Catalog

In this recording of Thai composer Narong Prangcharoen's chamber music, he explains that "Throughout my life, I have had two basic sources of inspiration, the power of nature and the power of the mind." While most of his compositions have been for orchestra, he uses the same sources of inspiration for his chamber music, but the textures and colors are varied to suit the chamber medium. Prangcharoen has established an international reputation and is recognized as one of Thailand's leading composers. Among many other awards, he has received the American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Commission and the Audience Choice Award. His music has been performed in Asia, America, Australia and Europe. He is the founder of the Thailand International Composition Festival and is on the faculty of the Conservatory of Music, University of Missouri in Kansas City.

This recording presents works for flute and harp that seamlessly arc between the natural world and the human spirit, serving as reminders of the fragility of the environment and the ability to perceive and affect it. As the Aletheia Duo, flutist Jonathan Keeble and harpist Ann Yeung share a passion for bringing the creative possibilities of the music of this time to their audiences and have inspired critics to describe their evocative performances as having "lyricism, and above all, magic." This passion balances their commitment to reinterpreting contemporary and historic compositions for flute and harp with verve, sensitivity, and enthusiasm. Individually recognized as leading performers and exceptional pedagogues, they have been performing together since 2002. They are both on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The intensity and focus of David Glaser's music reflect the concentration of his life. He has lived in New York City for the entirety of it -- raised in Queens, and for the past 25 years, living in Manhattan. What characterizes virtually all of his music heard on this recording is its intentional direction towards New York concert-music performers, their ensembles, and the culture and tradition that they embody and extend. His music calls visual metaphors to mind: the luminous radiance of its sparkling timbral textures is a reflection of the focus of an intense conception, asking that an audience shut its eyes in order to see. Glaser is a graduate of Columbia University and is the recipient of awards and commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Alice M. Ditson Fund, and the American Music Center.

The Palisades Virtuosi continues their commendable series of commissioning new works from outstanding American composers for their trio's instrumentation of flute, clarinet and piano. This fourth volume brings the total to almost 50 new works the ensemble has added to the repertoire. Two of the works on this recording have the added attraction of the formidable Marni Nixon joining the group to narrate the poetry in the Unitarian Hymnal that forms the background for Gwyneth Walker's work and the information about crows that precedes each movement of Amanda Harberg's Birding in the Palisades. Palisades Virtuosi consists of the virtuoso musicians Margaret Swinchoski, flute, Donald Mokrynski, clarinet and Ron Levy, piano. The ensemble has received rave reviews for its previous three releases on Albany Records.

Clarinetist Dennis Nygren has recorded a wonderful program of music written especially for him, music that he has arranged and works that have not been previously recorded on clarinet. Dr. Nygren was on the faculty at Kent State University from 1983 to 2012, receiving the Distinguished Honors Faculty Award in 2008. He has been in demand as a guest soloist, recitalist, orchestral player, chamber musician, clinician and lecturer. A graduate of Michigan State University and Northwestern University where he earned a Doctor of Music degree, he is an acknowledged expert on the clarinet music of Debussy and Berg, Nygren is also known for his arrangement of Victor Babin's Hillandale Waltzes for clarinet and wind ensemble. His arrangements on this disc include the Mozart Church Sonatas, originally scored for violins with organ continuo, the Montbrun Six Pièces and the Debussy Four Songs.

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.

Jan Krzywicki (b. 1948) is active as a composer, conductor and educator. He has been comÂmissioned by prestigious performers, and organizations such as the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Chestnut Brass Company, and performed across the United States by ensembles such as the Colorado Quartet, the Network for New Music, the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, Alea III, and others. He is the recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Rockefeller Foundation residency (Bellagio, Italy), a Bogliasco Foundation residency (Bogliasco, Italy), ASCAP and Meet the Composer awards, and has been a Fellow at the MacDowell, Yaddo, Millay, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts artist colonies. As a conductor he has led chamber and orchestral groups in literature from the middle ages to the present, including a large number of premieres. Since 1990 he has been conductor of the contemporary ensemble Network for New Music. Krzywicki is a professor of music theory at Temple University. All the compositions on this recording were composed in 2000 or later and complement his first disc of chamber works on Albany Records (TROY337).

The Stentorian Consort (David Begnoche, Barney McCollum, Brent Phillips and Jonathan Whitaker) offers a program of works for trombone that includes five world premiere recordings. Praised for inspired performances and innovative programming, the Consort has established itself as one of the nation's premiere trombone quartets. They maintain an active performance schedule of recitals and master classes and have performed by invitation at several trombone conferences. This, their second recording celebrates and reflects their continued interest in new repertoire. The Stentorian Consort is joined by guest soloist Joseph Alessi, principal trombone of the New York Philharmonic, for two works on the recording.

Composer Andrew Waggoner notes that these are five recent pieces that grew somehow out of the narrow space in which experience is transformed into history. Time, memory, the spell of love and the long-sounding echoes of terror inform each of these works, which while stylistically varied, share a common set of musical and emotional concerns. Bookending these pieces are two group improvisations by Open End. They frame and comment on the works they enclose. Born in 1960 in New Orleans, Andrew Waggoner studied at Eastman and Cornell. He has been commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Academy of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields and the Saint Louis Symphony, among others. He is the recipient of an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Roger Sessions Prize. He is Composer-in-Residence at the Setnor School of Music of Syracuse University and a co-founder of the new music ensemble Open End.

A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Emma Lou Diemer received her degrees in music composition from the Yale School of Music (B.M., M.M.) and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D.). She studied further in Brussels on a Fulbright Scholarship and at Tanglewood. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she taught composition and theory from 1971 to 1991. She has been composer-in-residence with the Santa Barbara Symphony, and is organist emerita at First Presbyterian Church in Santa Barbara. This recording offers some of her recent chamber works including a work for string trio and a work for brass and piano, both written in 2001.

Barbara White's music subverts our presumptions and compels us to alter the way we listen, to discard tired preconceptions and generic expectations. She projects a sense of stillness in the midst of intense activity and activity within stillness: we are directed to find the calm center in the furiously moving; alternately, we are invited to listen deeply and actively to the quieter music, to sense a vast reservoir of unexpressed energy, to enter the depths of reverberaÂtion and enjoy the subtle decay of harmonics, to be thrown off balance by an unexpectedly delayed or anticipated attack. This music of transparent density and dense transparency compels us. Its surprises enlighten rather than shock. White's music has been presented by ensembles such as the Orchestra of St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, Earplay, eighth blackbird, and janus. Honors and awards include a Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, three awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship. Ms. White is Professor of Music at Princeton University.

Composer Paul Chihara comments that “This cd is a labor of love. It represents my activities in concert, ballet, movies and Broadway — and is unabashedly personal and romantic.” One can think of Paul Chihara as several different composers: the Chihara of exquisite instrumental color; the Chihara of the theatre; and the Chihara of American popular music. Premiering throughout the U.S. and Europe for more than five decades, Chihara’s prize-winning concert works have earned him both domestic and international recognition. He was composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Ballet, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Marlboro Festival. He has composed scores for more than 100 motion pictures and television series. Active on Broadway, he was musical consultant and arranger for Sophisticated Ladies.

Composer Paul Osterfield was born in 1973. He composed and performed as a cellist throughout middle school and high school. He won first prize as a student in the U.S. Copyright Office and Library of Congress Young Creators' Contest and the work was subsequently performed by the Cleveland Orchestra. Since then, his compositions have received performances internationally and throughout the United States. He is on the faculty at Middle Tennessee State University. A graduate of Cornell, Indiana University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, Osterfield's primary composition teachers include Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra. This first commercial recording of his music offers an overview of his chamber and vocal music.

Composer John Aylward has been awarded a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Grant and First Prize from the International Society for Contemporary Music, among many other honors. His music has been praised for its rhythmic vitality, rigorous formal qualities and its lyricism and is performed in the US and abroad. He is on the faculty at Clark University and is the founder of the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble and the Etchings Festival. This recording offers some of his best chamber works including a song cycle based on the poetry of Louise Gluck, a piece for violin and cello and a large chamber ensemble work titled Stillness and Change.

Born in 1936, the eminent American composer Elliott Schwartz has had a distinguished career as a composer, professor and writer. He is the Robert K. Beckwith Professor of Music Emeritus at Bowdoin College, where he taught from 1964 to 2007. His music has been performed by major orchestras and ensembles around the world and he has held visiting appointments at Oxford University, the Royal Danish Academies, and the Rotterdam and Amsterdam Conservatories, among many others. His style is marked by a fondness for unsynchronized layers of activity, highly dramatic -- even theatrical -- gestures, and brilliant instrumental colors. Although the three works on this recording appear to be widely contrasted in certain surface ways, they also share important features. Each was conceived as the response to a personal experience and each explores a layering of textures.

The music of composer David Dies (b. 1972) has been performed in venues around the world, including London, Lima, New York City, Chicago, Lenox, Massachusetts, Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, where he has been both student and teacher. Notable performances include sopranos Mimmi Fulmer and Judith Kellock, cellist Jakub Omsky, pianist Christopher Taylor and bassoonist Marc Vallon, among others, who are featured on this recording. He currently teaches music theory and composition at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. Dies comments that, "I titled the CD, agevolmente, because the complicated path I took to find the "simple" term reminds me of a central irony in my music. Generally, I want my music to sound comfortable, natural, elegant, and easy, but it takes a high level of skill, musicianship, and concentration to perform. I want the music to sound unlabored and simple when, for the performer, it can be exacting and complex."

Donald Crockett is dedicated to creating music inspired by the musicians who perform it and this recording is no exception. It represents works composed across a span of about a dozen years and Xtet, the Los Angeles-based new music ensemble, with its highly variable instrumentation and composer/performer ethos, was the ideal vehicle to undertake the performance of this music. Donald Crockett was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006 and has also received the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, and an Aaron Copland Award, among many other honors. Also known as a conductor, Crockett has presented many world, national and regional premieres with Xtet. He has also been active over the years as a composer and conductor with the venerable and famed Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles. Donald Crockett is on the faculty of the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music and serves as Senior Composer-in-Residence with the Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East.

Composer, concert presenter, educator and arts administrator, Theodore Wiprud has played many important roles in American musical life since the 1980s. His ongoing work with musicians, students, and communities -- currently as Director of Education at the New York Philharmonic and host of the Philharmonic's Young People's Concerts -- corresponds with music described as "rewarding to perform," "warmly received by audiences," and "destined to set a high standard." Theodore Wiprud came of age as a composer as the rigorous precepts of both serialism and classic minimalism yielded to a flowering of musical plurality. His works characteristically employ a freely tonal approach to harmony, convey specific emotional climates, and often reflect aspects of spiritual experience. This is the first commercial recording dedicated to his music.

George Edwards graduated from Oberlin and then did graduate study at Princeton, where he studied with Milton Babbitt, Earl Kim and Edward T. Cone. He taught at the New England Conservatory and then moved to Columbia University in 1977 where he taught composition and theory until 2004 when he retired. George Edwards' longtime friend and colleague, the composer and theorist Fred Lerdahl, identifies three basic strands in Edwards' music. First, it is relentlessly contrapuntal. Second, Lerdahl notes that while the music is not truly serial, the works of twelve-tone composers have had a profound effect. Finally, the music shows a strong affinity for the lyrical intensity and harmonic richness of the late Romantic Austro-German repertoire. These three strands coalesce in important ways to form the essence of George Edwards' unique compositional voice. With the release of this recording, we are fortunate to have the opportunity to engage with a composer of the first order.

Since 2006: The Saxophone Music of Allan Blank, is comprised of recordings of music dating from 2006-2009 by noted composer Allan Blank. These works, in combination with five pieces written for saxophone prior to 2006, qualify Blank as one of the most prolific major American composers for the saxophone. Saxophonist Bill Perconti is a Professor of Music at Lewis-Clark State College. He has been an ardent champion of American composers, and his numerous recordings contain world-premieres. Most of the compositions included on this recording were as a result of correspondence between the composer and Perconti.

Violist George Taylor and guitarist Nicholas Goluses, both faculty members at the Eastman School of Music, offer a lovely program of music for viola and guitar. The recording leads us through the various phases and moods of night from the first shadow to darkness to the sounds of night. The performers capture all the moods and colors, the timbre and sonority of the viola and guitar blending and interweaving beautifully. Their interpretations of these works are characterized by elegance, grace, warmth and humor.

It was Biljana Milovanovic, pianist for the Ibis Camerata ensemble, who conceived this project of recording a group of compositions by Yehudi Wyner. Mr. Wyner performed in one piece (with Richard Stoltzman) and conducted another, but his major contribution was in coaching performers in matters of his style. The music spans 50 years of Wyner's compositional output beginning with the Partita for Piano of 1952 and arriving at Commedia for Clarinet and Piano of 2002. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, Yehudi Wyner is one of America's most versatile musicians. His compositions include more than 60 works and he has received many commissions and honors in addition to the Pulitzer. He has taught at Yale, SUNY Purchase, Cornell, Harvard and Brandeis. This is the fourth recording by the Ibis Camerata to appear on Albany Records.

This recording is a symbol of cross-ocean friendship between composer Faye-Ellen Silverman and guitarist Volkmar Zimmermann and includes two pieces commissioned by Zimmermann and his Corona Guitar Kvartet. All the works feature guitar and range from works for solo guitar, guitar quartet and works for voice with guitar. Faye-Ellen Silverman studied at Barnard College, Harvard University and Columbia. She has received numerous commissions and awards and recordings of her music appear on the Albany, Capstone, Crystal and New World record labels. Her collaborator, German-born guitarist Volkmar Zimmerman studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. He has performed in Europe, Russia, the United States and in Canada as a soloist and as a member of the Corona Guitar Kvartet. A bonus video, playable on QuickTime is included. Titled SPOR, it is a film by Nike Arnold and Clara Bausch and uses the first track from the recording, Processional, as music.

This recording brings together a selection of Ingrid Arauco's music written in the last decade and suggests a certain continuity of thought, with the entire program intended to be comprehended as a single artistic statement. A member of the music faculty at Haverford College, Ingrid Arauco studied at the University of Pennsylvania. Her works have been performed by many distinguished musical organizations, including the Colorado Quartet and the Network for New Music. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including awards from the American Guild of Organists and has received commissions from the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and the Kindler Foundation in the Library of Congress.

As on the previous release of Gernot Wolfgang's music on Albany Records, rhythms (grooves) from musical styles such as jazz, rock & roll, pop, world music and electronica play important roles within his chamber music compositions. While they rarely stretch through an entire piece, they provide energy and forward motion in between the free flowing rubato passages. Active in the Los Angeles film and TV music industry, Wolfgang has served as composer-in-residence with the Beverly Hills International Music Festival where he curated a concert series featuring the chamber music of film/TV composers.

David S. Lefkowitz, a native of New York City, studied composition at Eastman, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. He has won international acclaim as a composer, with his works garnering performances around the world as well as numerous prizes and including recognition from the National Association of Composers, the Chicago Civic Orchestra and the Gaudeamus Music Week. As a theorist Lefkowitz has researched "meta-theoretical" issues such as the process of segmentation and the internal structure of set-classes. Lefkowitz has enjoyed creating music with different, often contradictory faces. The works on this disc in which tonality and atonality, consonance and dissonance exist in tension are not found at one particular point along the continuum from one stylistic extreme to another. Rather these pieces thrive on the tension between the contradictory characteristics.

The recording of James Willey's String Quartets Nos. 3, 7 and 8, marks the culmination of a decades-long partnership between the composer and the Esterhazy Quartet, which began in 1977 with the Quartets performance of his String Quartet No. 1. Since then the Esterhazy Quartet has performed and recorded all eight of the composer's works in this genre. Aided by this long, closely-knit collaboration in which ideas, revisions and artistic inspiration would flow back and forth between composers and performers, James Willey has created one of the most beautiful and personally expressive canons of string quartets in the latter part of the 20th century.

The music of John Allemeier has been described as having a "sweet sense of mystery." His music has been performed throughout the United States and Europe in chamber concerts and at international festivals. A graduate of the University of Iowa, Northwestern University and Augustana College, he also studied at the Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt. He teaches composition and music theory at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. This CD presents four premiere recordings of his music for various chamber ensembles. Each of these pieces resulted from commissions and collaborations with education and and artistic organizations between 2007 and 2010.

William Matthews began studying and performing music as a flutist in Springfield, Ohio, then studied composition formally at Oberlin, the University of Iowa, the Institute of Sonology and the Yale School of Music. He has taught at Bates College since 1978. His creative time is divided between acoustic and electro-acoustic compositions and both types are represented on this first recording devoted to his music.

This recording allowed composer Dalit Hadass Warshaw to feature and reconcile diverse aspects of her musical identity -- composer, pianist, and thereminist. The music runs across a broad harmonic spectrum with music ranging from solo instrumental works to string quartet to voice. It also highlights Warshaw's mission to integrate the theremin with acoustic ensembles as her music for this instrument features the more lyrical, vocal and expressive capacities of this unusual instrument. The theremin used for this recording belonged to Clara Rockmore and was customized for her by its inventor, Lev Theremin, in the early 1930s. A prolific composer and active performer, Ms Warshaw's music has been widely praised for its lyricism, its unique orchestral palette, its sense of drama and emotional intensity.

The Scott/Garrison Duo consists of clarinetist Shannon Scott and flutist Leonard Garrison, has performed together since 1988, with a long commitment to American music. They have been featured at five conventions of the National Flute Association and were winners of the NFA’s Chamber Music Competition. This recording features nine delightful works for this wind duo, exploring works by American, French and Swiss composers.

This second recording of chamber music by Armand Qualliotine on Albany Records features music for piano, vibraphone and marimba. Qualliotine (b.1954) earned his degrees from the Hart College of Music, SUNY-Stony Brook and Brandeis University. His post-doctoral work included studies with Pierre Boulez and Milton Babbitt. He is now a professor of composition at Berklee College of Music. He has received commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation, Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, and the Paul Jacobs Commission for orchestral composition from the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra.