath the surface. It is a healthy sign of the times that a composer can once again choose to be accessible in this way and not be automatically squashed and discouraged by the mandarins of contemporary music. Such was the fate of many American composers active in the generation that preceded Liebermann, and the new music scene is still in recovery from those bad old days."

A native of Detroit, Paul Schoenfield began musical training at age six. He holds a degree from the Mellon University, as well as a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Arizona. A man of broad interests, he is also an avid scholar of mathematics and Hebrew. He held his first teaching post in Toledo, has lived on a kibbutz in Israel, was a free-lance composer and pianist in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and ultimately moved to Cleveland and then to Israel. Schoenfield and his family now divide their time between Israel and the United States. He has produced a large body of work for soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestra and recently completed a full-length folk opera, The Merchant and the Pauper, commissioned by the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Six British Folk Songs, a six-movement suite for cello and piano, was written in the summer of 1985 as a tribute to the cellist Jacqueline du Pre. It was commissioned by the Sewell family and premiered by cellist Laura Sewell, who had been a student of Du Pre. Sparks of Glory was written in 1995 for the Sea Cliff Chamber Players. It was commissioned by the Tilles family, who had specifically requested a work for narrator commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. For this purpose, "I could think of nothing more fitting than the accounts written by the Polish-Israeli journalist Moshe Prager."

Composer Stephen Rush has written six operas, more than 50 works for dance, chamber, and electronic media, concertos, and four symphonies. His works have been performed by distinguished ensembles including the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Warsaw National Symphony. The author of two books, his music appears on several record labels including Centaur, MMC, and Innova. A professor of music at the University of Michigan, he founded the Digital Music Ensemble at that institution, which he has directed for 25 years. He tours and records with his electronic psychedelic improvisation band, Crystal Mooncone. For this recording on Albany Records, he has chosen a variety of chamber works for varying ensembles including three versions of Taming the Ox, a work commissioned by flutist Rebecca Gilbert as a means of public sonic meditation.

The music of Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand (b. 1970) is wide-ranging — from settings of classical Arabic poetry to scores for dance and pieces for young audiences. His works explore connections between music and other arts, and draw inspiration from diverse sources such as 19th century graphic art, fables of the world, folksong and jazz. This second recording on Albany Records devoted to his music amply demonstrates these influences. Two of the works are inspired by literary sources (Imaginary Scenes and Four Fables); while Capriccios takes its inspiration from the Paganini 24 Capriccios and the Variations on a Theme of Bartok draws from Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. Movements from the Art of Conversation are introduced to the audience through short, spoken dialogues performed by the string quartet, which alternate with the seven movements of the piece.

Robert Starer was born in Vienna in 1924. He entered the State Academy at age 13. Soon after Hitler's annexation of Austria in 1938, he went to Jerusalem and continued his studies at the Palestine Conservatory. During World War II, he served with the British Royal Air Force. In 1947, he came to New York City for post-graduate study at Juilliard. He also studied with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood in 1948. In 1957, he became an American citizen. He taught at Juilliard from 1949 to 1974 and at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York from 1963-1991. In 1994, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His book, Continuo: A Life in Music was published by Random House in 1987. His complete works for solo piano have recently been published in one volume. In 1986, Itzhak Perlman recorded his Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa. This disc offers a selection of Mr. Starer's chamber works for voice and various instruments.

Joel Brown, the guitarist on this recording of works by American composers says in the booklet notes, "My original idea to record guitar quintets by Boccherini and Giuliani changed abruptly after meeting Andrew York at a Los Angeles Guitar Quartet concert. York's infectious compositional style appealed to me and I found myself working new music into what had been a 19th century program. When I approached Andrew about writing for my recording he enthusiastically accepted. This changed everything for me; if Andrew York was interested, then why not other composers as well? Before I knew it, five composers - some of them old friends, some of them new friends - were writing music for a now rethought ensemble of guitar, flute and cello. Several times during this project when the inevitable problems arose, I felt that even if everything were to fall through, I was still infinitely richer for the experience. To work so closely with these fine composers was a rare opportunity. And working with such incredible musicians and good friends as Jan Vinci and Ann Alton was a great pleasure. But the greatest reward is the privilege of premiering this music."

The Balaton Chamber Brass (Amy Cherry, trumpet; Dan Cherry, trombone) is a duo created with the intent of furthering the art of brass chamber music, performing educational outreach concerts, and adding new works to the brass repertoire. They have presented recitals at the International Women's Brass Conference; at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory, Morehead State University, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and Western Carolina University. They have served on the faculties of Western Carolina University, Morehead State University, East Tennessee State University, and Wright State University and are now teaching at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. For this recording they give expressive and informed performances of new works by Michael Kallstrom, Michael Sitton, Elizabeth Raum, Bruce Frazier and Wayne Lu.

Albany Records continues its series devoted to the music of Pulitzer Prize winning composer Charles Wuorinen with this disc, which includes the world premiere recordings of two major chamber works from 2008, as well as new recordings of two Wuorinen classics. The music is performed by several of the finest Wuorinen specialsts: the New York New Music Ensemble; violinist Mark Steinberg; pianist Alan Feinberg; and percussionist George Nickson. In the notes, Frank J. Oteri writes that "At this point in his career, his [Wuorinen's] chamber music output must now be one of the most extensive ever created by an American composer." The four works are performed in descending order of the number of musicians involved: quartet, trio, duo and solo percussion, although the final work is every bit as multilayered as the earlier works, giving the impression of a work for chamber ensemble.

On this recording by the Dallas Chamber Symphony, two major works by American composers offer representative views of the migrant experience. In Chasing Home, composed in 2017 by Joseph Thalken, conversations with refugees from around the world inspired dance scenes based on the plight of migrants fleeing the Syrian Civil War. Appalachian Spring is a ballet about pioneers in Pennsylvania in that time when opportunity and open space drew Americans ever farther west. The Dallas Chamber Symphony, led by Richard McKay, was founded in 2011 and is renowned for its musical excellence, imaginatively curated concerts and groundbreaking multidisciplinary collaborations.

Clarinet trio CDs aren't the most mainstream kind of CDs around. However there are always clarinetists like the distinguished artists from Chicago performing on this recording who are always searching for fun, interesting new music to perform. The music was selected with these criteria in mind and the hope is the listeners will find the "fun" in this music -- four works of which were written specifically for this ensemble.

Paul Seiko Chihara was born in Seattle, Washington and received his DMA from Cornell University in 1965 as a student of Robert Palmer. He also studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Ernst Pepping in Berlin and Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood. With Toru Takemitsu, Chihara was composer-in-residence at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont in 1971, and was the first composer-in-residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (Neville Marriner, conductor). He is currently on the music faculty of UCLA. Chihara's prize-winning concert works have been performed in most major cities and arts centers in the United States and Europe. Perhaps due to the extraordinary color sensitivity of his music, he has had an illustrious parallel career composing for stage, TV and film. He has composed the scores for over 90 motion pictures and television series including the film Prince of the City and the television series China Beach. He has also worked on Broadway, serving as music consultant and orchestrator for Duke Ellington's hit musical Sophisticated Ladies, and as composer for Shogun the Musical. He was composer-in-residence with the San Francisco Ballet from 1973-1986. While there, he composed many trailblazing works, including the first full-length American ballet The Tempest.

A native of Oklahoma, George Quincy celebrates his Choctaw heritage. He holds two degrees from the Juilliard School where he later taught. He served as musical advisor to Martha Graham before going on to compose, orchestrate and conduct music for theater, dance, film, opera, television and concert. The composer writes: "When I was a boy in Oklahoma, the nights were magical, the stars incredibly bright. I used to lie in the grass and wonder. Jupiter was so bright, it invited all kinds of images. It surely was inhabited, I thought. I used to mix up myths of the West (Greece) with those of the Choctaw which surrounded me." Nina da Vinci Nicholas writing in Theater Scene writes: "Choctaw Nights sails by its own star into luscious harmonies. Melody floats above rhythmic base. Jupiter has a long lyrical line that sings and sings above a repeating rhythmic figure in the piano. Voices from Ground Zero contains a moving elegiac strain picked up by each of the instruments. A romantic yearning breaks through."

You'll remember Joel Brown from all those wonderful discs with the late Bill Crofut from Albany's "early years." Now he's back with a delightful Christmas disc with his celebrated friends and family. This album was inspired by a concert and TV show featuring Brown's arrangements of Christmas tunes for a student guitar ensemble. It was such a success that he was encouraged to create this recording. All right, it took more than a decade but it was worth the wait! As with those great Crofut albums, the arrangements are jazzy, folksy and often times plain-old traditional. Of course you've heard these tunes a lot of times in the past, but they've never sounded so fresh as they do here. As Joel writes, "Christmas music has always been my favorite part of the holiday season. I still feel a flood of excitement and joy when I think of standing in our little hometown church singing in unison with family and friends. I hope the music on this recording will bring some of that same feeling to you. Merry Christmas!"

Christopher Theofanidis’ music has been performed by many of the world’s leading performing arts organizations. He is a two-time Grammy nominee for best composition and his work for viola and chamber orchestra won the 2021 Grammy for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. He is on the faculty at Yale University and the Aspen Music Festival. Italian guitarist Nicolò Spera initiated this project of recording all of Theofanidis’ music for guitar, which includes a work for viola, guitar, and flute; a work for flute and guitar; and a large work for chorus and guitar. Spera enjoys a distinguished career as a recitalist and chamber musician. He is known for his research on the Franco-Andalusian composer Maurice Ohana. He is on the faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder. EXIGENCE is a professional vocal ensemble highlighting artistry within Black and Latinx communities. Melissa Studdard is the author of two poetry collections. Her awards include The Penn Review Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Lucille Medwick Award, and the Tom Howard Award.

About her piece Canyon Echoes composer, conductor and flutist Katherine Hoover writes: "This piece was inspired by a book called 'The Flute Player,' a simply and beautifully illustrated retelling of an Apache folk tale by Michael Lapaca." Joan Tower is the composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Lukes. "In my piece Snow Dreams there are many different images of snow, its forms and its movements: light snow flakes, pockets of swirls of snow, rounded drifts, long white plains of blankets of snow, light and heavy snowfalls, etc. Many of these images can be found in the piece, if in fact, they need to be found at all. The listener will determine that choice." Roberto Sierra is Professor of Composition at Cornell University. "These six pieces for flute and guitar are a series of chronicles (cronica in Spanish) that I composed on the subject of the meeting between the aboriginal Indian culture of the Caribbean Islands and the Spanish Conquistadors." Augusta Thomas writes: "Music of all kinds constantly amazes, surprises, propels and seduces me into a wonderful and powerful journey. I am happiest when I am listening to music and in the process of composing music. I care deeply that music is not anonymous and generic or easily assimilated and just as easily dismissed. I would say that Eclipse Musings has urgent, seductive, and compelling qualities of sometimes complex, but always logical thought, allied to sensuous and engaging sonic profiles."

Radical, traditional, original, archetypal, Cindy Cox derives her "post-tonal" musical language from acoustics, innovations in technology, harmonic resonance, and poetic allusion. Naturally unfolding through linked strands of association, timbral fluctuation, and cyclic temporal processes, her compositions synthesize old and new musical designs. This is the second disc of Cox's chamber music to appear on Albany Records. Cindy Cox is the Evelyn and Jerry Chambers Chair Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

A listener new to Amy Williams' world should not expect to need help entering it. Long an active pianist, Williams has internalized the work of Boulez, Nancarrow, Cage, Ligeti, Kurtág and Feldman, but confidently occupies the present. In fact her work combines attributes often considered opposites: it is rigorous, yet playful; abstract yet personal; stylish but as bracingly frank as a cold shower. With her music, one encounters a radiant intelligence and clear sense of musical purpose that vaults past many of the issues customarily associated with discussion of new music. This recording consists of duos as well as her Cineshape series, which is a group of striking stand-alone chamber works that together form an impressive sequence on a symphonic scale. Amy Williams' compositions have been presented at important contemporary music venues worldwide and have been performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the JACK Quartet and many of the major new music ensembles. She has received numerous awards and commissions and is a U.S. Fulbright Scholar. A graduate of the University at Buffalo, she is on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh and artistic director of the New Music On The Point Festival.

Donald Wheelock is a native New Englander and has taught at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts since 1974 where he is currently Professor of Music. He studied composition with Edgar Curtis and Kenneth Leighton prior to receiving his Master of Music degree from the Yale University School of Music, where he was a student of composer Yehudi Wyner. A frequent guest at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, he has twice received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In addition to the string quartets, Wheelock has written many chamber ensemble works, solo instrumental compositions, and numerous vocal, choral and orchestral works. The Ciompi Quartet has been in residence at Duke University since 1965. The current members of the quartet are professors in the Department of Music at Duke, where they perform, teach strings and chamber music, and bring the living tradition of string quartet playing into the University as well as to many cities in the region. In addition to their performance of the masterworks of the Classical and Romantic periods, the Ciompi Quartet has a special interest in commissioning and performing music by contemporary composers.

Chris Gekker is Professor of Trumpet at the University of Maryland. For 18 years he was a member of the American Brass Quintet, as well as being Principal Trumpet of the Orchestra of St. Luke's and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist, he has specialized in new American music for his instrument. This release is a companion to his earlier Albany disc, Winter (TROY670).

Charles Knox is a former student of Bernard Heiden at Indiana University where he received the Ph.D. degree. He has written over 100 compositions and received commissions for conventional instruments as well as such unusual combinations as bassoon choir and tuba octet. His most recent compositions are a short opera, Workshop, a symphony for saxophone Orchestra, and a duo for piano and keyboard percussion called Attempted Claviercide. Clouds are not Spheres for flute, cello and piano was composed in 1994 especially for the performers heard on this disc. The title "clouds are not Spheres" comes from a statement made by Benoit Mandelbrot in Chaos by James Gleik. Song and Double is a lyrical tune for oboe and piano and it was composed in 1984. Semordnilap was composed in 1991 as a light, humorous piece for a fundraising drive for the contemporary music ensemble, Thamyris. It is composed for flute, piano, soprano and marimba. Scherzos for horn, violin, cello and piano was composed in 1994 for the Atlanta Chamber Players. Rounds About for violin, clarinet, trombone and percussion is in five short movements and was composed in 1983. Music for Brass Quintet is a work in three movements and was composed in 1967. The Suite for Piano Four-Hands is the oldest work on this disc and was composed in 1959. Wings of Our Soul was composed in 1993 and is written for violin and Organ. Music for Brass Quintet and Piano was commissioned by the Georgia Association of Music Teachers in 1983. The performers of the music on this recording are from the Atlanta area; many are principals and members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Evan Chambers studied composition at the University of Michigan, where he joined the faculty in 1993. He is also a traditional Irish fiddler, and appears frequently as a performer of his own works. The composer writes: "I grew up on the edge of the suburbs. Living at a balance point between urban and rural, I did not fully belong in either world but always moved in both: symphony concerts, shopping malls, and trips to museums on one hand, and fields, ponds and endless walks in the woods on the other. I also occupied the dividing line between folk and classical music, surrounded as I was by my father's equally enthusiastic renditions of Tchaikovsky on the violin and John Henry on the five-string guitar. I came to love the beauty of in-between spaces." It can safely be said that Evan Chambers' music occupies most imaginatively all these in-between spaces.

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

Composer Martin Brody is on the faculty at Wellesley College, president of the Stefan Wolpe Society and on the editorial boards of Perspectives of New Music and The Open Space. He was a Fromm Resident at the American Academy in Rome and later served as the arts director. His three works on this recording explore a common premise: imaginative identification with something or someone outside one's self as a catalyst of self-transformation. In Beasts, it's identification with animals; Millennium Sightings uses text from a 12-century Italian monk that details the apocalypse and an impending new age; and Tree of Life uses texts by James Merrill and Ovid, that deal with the relation between a person and the natural world. Performed with sensitivity and virtuosity by the illustrious Boston ensemble, Collage New Music conducted by David Hoose with soloists Elizabeth Keusch and Pamela Dellal, these works are world premiere recordings.

Born in Bad Gastein, Austria, Gernot Wolfgang is a graduate of USC's "Scoring for Motion Pictures and TV," and also holds degrees from the Berklee College of Music in Boston and the Austria University of Music in Graz. He has received commissions from individuals and organizations such as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Verdehr Trio, bassoonist David Breidenthal, flutist Susan Greenberg and the Jazz Bigband Graz. As a guitarist with the Austrian ensemble "The QuARTet," he has recorded two critically-acclaimed CDs. He currently resides in Los Angeles. He writes, "As a former jazz guitarist, rhythms are a top priority for me. Specifically, rhythms (grooves) that can be found in 20th century music styles such as jazz, rock, pop, world music, etc. I have made it my mission to find ways of organically incorporating grooves into orchestral or chamber music settings, hence the subtitle of this CD. That doesn't mean that all of the music is based on grooves all of the time, but grooves play important roles within the individual pieces. My goal is to allow them to have an equal standing among other compositional devices already established in contemporary concert music."