Catalog

William Bolcom has said: "Curtis Curtis-Smith is one of the best-kept secrets in contemporary music. It is high time that listeners and musicians alike become acquainted with this music of passion and humor, intellectual agility and disarming emotional directness. I have long been its advocate to our best performers, who have played it enthusiastically worldwide, and I envy anyone who is becoming acquainted with it for the first time." C. Curtis-Smith (Curtis O.B. Curtis-Smith) was born in Walla Walla, Washington, studied at Whitman College, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois and at Tanglewood with Bruno Maderna. He has taught composition at the University of Michigan and is currently Professor of Music at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. His Great American Symphony was premiered in 1982 by the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra. The audacious title is as mischievous as it is ridiculous, and as American as a slick Madison Avenue advertising slogan. In the music, there are allusions to sundry aspects of Americana, from New Orleans jazz to acid rock; from gospel harmonies to boisterous marches to quaint southern folk hymns and Broadway show tunes. The composer writes: "On one level, the piece may be heard as fun and games entertainment, while on another it may be heard as an ironic and satirical commentary on the very tunes and styles it purports to trifle with. The piece has certainly enjoyed widely diverse reactions, from those finding it a masterpiece to those thinking it a travesty. Ross Lee Finney called it 'a controversial piece' and David Diamond, while finding the title a 'happy impertinence', admitted to lacking 'the requisite sense of humor about the title'. Another listener objected to my 'irreverent' treatment of The Star Spangled Banner in the last movement. I have never before, nor since, written such a brazen, outlandish, ill-behaved piece - yet GAS! is not malicious; it's more like a clown working things into his act."

George Rochberg's Caprice Variations were composed in 1970, and incorporated musical elements that ignited his passions. The work began to germinate in 1969, during an accidental encounter with Brahms' Opus 35 variations on Paganini's famous caprice and this led directly to his Third String Quartet. Eight variations of the Caprice are expanded and revisited elements of this string quartet. Requiring considerable musical, artistic, and technical prowess, the Caprice Variations are very rarely performed. Born in 1995, French violinist Léo Marillier studied at the New England Conservatory and the Paris Conservatory, as well as the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. The winner of numerous competitions, Marillier has performed with noted chamber musicians and ensembles in the U.S., Europe, and the U.A.E. and has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in Europe. He is the artistic director of the Inventio Festival in Paris. He is a member of the Diotima Quartet.

Albany Records continues its series of recordings of George Walker, who has achieved international recognition as a pianist and as a composer. Walker has published more than 80 works for every medium except opera. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996. With his inclusion into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2000, he became the only living pianist-composer to receive this honor. The four piano sonatas, the brilliant and dynamic Piano Concerto and other shorter works that he has composed have expanded the standard repertoire of classical piano literature. Nevertheless, his devotion to the music of the great composers of the past remains undiminished, as evidenced by this superbly played recording.

George Walker was born in Washington, DC on June 27, 1922 of West Indian-American parentage. He graduated from high school at the age of 14, attended Oberlin College and the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied piano with Rudolf Serkin and composition with Rosario Scalero. His auspicious debut at Town Hall in 1945 was described in the New York Times as "notable...an authentic talent of marked individuality and fine musical insight...a rare combination of elegance and sincerity...an understanding, a technical competence and a sensitiveness rarely heard at debut recitals." Walker obtained his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from Eastman and went on to study in France with Nadia Boulanger on Fulbright and John Hay Whitney Fellowships. His compositions have been played by virtually every major orchestra and chamber orchestra in the United States. This recording uniquely showcases the pianist as composer-composer as pianist as Walker performs his Sonata No. 1.

The great American composer George Walker, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1996 with his composition, Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra began his musical career as a pianist. He was born in Washington, DC in 1922. He began to take piano lessons when he was five years old. He graduated from Oberlin at 18 and went on to Curtis where he studied piano with Rudolf Serkin and composition with Rosario Scalero. In 1945 he made his acclaimed New York debut in Town Hall in a concert that was sponsored by Mr. And Mrs. Efrem Zimbalist. Two weeks later, he appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra as soloist in the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 under Eugene Ormandy. Subsequently he appeared with many major Orchestras performing the core of the romantic repertoire. In 1950, he became the first black instrumentalist to obtain major concert management. In 1953, he became the first black artist to make a major concert tour of Europe, where he played to resounding acclaim in seven countries. Here we have the composer as performer in works that have long had special meaning for him. This is a unique, warm, lovely disc. Please note that it is HDCD encoded for your customers who are looking for the latest in digital technology.

Two of his most important orchestral works, Sacred Symphonies and the Idumea Symphony, are beautiful, strikingly kaleidoscopic works in the best Ivesian tradition. A renowned pianist, Bell presents here a recital of his highly original piano music. The vocal works of Larry Bell can also be heard on Albany TROY741.

Composer/pianist Grigor Khachatryan is an Armenian-American who was born and raised in the post-Soviet Union Armenia. He was taught from childhood that life holds no meaning without freedom. Both of his piano sonatas are based on stories that honor men and women who have given their lives to preserve human freedom and elevate the value of human life. Khachatryan came to the United States as a teenager, living in Bedford, Indiana where he finished high school, taking piano lessons at Indiana University at the same time. He went on to do his undergraduate and graduate work there, completing a Doctorate degree in Piano Performance. A winner of many awards and competitions, Khachatryan is active as a concert artist and composer. He is on the faculty at Concordia College, Moorhead.

Created with the concert pianist's repertoire in mind. H. Leslie Adams Piano Etudes are studies of varying styles, moods, tonalities, and thematic natures — each providing different technical challenges, while expressing the composer's personal sense of beauty. A graduate of Oberlin, Long Beach State University and Ohio State University, H. Leslie Adams' music has been performed by orchestras in the U.S. and abroad and he is the recipient of commissions from the Cleveland Orchestra, Ohio Chamber Orchestra, and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, among others. Pianist Thomas Otten, a faculty member at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, has been the recipient of numerous national and international prizes and has performed internationally as a concerto soloist and recitalist. His performances of these etudes are engaging and beautiful. Piano Etudes, Part I, was recorded by Maria Corley for Albany Records (TROY639).

Music from an ancient land meets an instrument of antiquity: the result is a fascinating collection of music by composers either born in Israel or settling there from many points in Europe. Soloist Marina Minkin herself came from the Ukraine in 1981. A student of Mark Kroll, she is active in both Israel and the United States and is a founding member and director of the Ad Libitum Ensemble.

Lola Odiaga, the Peruvian harpsichordist and fortepianist, continues her series of the complete works of Haydn for piano with this disc that features five sonatas from 1776. The mid- and later 1770s saw a relaxation in Haydn's compositional style, a move away from the stormy melancholy of the many minor key works written in the late 1760s and early 1770s. It is no coincidence that this was also a period in which the composer strengthened his ties with Vienna where he eventually took up residence in 1791. The "six sonatas of 1776" (so called in Haydn's catalog of his own works), of which five are featured on this recording, were the official property of Haydn's patron Prince Nikolaus Esterhçzy, but they could be purchased in Vienna, in manuscript copies, and from professional copy shops. Each sonata on the program ends with a finale in variation form, based either on a minuet or a contredanse, and this, along with the use of the minuet and trio as an internal movement, and the elements of folk song, suggests that in writing his six sonatas of 1776 Haydn aimed to appeal (though not to pander) to current Viennese taste. The fortepiano used in this recording is a copy of an Anton Walter instrument dated ca. 1790 built by Rodney Regier of Freeport, Maine. It has a compass of just over five octaves and - as was the case with the fortepianos of the period - in many ways resembles the harpsichord more than the modern piano.

The keyboard sonata is an intimate genre suited to experiments in form and style. Haydn's cultivation of the sonata in all but the last years of his life creates a detailed illustration of his compositional development. The five sonatas recorded her reflect a relaxation in Haydn's compositional style, turning away from the stormy melancholy of the many minor key works written before 1772. Lola Odiaga, the acclaimed Peruvian harpsichordist and fortepianist, studied piano at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, and at the Hochschule fur Musik in Hamburg, and harpsichord at Yale University. Among her teachers were Edward Steuermann, Stefan Askenase, and Ralph Kirkpatrick. In addition to a teaching career that has included the National Conservatory of Music in her native Lima, Wellesley College, the Hartt College of Music, the Yale University School of Music, and Boston University School for the Arts, Odiaga has concertized as soloist with orchestras, and in solo and chamber music recitals in the United States and Latin America both as pianist and harpsichordist. Since 1983 she has been making appearances as a fortepiano performer.

This program features some of Haydn's earliest compositions, works that survive (in Christa Landon's words) only through "happy accident." Haydn himself felt no compunction to preserve his earliest efforts. When, in the last years of the 18th century, Breitkopf set about an authorized edition of Haydn's complete keyboard works (published 1800-1806), the composer, with a view towards posterity, expunged not only spurious works that had been published in his name, but also, as the preface explained, "those works of my early youth, which are not worth preserving." Those works that do survive from the 1750s and early 1760s are thus of particular interest, not simply as a measure of Haydn's subsequent development but also, as Landon remarks in the preface of her own complete edition of the composer's keyboard sonatas, because they possess "moments of such beauty that they should be kept alive by performance and not be allowed to fall into oblivion." Here on this new disc in Albany's continuing series devoted to the piano works of Haydn, you have the opportunity of hearing these early works for yourself and judging their value.

Mozart and Beethoven were renowned pianists, while Haydn, in his own words "was not a wizard on any instrument." Yet recent research has emphasized the special significance of keyboard music and performance in the composer's life. Not only did he perform as soloist, organist and accompanist during his tenure at Esterhçzy but throughout his creative life Haydn cultivated the most respected genre of solo keyboard music - the sonata. The first three sonatas of this program were composed in 1773. They were published by Giuseppe Kurzback in Vienna in 1774, appearing in a set of six sonatas that Haydn dedicated to his patron Prince Nikolaus Esterhçzy. This was Haydn's first authorized publication, although copyists had been smuggling his works into print for some time. An obsequious dedication to Prince Nikolaus reminds us that Haydn's compositions were the official property of his patron. The last three sonatas in this program were written during the 1770s and published in Vienna by Artaria in 1780. A new contract between Haydn and his patron, dated 1779 reveals that Prince Esterhazy no longer had exclusive rights over Haydn's compositions. These sonatas appeared in a set of six dedicated to Katharina and Marianna von Auenbrugger, sisters who were celebrated fortepianists.

This selection of piano music by Henry Martin composed between 1980 and 2007 has a place within both the composer's broader work and the literature for piano to which it makes a valuable contribution. Over the years, Martin has composed for chorus, orchestra, string quartet, various smaller ensembles, and solo instruments; but many of his works involve the piano, and about a score of them are for solo piano. All facets of Martin's life (pianist, music theorist, educator) come through in this music that is so beautifully performed by the noted pianist Hilary Demske. The listener to these pieces can look forward to rewards for the heart as well as the mind.

Patti Monson is the flutist for the New York new music ensemble Sequitur and The Curiously Strong Wind Quintet. She has been a guest artist on many recital series dedicated to new music and holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Yale University School of Music. Her teachers have included Robert Dick, Bonita Boyd and Samuel Baron. She is currently on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, as director of the MSM contemporary ensemble TACTUS. She writes: "High Art - chamber music for solo flute is the second disc in a series of recordings to be dedicated to multi-voiced works for one flutist. I have always been enchanted by the Telemann Fantasies, Bach Partitas and other such magical works where pitches transcend their rhythmic values, and allow the solo musician to be playing multiple melodic lines at once. In the 20th and 21st century, composers are sharing similar passions. I am thrilled to present these works, which represent for me an exciting union: the personalities of musics composed during my lifetime and the traditions of my Baroque heroes. In this recording, the composers were invited to be the producers of their recordings."

Pianist James Adler has recorded a recital that pays homage to people who have been great influences and offers musical remembrances of important people in his life. The longest work on the program, Pictures at an Exhibition is dedicated to his mother and his aunt, both of whom encouraged him in his pursuit of music. 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-Constitution). Mr. Adler made his orchestral performing debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and has appeared in recital at famous venues around the world. His discography includes recordings on the Albany, Capstone, Navona, and Ravello record labels.

Michael Pendowski joins with pianist Jeremy Samolesky in a recording of works for alto saxophone. The repertoire features music that is jazz or jazz-inspired, reflecting Pendowski's personal interests. A director of the jazz program at Auburn, Dr. Pendowski is also an assistant professor of saxophone. He has taught at Eastman, Northwestern University, and DePaul, among other schools. He is a graduate of Eastman and Northwestern. He is a prominent composer in the educational field, having published dozens of jazz and classical compositions, encompassing the full spectrum from professional ensembles and high schools and universities. He has been a clinician throughout the country and in South America and has conducted and taught at the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. Also on the faculty at Auburn, Jeremy Samolesky has appeared on concert stages across four continents. He performs and teaches regularly at universities and conservatories around the world.

Described in WIRE as "sonically beautiful yet unnerving," and by Graz's Kleine Zeitung as possessing "unusual emotional intensity," Daniel Rothman's music has been likened to the unlikely combination of Luigi Nono (Opera News) and Robert Ashley (All Music Guide). But these piano works trace another facet of Rothman's sensibility, powerfully and poetically interpreted by pianist Eric Huebner, whose performances of Ligeti and Messiaen have earned him high praise from conductors such as David Robertson and Oliver Knussen, with whom he has performed.

A regular on concert series throughout North America, Jonathan Keeble is quickly carving a niche as one of the leading performer/pedagogues of his generation. In addition to being a past winner of the Coleman Chamber Music Competition, and recipient of the Eastman School of Music Performer's Certificate, he is the recipient of numerous grants and awards. Mr. Keeble's passion for new music has led him to commission many new works for the flute from rising young composers. He is a popular performer at flute festivals around the world. He also routinely tours with Prairie Winds, a professional wind quintet. Mr. Keeble's teaching experience includes his present position as the flute professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with posts held at Oklahoma State University, and as visiting professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia.

Five works for solo piano plus a sonata for two pianos by the distinguished American composer Adolphus Hailstork are performed by Andrey Kasparov and Oksana Lutsyshyn. Sharing the honors on the solo piano pieces, they join forces for the Sonata for Two Pianos. Hailing from Armenian and Ukrainian families, these musicians were educated at the Moscow State Conservatory and came to the United States in the 1990s. They presently teach at Old Dominion University where they are colleagues of the composer.

The compositions on this album represent more than 20 years of creative collaboration between composer Victoria Bond and pianist Paul Barnes. It began in 1999 with the recording of Black Light when Barnes first introduced Bond to the communion hymn Potirion Sotiriu. That started an exploration of three distinctive Byzantine chants. The two piano concertos were recorded earlier and are re-released here. All of these works are related to each other in that they are about the mystical quality of light. Victoria Bond leads a multifaceted career as composer, conductor, lecturer, and artistic director of Cutting Edge Concerts. Her works have been performed around the world and her recordings appear on numerous labels including Albany Records and Naxos. Pianist Paul Barnes continues to electrify audiences with his intensely expressive playing and cutting-edge programming.

This fascinating disc contains 30 of the most popular carols in "impossible" arrangements. Gordon Green writes: "Every year at Christmas time I'm struck by the predictability of most of the Christmas music that crowds the record stores and airwaves. In this collection, I show the Christmas classics in a different light. I take a fresh look at some of the best melodies in circulation." The "fresh look" Green is talking about uses just synthesizers to create the music and catchy and appealing it is.

Leo Sowerby's piano compositions span the composer's entire creative life. His very first composition, written in 1905 at the early age of ten, was a piece now lost entitled The Dawn of Day. His last important piece with piano is the Dialog for Organ and Piano, written within a year of the composer's death in 1968. Sowerby was a born pianist and in his early years he frequently performed his own music and the works of other composers as well. As he grew older, he appeared less frequently in public as a pianist and finally gave it up all together. The Organ became his primary instrument and he divided his time between composing, teaching and his work as a church musician. Dating from 1916 to 1929, the selections on this compact disc are products of the composer's youthful maturity. All these works were composed when Sowerby was in his twenties, except for the Florida Suite, which he composed when he was 34.

Composer/pianist Allen Shawn began the improvisations on this recording during the height of the pandemic, recording and sending them to his son in Los Angeles. None of the pieces were planned. Some were recorded on his phone; some on a zoom recorder — yet taken as an entire sequence, the nineteen pieces cohere like a notated piece. This recording therefore should be received in the spirit of those old recordings created from tape recordings of musicians done in someone's living room, and never intended to be made into a record. It is an artist's sketchbook, not a finished painting, but nonetheless possibly deserving consideration in its own right.

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

On this CD are gathered shorter and occasional pieces and one extended work by California-born composer David Macbride. The pieces were written in a period spanning a little over a decade, and are played by him here with a nuanced artistry and great authority. It is a delightful and ultimately very moving recording, as it reveals a composer in mid-career who is able to do that very hardest of things, which is to allow the listener into his world without posing or imposing. In a period when "new music" often seems to need some kind of verbal explanation, Macbride's work, even at its most complex, holds true to music's purpose, which is to communicate directly to the listener with sounds. So natural and sure is his composer's art that any accompanying notes seem almost unnecessary. Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to recommend music that is at once so touching and so beautifully made. Macbride's roots in California and in Beijing, China, the birthplace of his mother, influence the tone of his music, which, even at its most dense, generates an extraordinary attentiveness and calmness in the hearer. His language seems an effortless coalescence of Eastern and Western elements, remnants of neo-classicism, figurations and harmonies from mid-century jazz, and, at times, echoes of Satie, Messiaen and of an attractive early work of fellow Californian John Cage. Different degree of influence from these sides emerge in different works, but one is struck in the end by the music's remarkably unified voice and sense of purpose. Transparent, lucid, firmly in the present, yet also deeply meditative, the overriding impulse behind Macbride's expression feels quietly, unpretentiously religious.

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

Alex Freeman composes in a wide range of styles and media. He holds degrees from Eastman, Boston University's School of Fine Arts and Juilliard. His doctoral research led him to Finland, where he lived for six years, studying at The Sibelius Academy. Assistant Professor of Music at Carleton College, Freeman has won awards from ASCAP, The American Academy of Arts and Letter, The American-Scandinavian Foundation and The Fulbright Foundation, among others. The music on this disc reflects Freeman's compositional activity over the last 13 years. Performed in reverse chronological order, each work displays his penchant for continuity and long-range development. Three superb Finnish pianists, Matilda Kärkkäinen, Risto-Matti Marin and Salla Karakorpi, are joined by American pianist Brian Lee in these performances.

With this recording, double bassist Anthony Stoops embarks on an unlikely project — that of enlarging the repertoire for solo double bass music in order to legitimatize the double bass as an important solo instrument. Performing five new works by American composers, some of them commissioned by him, Stoops is a strong advocate for his project. An international acclaimed soloist, pedagogue, orchestral and chamber musician, Stoops is Associate Professor of Double Bass at the University of Oklahoma and Co-principal Bass of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. A graduate of Northwestern University, the University of Iowa and the University of Michigan, Stoops performs on a custom double bass made for him by American luthier Aaron Reiley.

This recording presents but a sampling of the wealth of jazz-inspired character pieces. It is not surprising that many American composers draw on this native language of jazz for inspiration in their art music, but in the first decades of the 20th century many European composers found ways to incorporate this exciting American art form into their music. The works performed by Jonathan Sokasits explore the variety of ways that composers integrate elements of jazz into their writing. On the faculty at Hastings College, Jonathan Sokasits has previously taught at Ithaca College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studied at Ithaca College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was a student of Howard Karp. Sokasits regularly performs as a recitalist and with numerous chamber ensembles. His recordings appear on the Mark and Albany Records labels.

Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) created some of the most popular and enduring pianistic portraits of his native Spain. His masterpiece was Iberia, a collection of 12 substantial pieces divided into four books. Technically challenging and structurally complex, Iberia is a monument in the piano repertoire. Pianist and Albéniz scholar Pola Baytelman teams up with musicologist and Albéniz biographer Walter Aaron Clark to present the only documentary on this magisterial work. Combining brilliant performances with lucid explanations of the music itself, it takes the viewer on a voyage through time and space to the Spain of Albéniz's Romantic imagination. In addition to this Blu-Ray video, an audio CD is included of Baytelman performing works for piano by Albéniz, including excerpts from Iberia. Acclaimed pianist Pola Baytelman is also highly respected as an educator, having taught master classes in China, England, Hong Kong, India and throughout the United States, including being featured at the 9th International Symposium on Spanish Keyboard Music. Dr. Walter Aaron Clark is Distinguished Professor of Musicology at the University of California, Riverdale, where he is the found/director of the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music.

Horn player Laura Klock, after a 40 year career as a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and principal horn of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, decided it was about time to record her own disc featuring some of the composers who have energized and inspired her over the years. Written by and recorded with her friends, this disc indeed spreads the word about these exciting new works for horn by Emanuel Rubin, Frederick Tillis, Jeff Myers, Robert Stern, Hsueh-Yung Shen, and Salvatore Macchia. Ms. Klock, a graduate of the University of Michigan, was a founding member of the Massachusetts Brass Quintet and a member of the Brass Ring Quintet. Throughout her career, Ms. Klock has enjoyed teaching and playing both the modern horn and its ancestor, the natural horn. This disc reflects those interests with the inclusion of an energetic contemporary work for natural horn and alto saxophone. She has commissioned and recorded numerous new works for horn and her recordings appear on the Open Loop, Crystal, Gasparo, and Albany Records label.