Catalog

Currently a faculty member of the Washington Conservatory, Haskell Small received his musical training at the San Francisco Conservatory and Carnegie-Mellon University. He has studied piano with Leon Fleisher, William Masselos and Robert Sheldon and composition with Vincent Persichetti. His musical output is difficult to categorize. Nevertheless, it is clear that he is a throwback to the great composer/pianist tradition of the past four centuries. For almost three decades he has been performing internationally as a soloist. Throughout his teen years, he was adept at playing various jazz and rock styles by ear, but he did not acquire fluent musical literacy until he was 18. Although his compositions include works for cello, voice and various chamber and orchestral groupings, solo piano music remains the main thrust of his work. The program of solo piano music found on this disc was conceived, and is presented, with the intense concentration, wit, and quirky juxtapositions that Small's concert audiences have learned to expect.

By now the Illinois State University Wind Symphony under Stephen Steele has achieved renown for their adventuresome Albany recordings (TROY500, TROY600, TROY755 and TROY774-775). One of the composers prominently featured in these releases is David Maslanka, who, after Vincent Persichetti, is probably the most important American composer for band. His Symphonies 4 and 5 are featured in this series, and the Symphony No. 7, as Maslanka explains, is a Symphony of old songs remembered: "I am strongly affected by American folk songs and hymn tunes. With one exception all the tunes are original, but they all feel very familiar. The borrowed melody is from the 371 Four-Part Chorales by J.S. Bach. Each song has a bright side and a dark side, a surface and the dream underneath." Samuel Zyman, a long-time Juilliard faculty member, is one of the most prominent Mexican composers. His Cycles is a one-movement work that consists of several distinct sections that appear and alternate "cyclically" throughout the work. Matthew Halper's works are widely performed and his Flute Concerto is an expansive, dramatic work that covers a wide musical terrain in a single movement.

The American composer, Irwin "Buddy" Bazelon died on August 2, 1995 at the age of 73. Sadly, his death occurred just two months after the completion of the recording of this CD. During his lifetime he completed nine symphonies and more than 60 orchestral pieces, including Fire and Smoke which was a featured work at the 1994 Aspen Music Festival. He was at work on his tenth symphony at the time of his death. Buddy was born in Chicago. He graduated from DePaul University, studied composition briefly with Paul Hindemith at Yale and extensively with Darius Milhaud at Mills College. The Symphony No. 9 is an orchestral version of a piano piece written for Alan Mandel. It is dedicated to Sunday Silence, winner of the 1989 Kentucky Derby and Horse of the Year. About the music Harold Farberman has written: "It is the work of a master composer. The orchestral writing is compact, direct and dazzling. Everything on the page, even the smallest detail in the densest of textures, can and must be heard. The rhythmic elements, derived from jazz, that drive and create the large structures typical of Bazelon and his sound, are crystal clear in this last symphony. He is an unmistakable and unique American voice."

The Portland Youth Philharmonic honors their conductor of 40 years, Jacob Avshalomov, with this recording. You will be able to judge for yourselves the value of the man as a composer from these three live performances of some of his best music. For his 40 years with the Portland Youth Philharmonic, he has already been judged and indeed, has made a significant contribution tot he world of music in the United States and beyond. Alumni from the Portland Youth Philharmonic, first trained by Jacob Avshalomov, can be found in all major orchestras of the world. What an achievement! Avshalomov was born in China in 1991. His father was the Siberian composer Aaron Avshalomov. He came to the United States in 1937 and studied with the underrated composer Ernst Toch. He graduated from the Eastman School with a B.M. and M.A. In 1954, he was invited to Portland to conduct the Junior Symphony's 30th anniversary concert. He remained there for 40 years. Under his direction, the orchestra toured Europe, Japan and Korea and is acknowledged as one of America's finest youth orchestras.

The composer, conductor and pianist Jeff Manookian is the music director and conductor of the Intermountain Classical Orchestra and the University of Utah SummerArts Orchestra. His Concerto for Flute and Orchestra was a commission from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition. It is luxuriantly post-romantic in its tonal casting. The concerto received its premiere on September 26, 2001, in Yerevan, Armenia with the same forces as appear on this recording. The United States premiere took place a week later in Salt Lake City, Utah on October 5, 2001, with James Michael Caswell conducting the Salt Lake Symphony Orchestra. On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Turks rounded up and killed the Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople (present day Istanbul). From 1915-1923, the Ottoman Turk empire carried out an epic genocidal campaign where more than half of the Armenian population, throughout Anatolia, was brutally murdered. Symphony of Tears carries the listener through the tragic events and deeply felt emotions of the Armenian genocide. This work endeavors to honor the dead of this horrific event, comfort its survivors, educate the public about this tragedy, promote hope for the future of all peoples and console those who have suffered or are the progeny of the crimes of hate. The Symphony of Tears was premiered on April 30, 2000 at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City, Utah by the Oratorio Society of Utah and the Madeleine Festival Orchestra, Joel Rosenberg conducting.

Mezzo-soprano Aidan Soder and baritone Paul Busselberg collaborate with pianist Calogero Di Liberto in presenting a recital of songs based on the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, one of India's most beloved literary figures. Composers from all over the world have been compelled to set his poetry to music, as this recording amply demonstrates. John Alden Carpenter, British composer Frank Bridge, Italian Franco Alfano and German composer Karol Szymanowski all wrote songs dating from the first two decades of the 20th century that used his poetry. The recording also includes recent settings (2004) of Tagore's love songs by the young American composer Karim Al-Zand.

Composer Bernard Hoffer first heard jazz pianist Takaaki Otomo at a restaurant in New York and was impressed by his musicality, dynamic sensitivity, and beautiful harmonic sense. With bass player Noriko Ueda and drummer Jared Schonig, Takaaki selected five originals, four jazz standards plus one Broadway show tune and two novelties from Gustav Holst's The Planets for this recording. Beginning his training as a classical pianist Takaaki switched to jazz when he was a teenager and won first prize in a jazz competition in Japan in 2007. He moved to New York City in 2014. Originally from Japan Noriko Ueda began playing the electric bass, then switching to upright bass at age 18. She is a graduation of the Berklee College of Music where she majored in jazz composition. She has her own trio and quartet and has performed at the Blue Note Jazz Club. She won the Charlie Parker Jazz Composition Prize in 2002. Hailing from Los Angeles, drummer Jared Schonig studied at Eastman where he won seven Downbeat Student Music Awards. A favorite among vocalists, Schonig tours with Grammy Award-winners Kurt Ellling and The New York Voices. He is in demand as a drummer for studio recordings and session work.

Assem3ly is a dynamic trio championing chamber music of our time for flute, piano, and percussion. Comprised of flutist Lindsey Goodman, pianist Anne Waltner, and percussionist Scott Christian, Assem3ly commissions and performs new works from established and emerging composers and this recording is typical of their programming. Distinguished composer Joseph Schwantner's Taking Charge opens the recording, followed by Bolamkin, a work by John Allemeier. Ty Alan Emerson's Caliban Ascendent precedes the final work on the recording by Randall Woolf: Between Me, Myself, And The Lamp Post. The performances sparkle with intensity and commitment. A recording of music for an unusual, but very effective grouping of instruments.

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

The eleven pieces on this CD of piano music by Pulitzer Prize winner Tania León were composed across a span of almost fifty years, from student works (Rondó a la Criolla, Homenaje a Prokofiew, Preludes 1 and 2) written in the mid-1960s when León was doing post-graduate work at the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory in the municipio of Marianao, La Habana, to going gone, the brilliant reworking of Sondheim's "Good Things Going" she crafted in 2012. Born in La Habana, Cuba, León came to the U.S. as a young pianist in 1967 and became a founding member of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Her many honors and awards include the New York Governor's Lifetime Achievement award and honorary doctorates from Colgate, Oberlin, SUNY Purchase and The Curtis Institute. Pianist Adam Kent has performed in recital, as soloist with orchestra, and in chamber music on four continents. A professor at the State University of New York at Oneonta, Kent studied at The Juilliard School. His recordings appear on the Bridge, Claves, and Albany record labels.

During the past several years, the Corona Guitar Kvartet (Per Dybro Sorensen, Volkmar Zimmermann, Kristian Gantriis and Mikkel Andersen) has specialized in forging personal relationships with composers of varying styles, and of performing their works. The selections on this, their sixth CD, reflect the diversity of contemporary music styles performed by the Kvartet and most of it was written especially for them by composers taken with the the Kvartet's openness to differing musical visions, its willingness to play composers whose music its members admire, and its dedication to understanding each work on its own terms. The composers include Charles Norman Mason and Dorothy Hindman, faculty members at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music; Edward Green, a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music; Franco Sbacco, a faculty member at the State Conservatory of Music Santa Cecilia of Rome; and Fred Frith, a faculty member at Mills College.

This recording of music by Peter Boyer centers around a commission by conductor Lawrence Golan to write a work to be performed in concert immediately following Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony. The idea was that the new work, while not intended to be in the style of Tchaikovsky, would share some musical material so as to be intrinsically connected to it and find a natural place in concert programming. Peter Boyer, born in 1970, received his D.M.A. from the Hartt School. He studied with John Corigliano, then relocated to Los Angeles where he studied film music with Elmer Bernstein. His music has received more than 200 performances by 70 orchestras. His major work Ellis Island: The Dream of America received a Grammy Award nomination.

Let's take a look at the unfamiliar music contained on this disc. About Tears David Maslanka writes: "Tears is about inner transformation, and about groping towards the voice of praise. As St. Francis and St. Ignatius have it, the proper function of the human race is to sing praise. Tears is about inner breaking, and coming to terms with the pain that hinders the voice of praise; Tears is about the movement toward the heart of love." This is a recent piece from Mr. Maslanka's pen. Dana Wilson completed his Dance of the New World the same month - 500 years later - than Columbus first landed in the New World. He wanted in this piece to pay tribute to the blending of styles and attitudes that has taken place in the Latin American region of this hemisphere where Columbus first landed. Frank Ticheli's Postcard was first performed by the University of Michigan Symphony Band on April 17, 1992. Mr. Ticheli is a graduate of the University of Michigan and now teaches at the University of Southern California where he is Assistant Professor of Music. He is also composer-in-residence with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra.

Rimsky-Korsakov's three works for solo instruments and military band, the Concerto for Trombone (1877), the Variations for Oboe (1878) and the Concertstuck for Clarinet (1878), date from his years as Inspector of the Imperial Russian Naval Bands (1873-1884). Not only do these works testify to the growing expertise in Imperial Russian military music performance (doubtless as a result of the newly established St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories), but they also give us some insight into Rimsky's ever-evolving compositional thinking. The composer acknowledged as much, writing in his memoirs that they were "written primarily to provide the military band concerts with solo pieces of a less hackneyed natures than the usual: secondly that I myself might master the virtuoso style so unfamiliar to me, with its solo and tutti, its cadences, etc." And in many ways these three pieces constitute "experiments" in that combination of ensemble sonority and solo virtuosity that earmark Scheherazade (188) as a masterpiece of Orchestral wizardry. The first performance of Karel Husa's Music for Prague 1968 was given at the Music Educators National Conference in Washington, DC in 1969. The work was commissioned and premiered by the Ithaca College Concert Band with Kenneth Snapp, conductor. Since that time, it has received over 7,000 performances in both its original version for concert band, and the composer's adaptation for symphony Orchestra. Prokofiev began composing marches for wind band in the mid 1930s, during the period when he returned to the Soviet Union. His first was the Athletic Festival March from 1935, in which he imagined a festival march for millions of young Soviet athletic. As well, the three soloists on this disc are all or have been members of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Composer James Adler calls this recording a celebration — a celebration of his love for composing musical theater and art songs. Performed by a stellar group of singers from both the musical theater and classical art song world, the songs underscore Adler's affinity for putting the spoken word to music. Known as a renowned pianist as well as a composer, Adler has performed across the U.S. as well as internationally. Sung by cabaret singer Shana Farr, Broadway stars Michael Buchanan, Kennedy Kanagawa, and Perry Sook, Metropolitan Opera star Victoria Livengood, and classically trained Elizaveta Ulakhovich, this stellar group brings these songs to life.

The 99 Beautiful Names of God are the names by which Muslims regard God. Composer J. Mark Scearce was inspired to interpret these names into music from a desire to heal. He created 99 Beautiful Names in order to help a pianist friend, ill from cancer, by giving her a set of small pieces that she could play to bring her back to her instrument and through it, back to health. Pianist John Cheek comments that "Mark's nobilissima visione for solo piano aims to heal and give the listener some soul time: Intimate, respectful ruminations on the Godhead or visions of Almighty Power."

Born in Barcelona, Spain, Leonardo Balada graduated from the "Conservatorio del Liceu" of that city and the Juilliard School in 1960. He studied with Vincent Persichetti, Aaron Copland and Igor Markevitch. Since 1970 he has been teaching at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he is University Professor of Composition. Another volume of his music appears on Albany TROY343.

Two of the three concertos on this recording were composed on commission from New Heritage Music, a publicly supported non-profit organization which promotes the creation of works inspired by persons, events and ideas central to history. Chen Yi and Behzad Ranjbaran feel a particular connection to individuals striving for self-realization, as they were each born in countries where they suffered the lack of the freedoms that Americans hold dear. Both on this basis and artistically, they proved to be ideal choices to create musical works celebrating the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations (Chen) and the life and thought of Thomas Jefferson (Ranjbaran). According to New Heritage criteria, neither work is intended to be narrative or programmatic; rather, they reflect the artists' creative responses to an event or idea that has personal significance. By contrast, Barber's Cello Concerto was not commissioned with any patriotic or historical intention; yet it can hardly fail to have reflected the intensity and angst of the world situation - the last months of World War II and the first few months of the peace - amidst which it was written, the more so because the composer was wearing the uniform of an American soldier at the time. The three works on this program are thus linked by the struggle for human rights and freedom, experienced through singular, individual life experience of the loss of those rights or through participation, in uniform, in worldwide armed conflict on behalf of those rights. Chen Yi, born in China, experienced first hand the lack of those rights. She is one of several talented Chinese composers to have moved to the United States after having been caught up in the terrors of the Cultural Revolution, with its express intent of suppressing China's intellectual life. She came to the United States in 1986, and studied with Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky and earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Columbia University in 1993. In 1998, she became Lorena Searcey Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor in Composition at the Conservatory of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Behzad Ranjbaran began his musical studies early when he entered the Tehran Music Conservatory at the age of nine. Following his graduation, he came to the United States as a young violinist to continue his studies at Indiana University, with composition as a secondary major. He went to Juilliard for a doctorate in composition. His teachers were David Diamond, Vincent Persichetti and Joseph Schwantner. He has remained on the Juilliard faculty ever since.

Andrew List composes music in many different genres including orchestral works, string quartet, vocal, choral music and opera, music for children, solo works and a variety of chamber ensembles. A resident of Boston, Massachusetts, Mr. List is a Professor of Composition and Theory at the Berklee College of Music. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, List is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. He received his doctorate in music composition from Boston University where he studied with Bernard Rands and Nicholas Maw. Lee. T. McQuillan, a resident of Middletown, Connecticut, studied Music Education at Barrington College in Rhode Island and later received his Bachelor of Music in composition from the Hartt School of Music. Arthur Welwood is a Professor of Composition at the Berklee College of Music. Wind Sky Clouds, commissioned by jazz trumpeter Greg Hopkins, was completed in the summer of 2003. The premiere performance took place in Hartford, Connecticut on November 16, 2003, with Hopkins playing the solo trumpet and flugelhorn and Tibor Puszati conducting the Connecticut Valley Chamber Orchestra. The piece is an example of "Third Stream," a phrase first coined by composer Gunther Schuller to describe the fusion of jazz and classical styles and where the crossover from one to another in the course of the piece is blurred and often imperceptible.

The spirit of exploring new, and newly rediscovered, music is fully captured in this recording of American music for viola. The music ranges from the late 19th Century to today, yet it shares a common theme: a flowing lyricism that expresses the viola's rich vocal character. Of special interest is the first known American composition for viola (Benjamin Cutter); and the first composition for viola by an American woman (Blanche Blood). Violist Andrea Houde has performed as soloist, chamber musician, and in orchestras in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. A graduate of the University of Memphis and the Peabody Conservatory, Ms. Houde is on the faculty at West Virginia University and the artist faculty of the Interlochen Arts Camp. Her colleague, pianist Sun Jung Lee is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston, and West Virginia University. In addition to her performing career, she serves as staff accompanist at West Virginia University.

The Arditti Quartet is a phenomenal string quartet. They play new music as if it were Haydn. You will be awed by the performances they bring to this group of young composers from California. This disc is for you if you really enjoy contemporary music, contemporary chamber music, or contemporary American chamber music.

The real draw for this disc is the presence of the great trumpet player, Adolf Herseth from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For indeed, he is one of a kind, a true master recognized for his brilliant musicianship by his colleagues and audiences the world over. "Quite possibly the most dazzling player on his instrument in the world today," says Donal Henahan in The New York Times. Mr. Herseth was appointed Principal Trumpet of the Chicago Symphony in 1948 immediately after graduating from the New England Conservatory. A native of Minnesota, he also holds a degree from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. During World War II he served as a bandsman at Iowa prefight school and ended his military service with the Commander of the Philippine Sea Frontier in the South Pacific. His years with the CSO have included numerous solo appearances and concerts with many of the world's finest conductors, not to mention work on some of the finest recorded performances in the repertoire. The Asbury Brass Quintet is based in Chicago. Mr. Herseth, who joins them in the performance of the Bohme Sextet, has touched the lives of each one of the members of the Quintet's players, either as a teacher, colleague or mentor.

Composer Charles Fussell was Artistic Director of New Music Harvest, Boston's first city-wide festival of contemporary music and Co-Founder and Director of the New England Composer's Orchestra. He is currently a member of the Composition faculty at Boston University. The composer writes: "The Astronaut's Tale was mostly written during a generous two month fellowship at Yadoo in Saratoga Springs in June and July of 1996, and was completed the following winter. It is conceived as a numbers-opera; arias, duets, trios, with preludes and interludes, all connected by a narrator. The story traces a young man's life from his first experience of loss, his dog killed by a car, the appearance of a mysterious Einstein-like guide, his youthful desire to become an astronaut, marriage, and the fulfillment of his ambition. The setting is our own time with its confrontation of science and religion. The opera concludes with a meditation on the nature of the cosmos and our experience of life and death within."

Carl Zeller, after service in the Vienna Court Chapel Choir, studied both composition and law and earned his doctorate in law from Graz University in 1869. He spent most of life in government service, writing music in his spare time. Although Zeller composed several works for the musical theatre, his reputation rests mainly on The Birdseller, which had its premiere in 1891. It has a familiar boy-meets-girl plot, set in that never-never land of operetta where mistaken identities are as common as pine trees and nightingales sing on cue. The Birdseller has one of the most captivating scores ever written. Its best-known melody is "Roses in Tyrol," the magnificent song and ensemble that climaxes Act I. One of the most popular productions of the Ohio Light Opera in the 1990s, this 2007 revival will certainly delight listeners long familiar with the score as well as those who are discovering it for the first time!

This recording of songs by Asian and Asian-American composers who include Ke-Chia Chen, who is on the faculty at the Curtis Institute; Taiwanese-American Chihchun Chi-sun Lee, the receipient of numerous honors and awards; Asako Hirabayashi, winner of the Alienor International Harpischord Composition Contest; Yangzhi Ma, faculty member at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing; and Chen Yi, Distinguished Professor at the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance. Tenor Brian Arreola is on the faculty at UNC Charlotte and has been a featured performer with opera companies around the United States. Baritone Kelvin Chan divides his time between the U.S. and the Netherlands, where he has an active career as a performer, director, theatre-maker, and singer-actor. Pianist Wei-En Hsu, a graduate of Juilliard, is now on the faculty of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

Here we present the first complete CD recording with William S. Gilbert's English translation of Jacques Offenbach's 1869 comic masterpiece. Les Brigands achieved resounding success just as the Second Empire came to an end. Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy supplied Offenbach with a cheerfully amoral libretto that presents theft as a basic principle of society, not an aberration. The forces of law and order are represented by the bumbling carabinieri, who always arrive too late to capture the thieves. The carabinieri's exaggerated attire delighted the Parisian audience during the premiere at the Varietes on December 10, 1869. Only the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in the following months dampened the festivities. W.S. Gilbert's 1871 English adaptation for Les Brigands premiered on the London stage in 1889, starring Lillian Russell in the role of Fiorella. In his typical curmudgeonly fashion, Gilbert disparaged his own work and attempted to prevent use in London of his English version Ð happily to no avail. His arch lyrics give the Offenbach work a uniquely hilarious quality, delightful to an operetta audience happy to accept a rough-and-tumble pirate band speaking impeccable, drawing room English while describing dastardly deeds to gavottes and musical romps in three-quarter time.

The Buckley Chamber Players, named in honor of its home venue, Amherst College's Buckley Recital Hall, was founded in 2008. Its members are on the faculty at Amherst and Smith College and the University of Massachusetts. Playing a varied repertoire, it is dedicated to a close collaboration with composers who write works for the ensemble. This recording is representative of their concerts, and includes three works written for them, two of them by composers on the faculty at Amherst (Eric Sawyer and Lewis Spratlan).

Jerome Kern wrote The Cabaret Girl at the suggestion of London producer George Grossmith who, teaming with famed literary figure P.G. Wodehouse, provided the book and lyrics. The show opened at London's Winter Garden theater on September 18, 1922. The show ran for 361 performances and showcases both the unparalleled wit and sentimentality of Wodehouse and the inexhaustible melodic genius of Jerome Kern.

Antonio Caldera composed during the most flourishing period of the Baroque. While his contemporaries - Handel, Bach, Scarlatti and Vivaldi - are today held in higher esteem, in his own day, Caldera's vocal output was much celebrated. 18th century music critic Charles Burney called him "one of the greatest professors both for the Church and the stage that Italy can boast," and rated Caldera second only to Handel for his vocal writing. He was born in Venice to musical parents. He was a working musician from an early age as both contralto chorister and cellist at St. Mark's in Venice, at the same time composing vocal music. He continued to draw a salary (with pay raises) until nearly the age of 30 as a contralto at the basilica. It was the custom of the 18th century for wealthy patrons to subsidize composers. The pragmatic Caldera always played his cards wisely and always had work. For the final twenty years of his life, Caldera maintained a comfortable position at the Viennese court where he produced an immense operatic and oratorio output. The court feats included operatic productions commemorating the birthdays and name days of the royal family. The Emperor himself studied keyboard and conducting with Caldera, and his two daughters sang on these occasions as well. In the summer of 1734, Caldera celebrated the Empress' birthday with a charming operatic gem Il giuoco del Quadriglio (The Card Game), for which the composer provided roles for the young archduchess and for his own wife Caterina. This work offers each of the four female vocalists her own da capo solo turn. It is scored for strings and continuo with the delightful and unexpected appearance of flute and lute and then a final happy ending quartet for everyone.

The Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum has reached the venerable age of 60, and it is very appropriate indeed that the Conference celebrates, at least in part, with a new recording of music played by members of its outstanding and musically vibrant faculty. Every summer for these past six decades, the Conference itself has been a celebration of the love of music making, involving Conference faculty and participants from around the world in a heady fusion of musical activities: public concerts, including frequent world premieres, professionally-coached rehearsals and intensive study sessions, lectures and seminars addressing a wide range of topics. From the beginning in 1945, participation by composers has been an integral feature of the Conference. Among the founders were composers Otto Luening and Richard Donovan. Among the many distinguished composers who have been in residence over the years are Henry Brant, Elliott Carter, Stephen Hartke, Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larsen and Steven Stucky. The recording presents a small but highly representative sample of what the Conference is all about. Vermont composer and Bennington College faculty member Allen Shawn (brother, incidentally, of playwright/actor Wallace Shawn) has been a Resident Composer and frequent guest at the Conference. His string quartet Sleepless Night and the Wind Quintet (a commission by long-time participants) are fine examples of his lyrical style. Donald Crockett, from Los Angeles, was in residence at the Conference in 1999, and since 2002 has been the Conference's Senior Composer-in-Residence. The Ceiling of Heaven was commissioned by the Conference. Fans of contemporary American chamber music will recognize many of the performers from their recordings (cellist Maxine Neuman, a member of the Conference faculty, is a specialist in this material) and will greatly enjoy this significant release.

Richard Wilson, like Robert Ward, was born in Cleveland, where he studied piano and cello. After graduation from Harvard, he received a grant which allowed him to study in Munich. Back in the United States he studied composition with Robert Moevs at Rutgers and then joined the music faculty of Vassar College where he holds the Mary Conover Mellon Chair in Music. He is also Composer-in-Residence with the American Symphony Orchestra. About this disc the composer writes: "This recording encompasses all of my choral music: from In Schrafft's, begun in 1966, to Poor Warren, composed in 1995. Ten works, spanning thirty years. Four poets are involved: W.H. Auden, Stephen Sandy, John Unterecker and John Ashbery. With each of them I have had some degree of personal association. W.H. Auden was friendly with individuals in Harvard's Quincy House, where I lived half my undergraduate years, and could often be seen in bedroom slippers, taking meals in our dining hall. I never summoned the nerve to meet him. Stephen Sandy was my English teacher in 1959 and was, in fact, the first college teacher I encountered as a fearful, insecure, unconfident freshman. Only later did I discover his poetry. John Unterecker worked on his Hart Crane biography at the artists' colony Yaddo when I was also a guest. We became friendly and enjoyed long talks together. Finally, John Ashbery teaches at Bard College just up the Hudson River from Vassar. We share an appreciation of Jack Benny's radio programs from the 1940's."

Horn soloist Eric Ruske has established himself as an artist of international acclaim. Named Associate Principal horn of the Cleveland Orchestra at the age of 20, his impressive solo career began when he won the 1986 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, First Prize in the 1987 American Horn Competition, and in 1988, the highest prize in the Concours International d'Interpretation Musicale in Reims, France. Of his recording of the complete Mozart Concerti with Sir Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, The New York Times stated, "Mr. Ruske's approach, firmly positioned with the boundaries of balance, coherence and good taste that govern the Classical Style, enchants by virtue of its confidence, imagination and ebullient virtuosity." A member of the faculty of Boston University since 1990, Mr. Ruske also directs the Horn Seminar at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.