Catalog

Among composers of so-called serious music over the last 50 years, few have realized the term "serious" as uniquely and powerfully as has Alvin Singleton. With many contemporary composers the seriousness of their work has been concerned with musical structure; Singleton throughout his career has answered the call of allowing his music to address crucial matters of his time. But this has always been accomplished through eloquent crafting of his musical materials. Singleton was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1940, the son of warm, witty, devoutly Christian parents. Abandoning a career as a CPA after falling in love with a Mahler symphony, Singleton studied composition at both New York University and Yale before working with Goffredo Petrassi as a Fulbright Scholar in Rome. He remained in Europe for nearly a decade and a half before returning to the U.S. to serve as composer-in-residence with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Extension of a Dream, written in 1977 and revised in 1987, memorializes the brutal beating death of South African freedom fighter Steve Biko by South African police. Argoru is a word from the Ghanaian Twi language meaning "to play" and both works heard on this disc, ArgoruVII and Argoru VI are scored for solo instruments (vibraphone and marimba). Between Sisters (1990) is a musical setting of "The House Slave," a poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove.

Extensions of Tradition(s) is a collection of works by American composer William C. Banfield. It includes recent recordings of performances that document his current music/art aesthetic as well as an early symphonic choral work. In the past 25 years Banfield has produced a body of compositions, authored eight books, made numerous recordings, and maintained an active teaching career. He has served three times as a judge for the Pulitzer Prize in music and his music has been performed and recording by the foremost orchestras and chamber ensembles in the United States and abroad. With the compositions on this recording, Banfield has shared several of the genres that make up contemporary composition, and in his case, his music embodies the multiple styles of the American musical landscapes of modernist languages, including jazz and American song. Composer Libby Larsen says that "One of my favorite Bill Banfield quotes is "I have often felt that, with my art, I could build a room where everyone can find a friend." This is Bill Banfield.

Ezra Laderman writes: "I love writing tunes and the pull to a specific key or note. I take pleasure in perpetual variation, creating whole blocks of music derived from small motivic cells. I enjoy putting into motion a number of musical issues and making them work together in a cohesive, symbiotic manner. I find the disjunct note, silence, and space, a powerful metaphor...and most of all I thrill to a long line, an arch that weaves and spins itself out giving a sense of completeness, of wholeness. I do not want to forsake this musical world that I inhabit. The challenge is to make it work, to make the music relevant for our time, for it to be evocative and for the music to engage the heart and the mind. On a different level, there is a personal, emotional, fallible, human level that is within each of us, one that I find not easily verbalized or articulated. The language of music has enabled me to go to that source, to communicate those inner feelings. We have collectively lived through joy, tragedy, uncertainty, determination, to mention but four dimensions of life. Without furling out the banner and showing my stripes, I have been able to express myself. What I have done has given me great satisfaction. Using these disparate tools together has made it possible for me to express these feelings persuasively, consciously, or intuitively. At least, it is my hope that I have done so. It is a life spent composing my way, and trusting that it reaches and speaks to you, and it will stand the test of time...My early works are clearly grounded in tonality, spiked with dissonance. In the middle years, my music is absorbed in atonality and serial techniques. These last years my compositions have embraced all that has been meaningful to me over a lifetime of creativity. And it is very apparent in the works that make up this CD."

The esteemed American composer Ezra Laderman (1924-2015) composed more than 300 works, which were performed by major orchestras, chamber ensembles, and soloists throughout the United States. His music incorporated a lyrical style into a contemporary context, using tonal material in combination with atonal, polytonal, or aleatoric elements, while seeking out unusual formal structures for his music. This recording contains the first recordings of Laderman's music composed between 2002 and 2013 and complements the nine recordings of his music on Albany Records. Laderman's many honors include three Guggenheim fellowships and the Rome Prize. He was Dean of the Yale School of Music from 1989 to 1995 and served as Director of the Music Program for the National Endowment of the Arts, and President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among many other prestigious appointments.

Irwin Bazelon died on August 2, 1995 at the age of 73. He composed nine symphonies and over 60 Orchestral, Chamber and instrumental pieces. Born in Evanston, Illinois, he graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor's and master's degree in music. After studying composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale briefly, he went to Mills College in Oakland, California with Darius Milhaud. From 1948 until his death, he lived in New York City and Sagaponack. His Long Island retreat was the perfect counterpoint for the tensions and hustle-bustle of urban life with which his rhythmically complex and often jazz-tinged music bristles. In his early years in New York, Bazelon supported himself by scoring documentaries, art films and theatrical productions. During the 1950's and 1960's he composed more than fifty scores of this kind, which proved to be an invaluable preparation for his Orchestral music. As a valedictory of sorts he wrote Knowing the Score: Notes on Film Music. Published in 1975, this book is widely used as a college text. As a guest composer Bazelon frequently lectured at leading universities and music schools throughout the United States and England. Young people were especially drawn to his feisty spirit and no-nonsense approach to earning a living by applying compositional talents to the commercial world without sacrificing integrity. A long-time horse racing enthusiast, one of his best known works, Churchill Downs (Chamber Concerto No. 2) is named for the home of the Kentucky Derby, and his ninth symphony (subtitled Sunday Silence for the winner of the 1989 Derby) is dedicated to the horse. Definitely an interesting man who gives us interesting music.

Composer Barbara White discovered the shakuhachi while in college and her fascination with this instrument has continued form more than 30 years. The works on this recording are the result of a ten year collaboration with shakuhachi grand master Riley Lee. White studied the shakuhachi with Lee and has composed numerous works for him. White's music has been described as "provocative even when it speaks in undertones, creating a personal space that is as unique as it is inviting." The recipient of numerous honors and awards, she is on the music faculty at Princeton. Riley Lee began studying the shakuhachi in 1970 while living in Japan. He is the first non-Japanese to attain the rank of "grand master."

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.

Richard Felciano's interest in musical acoustics led him through language, voice and organ studies to electronic and then computer, as well as to music for architectural and public spaces and music for non-Western instruments. Many of these works demonstrate a strongly ritualistic bent, reflective of the large Portuguese and Asian populations of his Northern California childhood. In the words of his colleague and fellow composer, Howard Hersh, "the vitality of invention and depth of artistic curiosity are clearly enormous, (yet) the major thrust of his contribution...lies in the power with which he has fused his innovative techniques to that timeless element of dramatic immediacy and his acutely-tuned sensibility to the sheer beauty of sound. There has never been any doubt that behind his music - whatever its external form - there stands a human - a humane - sensibility". The composer himself writes: "It has been said that artists spend much of their lives following a path which they somehow know is right but cannot yet clearly define. Scientists know a similar situation: Einstein spoke of 'something which is there but we don't know what it is.' In both instances, knowing that 'something' becomes compelling. In the notes about the works which are on this CD, my own search for that 'something' will become clear - a desire to approach composition through a deepening knowledge of 'what is there' in music - the physical nature of sound itself, so that, as in architecture, whatever structure is possible is defined by the nature of the materials. Picasso observed that the real problem in creativity is the materials, meaning that only through knowledge of them can anything at all be expressed. He was right."

The Kobayashi/Gray Duo is in demand throughout the world for their skillful presentations of works by 19th to 21st century women composers. They have presented their discoveries of new and unknown works at national and international conferences. This recording reflects their interest and enthusiasm and contains four world premiere recordings of music by women from the U.S., Poland, Norway, France, Spain and the Czech Republic.

This recording is an outgrowth of the Pan Pacific Ensemble's mission to enable and promote new compositions with a global outreach through high-level performances. This disc of commissioned works includes compositions by Chinese-American Chin Yi; Chinese composers Yi Qiao and Xinyan Li; Thai composers Tanapon Chiwinpiti, Siraseth Pantura-Umporn, and Naarong Prangcharoen; Malaysian composer Yii Kay Hoe; and Vietnamese composer Do Kien Cuong. Instrumentation for the Pan Pacific Ensemble includes flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn. The Pan Pacific Ensemble has appeared at the 2016 China-ASEAN Contemporary Music Festival and the 2017 Thailand Iternational Composition Festival in Bangkok in addition to their active concert schedule in the United States.

Kenneth Frazelle was born in Jacksonville, North Carolina and was a student of Roger Sessions at the Juilliard School. He attended high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he now teaches. He is composer-in-residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Santa Rosa Symphony. His score for Still-Here brought him international acclaim. The music, written for the folksinger Odetta and ensemble, was written as part of a multimedia dance theatre work. The film version of Still-Here has been viewed by millions on National Public Television and in Canada, France and Japan. Composer and percussionist Aaron Bachelder has composed Chamber, choral, Orchestral and electronic music, as well as songs in popular genres. In addition to his compositional activities, he is a founding member of the improvisational Chamber group, the Spool Ensemble, and the rock band Chapsticks. Robert Ward writes that his piece Appalachian Dances and Ditties "reflects the interest I have had in American folk music in general since the 1950's and in Appalachian music in particular since the 1970's when my wife and I had a second home in Sparta, North Carolina. The richness and vitality of that music is unparalleled by that of any other region of the country." Lukas Foss writes: "I wrote my Three American Pieces at a time when I was in love with my newly adopted country. All the music possesses an open-air quality I think I learned from Aaron, but I have handled it my own way. And there is always the influence of folk music - I looked at it a lot. I was also in love with jazz. The only popular idiom I never got close to was Broadway."

Wolfgang David (b.1971) has become ensconced on the international stage, both as a recitalist, and as a guest soloist with many of the world's leading orchestras. His teachers included Rainer Kuelchl, the concert master of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Igor Ozim at the Berne Conservatory and Yfrah Neaman at London's Guildhall School of Music. David Gompper (b.1954) has lived and worked professionally as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer in New York, San Diego, London, Nigeria, Michigan and Texas. He is currently Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa. In 2002-2003, he was in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching, performing and conducting at the Moscow Conservatory. He has performed with Wolfgang David in Moscow, the United States and Vienna.

Highlighting this recording is Ward's First Symphony, written in 1942 when he was a graduate student in composition and conducting at Juilliard. This was his first work to bring him national attention with a critic noting that "...he has the gift for the lyric line...strong melodic expression is supported by an active and resourceful imagination for contrapuntal design, by a great talent for rhythmic variety....The sum of these excellencies is greatness." Ward comments: "In the years after the war I have written many works for diverse media and under other influences. Looking back I hope these efforts might still merit the high praise that critic Glenn Dillard Gunn gave my First Symphony."

"First Takes" features world premiere recordings of four new works by outstanding American composers from the younger generation: Chris Theofanidis; Paul Moravec; Lisa Bielawa; and Michael Gatonska, beautifully performed by the String Orchestra of New York City (SONYC). SONYC was founded in 1999 and is already acclaimed as one of the leading ensembles in New York City. Performing without a conductor, the individual members each have an impact on the artistic process. Whether performing standard repertoire or the kind of new music on this CD, SONYC strives to inspire and educate its audiences.

Eric Salzman writes: "The first impression that Michael Dellaira's work gives is that of simple beauty, no small virtue in and of itself. But listen again. Repeated hearings reveal a musical world of depth and subtlety, marked by the kinds of surprises that are the mark of a sure and confident ear. Michael has something to tell us. He has created a personal musical language that combines the harmonic vocabulary and rhythmic interest of rock music with the technical rigor of the best modern classical music. It is this combination and synthesis of seemingly contradictory elements which points to the direction of new American music in a new century and which gives both surface tension and excitement, and deeper value to Michael's music." Michael Dellaira was born in Schenectady, N.Y. A passable clarinetist, violinist, and chorister as a child, he also performed as a drummer, singer, and guitar player in rock and folk groups. After graduating from Georgetown University with a degree in philosophy, he pursued a career as a guitarist and songwriter and at the same time began the formal study of music theory with Robert Parris, Milton Babbitt, Mario Davidovsky, Goffredo Petrassi and Franco Donatoni. During the 1980s, he withdrew into a private period of musical self-examination and re-evaluation, exploring styles and genres he had previously considered off-limits, simple-minded, or too abstract. This period lasted until 1995, the year he completed Three Rivers. That work, a turning point, employs the vernacular rhythms and harmonies characteristic of Dellaira's musical voice.

The history of the Five Seasons ensemble goes back to 2012 when Estonian composer and guitarist Robert Jürjendal heard a recording of the Corona Guitar Kvartet and contacted one of its members, Volkmar Zimmermann. Zimmermann initially asked Jürjendal to write a work for him and soprano Sara Fiil and their collaboration continued with the instrumentation expanding to the existing ensemble. The special membership of Five Seasons (acoustic guitar, soprano, trumpet, percussion, and electric guitar) encouraged Jürjendal to choose more academic writing, influenced by early guitar and lute music with the essence of romantic melancholy together with a complex contemporary harmony and sound conception. Five Seasons has appeared at Estonian Music Days to great critical acclaim.

Saxophonist Allison Adams, along with collaborators Andrea Lodge and Liz Bouk, has recorded seven new works for saxophone. Adams is on the faculty at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where she shares her excitement for music with the next generation of music educators and performers. A versatile performer in addition to a pedagogue, Adams has been a featured soloist at venues across the world. A graduate of Ithaca College, the University of Minnesota, and Arizona State University, she also does research and writes about performance injuries.

Arthur Foote was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He entered Harvard at the age of 17 and studied with John Knowles. Paine. In 1875, he received the first Master's degree in music ever given in this country. He was a professional organist active in the Boston area. He was very fortunate in that he could and did compose orchestral music that was performed by one of the best orchestras in the country at the time; the Boston Symphony. He taught music in the Boston area for more than 50 years. In 1944, taking advantage of two successive fellowships from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, Juan A. Orrego-Salas left his native Chile to study in the United States with Randall Thompson and Aaron Copland. He has taught extensively in both Chile and the United States. His Sextet was first performed at Tanglewood in the summer of 1954. Mr. Orrego-Salas has composed four symphonies, concerti, two ballets, an opera, a mass, two cantatas and a great deal of film music. This recording of David Diamond's Quintet is issued in honor of his eightieth birthday.

More than anything, people probably remember Fisher Tull (he died in 1994) by saying: "He was my friend." Known universally by his nickname, Mickey, he had the warm, honest smile and open-hearted character that bespeak the treasured friendship for which true Texans are known. Born, raised and trained in Texas, his life was dedicated to the cause of music within the state. Tull was a native of Waco and earned his undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees in music from the University of North Texas. He was a faculty member at Sam Houston State University for 37 years until his death. He was chairman of the university's Music Department for nearly half that time (1965-1982) and was a great builder of musical institutions at the university. As a composer, Tull received awards, commissions, appearances, performances and recordings, all of which brought recognition to his name from major musical institutions in Texas, across the United States, in London and continental Europe. His compositional activities grew out of his background as trumpet performer and jazz arranger in the early fifties. During his years in college, he wrote over 100 arrangements for dance bands, radio and television productions and recordings. He was the first staff arranger for the renowned University of North Texas Lab Bands. His first serious compositions were for brass ensembles, followed by several works for symphonic band. As he matured, his works embraced a large segment of the instrumental, orchestral and vocal spectrum.

Cellist Clancy Newman has enjoyed an extraordinarily wide-ranging career, not only as a cellist, but also as a composer, producer, writer, teacher, and guest lecturer. He has performed as soloist throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, Canada, and Australia. Newman's interest in composition focuses on works for cello, one of which (From Method to Madness) is heard on this recording. His collaborator, pianist Natalie Zhu, is the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, as is Newman. Zhu has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia as a soloist and chamber musician. For this recording they have chosen works for cello by Samuel Barber, Lukas Foss, and Kenji Bunch, in addition to the work by Newman. The earliest work on this recording, the Barber, was written in 1942; the Foss in 1946, while the Bunch and Newman are recent works.

Soprano Mary Elizabeth Southworth, flutist Danielle Hundley, clarinetist Marianne Breneman, and pianist Philip Amalong, formed the ensemble Conundrum in 2005. The group's name suggests both their unusual ensemble and also their openness and need to experiment with adventurous programming. After more than a decade of delighting audiences with their discoveries of repertoire for this ensemble and an active commissioning program, they have gathered the best of this music together for this their first recording. The result is From the Diamond Grid: first recordings of seven new works written or re-scored for the ensemble, plus one old favorite of theirs, which was modified for their instrumentation.

Leo Kraft is professor emeritus of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. He studied composition at Queens College and at Princeton University. He also studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. His From the Hudson Valley was commissioned by a consortium of 20 flutists from the National Flute Association and received its premiere on August 15, 1998 at their annual convention in Phoenix. Godfrey Schroth was a pupil of the American composer Paul Creston. He first came to attention in 1959 when his Piano Quartet won a major prize and was performed by the Phoenix Quartet. He describes his Spring in Bucks County as "a challenge to both the pianist and the flutist, who must play three instruments." The suite was premiered at the Philadelphia Art Museum in 1974. Its three movements are Equinoctial Dances, River Willows and Fields of May. Eric Ewazen was born in Cleveland, Ohio and studied under Samuel Adler, Milton Babbitt, Warren Benson, Gunther Schuller and Joseph Schwantner at the Eastman School, Tanglewood and the Juilliard School where he has been a member of the faculty since 1980. His Ballade, Pastorale and Dance was premiered at Aspen in July 1993.

Richard Danielpour writes: "I met Kenneth Fuchs some 20 years ago at the Juilliard School when we were being interviewed for the master's program by an auspicious panel of composers: Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, David Diamond, Vincent Persichetti and Roger Sessions. I was impressed by my initial conversation with him and happy that we each had been accepted into the program. I remember his very first string quartet as one of the few works of substance that I heard by a fellow composer during my six years there. Many years later we found ourselves at another school - the Manhattan School of Music. This time Ken was Dean of Students, as I took my place on the composition faculty. This happy confluence of appointments gave me the opportunity again to become acquainted with his music. The fourth quartet displays a formidable sense of craft and imagination with the utmost economy. It is perhaps the most powerful of all his works. The third quartet, with its undertones of Whitman, is at once the darkest and most virtuosic. Unfolding with great assurance, it has a muscular quality that reminds me of the American composers Ken admired so much when he was a student - Schuman, Mennin and Copland. Nonetheless, this third quartet, like the other two represented here, sings with its own voice from the first moment to the last. The second quartet is almost impressionistic, but it is never without the clarity of purpose that is a hallmark of his writing. The composer who is able to evoke joy, tenderness, humor, wildness and a sense of the tragic coherently within the same work does many of us a great service: he reminds those of us who love music why we continue to embrace it as an integral part of our lives. I have been privileged to know Kenneth Fuchs over the years and will be delighted to give this disc an honored place in my collection of much-loved CDs. That we are fortunate to have such extraordinary performances of these works by the American String Quartet is an added gift."

Don Walker's esthetic stems from the example of Charles Ives. Like Ives, Walker prefers to embrace all styles, as long as they produce music that is original, expressive, and involving for the listener. Many of the works on this recording date from the 1980s. During this time, Walker was often influenced by the Post Modern esthetic, which seemed to be taking over from Serialism and Chance Music. The music is lyrical, tonal, and often manifests jazz and world music influences. This is Walker's fourth recording for Albany Records.

William Hill has been critically acclaimed as a composer, soloist, visual artist, recording artist and conductor. Currently he is Principal Timpanist with the Colorado Symphony and teaches composition and counterpoint at Denver University's Lamont School of Music. Mr. Hill has served as a composer with the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, National Music Festival, the Colorado and Denver Symphonies, and the Nova Series of Salt Lake City. On a trip with his wife Natalie to Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and observing the teeming water life, Natalie remarked, "Wow, check out those funky little crustaceans," and the inspiration for the first work was born, reflecting not only the literal ebbs and flows of the tides, but of the impact made on all creatures by the changes in season and the pacings of life in general. Aurora Borealis, featuring the renowned James J. Pellerite, is an impressionistic tone poem depicting the icy monochromatic stillness of the far North, with gradual hints of color developing into more subtle shadows of the spectrum as the piece evolves. Seven Abstract Miniatures is based on pen and ink sketches by the composer, and shows the interrelationships that can exist between music and art (such as Pictures at an Exhibition).

Born in Berkeley to a mother of Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Gabriela Lena Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Franks has traveled extensively throughout South American and her pieces reflect and refract her studies of Latin-American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology and native musical styles into a western classical framework. Winner of a Latin Grammy and nominated for Grammys as both composer and pianist, Ms. Frank holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship. This disc includes four works composed over a seven-year period and all feature the piano — one for solo piano; one for flute and piano; another for flute, clarinet and piano; and one for piano quintet, beautifully performed by Ensemble MEME and pianist Molly Morkoski.

Violinist Igor Kalnin and pianist Rochelle Sennet founded Duo MemDi to perform music that embraces the diversity of world cultures. All of their live performances are from memory, hence the name Mem (memory) Di (diversity). This, their debut recording, includes two commissioned works and highlights a few of the many approaches to incorporating folk music elements in modern classical music. Violinist Igor Kalnin has performed internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, and an orchestra leader. He is on the faculty at Luther College and concertmaster of the Sinfonia da Camera. He received degrees from the Balakirev Music College, the Glinka State Conservatory, Yale, and Michigan State University. Pianist Rochelle Sennet has established herself as a well-known performer, teacher, and scholar. She studied at the San Francisco Conservatory, the University of Michigan, Texas Christian University, and the University of Illinois. She is the recipient of numerous awards including co-winner for the Krannert Center Debut Artist Competition. Dr. Sennet is on the faculty at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

George Walker, the Pulitzer Prize winning composer, began to study composition seriously after graduating from Oberlin College. After having been accepted at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia to study piano with Rudolf Serkin, he was accepted into the composition class of Sosario Scalero, teacher of Samuel Barber and Gian-Carlo Menotti. He completed his first string quartet before embarking on a career as a concert pianist. In 1956 he became the first black recipient of the Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from the Eastman School of Music. Although his degree was in piano (he never studied composition at the Eastman School), he composed his Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra, Second Piano Sonata, and Sonata for Cello and Piano while residing in Rochester, New York. In 1957, as a Fulbright Fellow in piano, he continued to compose under the guidance of Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Returning to the United States in 1958, he began to amass a catalog of more than 70 published works that have been performed by renowned ensembles and conductors throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. The composition dates of the works on this recording range in date from the sixties to the mid-eighties and present a variety of forces. There is a work for organ, Variations for Orchestra and a cantata for soloists, boys choir and chamber orchestra. The cantata is performed by the Boys Choir of Harlem on this recording.

This recording continues the series on Albany Records of the music of the distinguished composer George Walker, who celebrated his 90th birthday June 27. Walker is an acknowledged American Master whose orchestral works have been played by every major American orchestra. He is the recipient of seven honorary doctorate degrees and has been inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. Included on the CD are his Piano Sonata No. 3 written in 1976, his Music for 3 composed in 1971, his Piano Sonata No. 5 composed in 2003 and numerous songs. Walker's music is given superb performances by a sterling group of artists.

The songs for voice and piano by George Walker are among the finest written by an American composer and are "as outstanding as they are varied" according to Fanfare Magazine. Modus for Chamber Ensemble was commissioned by the Cygnus Ensemble. It received its premiere in New York in March, 2001. The four movements are characterized by recurring motives and highly rhythmical sections of great intensity. The title, Modus, refers to the elegant techniques used to transform and unify the movements. The Prayer for Organ was composed in 1996, 50 years after Walker's famous Lyric for Strings, a memorial to his grandmother, was written. The similarity between these two works lies in the use of contrapuntal techniques. The Improvisation on St. Theodulph is a fantasia on the melody stated before the work begins. The Prayer and the Improvisation were commissioned by the regional chapter of the American Guild of Organists in Washington, D.C. Spires was commissioned for performance by Dr. Mickey Thomas Terry at the Convention in Denver of the National Chapter of the American Guild of Organists in 1998.

Passing Through is the third recording devoted to composer Gernot Wolfgang's chamber music compositions. Ever since Wolfgang became interested in contemporary classical music, the prospect of integrating grooves from musical styles such as jazz, rock & roll, pop, world music and electronica into his concert works has intrigued him. The works on this CD contain such grooves as the means of providing forward propulsion, generating additional energy, and also simply for the fun of it. Gernot Wolfgang has been described by Gramophone as a composer with a "winning sonic arsenal," while jazz legend Dave Brubeck characterized his music as being of "unconventional beauty." Born in Austria, Gernot Wolfgang holds degrees from Berklee College of Music, the University of Music in Graz, and the University of Southern California. The recipient of numerous commissions, his music has been performed by major orchestras in the U.S. and Europe. He has taught at the University of Music in Graz and given masterclasses at UCLA, Texas Tech University, University of Music in Vienna and Instrumenta Verano in Oaxaca. He also works as an orchestrator in the film and TV music industry. A stellar group of Los-Angeles based musicians perform on this disc, including Judith Farmer, bassoon; oboist Jennifer Johnson; pianists Joanne Pearce Martin and Robert Thies; and the Eclipse and New Hollywood String Quartets.

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.