Catalog

Robert Ward provides the following notes: "The Concerto for Violin draws on many strands of my musical background. The first movement is a chaconne based on a 12-tone theme. It is made up of some 27 variations which sometimes demand pyrotechnical display and at others call for intense lyricism or lighthearted playfulness. The slow movement is a "blues" which reflects my war years when I led a swing band as part of my duties as an Army bandleader. The movement just trails off until it is rather rudely interrupted by the Finale. Here again the music is out of my jazz experience and the earlier influence of Gershwin, Copland, and Harris. The movement is nonetheless in a straightforward sonata form within which a fugue is included. The Suite from The Scarlet Letter is a ballet in seven scenes based on the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne's magnificent story proved to be an endless source of inspiration and a great challenge. In planning the work the choreographer and I have tried to accomplish in the "story ballet" the same close interweaving of plot and music that prevails in my opera, "The Crucible," based on the play by Arthur Miller. Each scene involves a principal dramatic climax in Hawthorne's novel and musical ideas are specifically associated with characters or elements of the story."

Three works for solo instruments and orchestra by Laura Schwendinger are presented in world premiere recordings. Esprimere for cello and orchestra was written in 2007 for Matt Haimovitz and premiered by him. Curtis Macomber is the soloist for Charoscuro Azzurro for violin and chamber orchestra and Waking Dream, a single movement work for flute and chamber orchestra was written for flutist Christina Jennings, who gave the premiere. The first composer to win the American Academy in Berlin Prize Fellowship, Laura Schwendinger is on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin Madison and directs their contemporary chamber ensemble. The recipient of numerous prizes, awards and commissions, Ms.. Schwendinger's music has been performed by leading ensembles and artists of our time. The three soloists, all virtuosos of international acclaim, give stunning performances of this music of infinite beauty.

Eric Ewazen writes: "As a member of the faculty of The Juilliard School for over 25 years, I was delighted to find out that so many of my former students from my Literature and Materials of Music classes play in the world-class International Sejong Soloists. My Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra was commissioned by the St. Lukes Chamber Ensemble of New York City and premiered by them with soloist Krista Feeney in May, 2000, during my tenure as their composer-in-residence. It is a large-scaled three-movement work exploring the incredible range of expressive possibilities and colors inherent in the violin. Down a River of Time, a concerto for oboe and string orchestra, was a work which percolated for several years before being composed and premiered by the wonderful oboist and my dear friend, Linda Strommen with the American Sinfonietta, conducted by Michael Palmer at the Bellingham Summer Music Festival in Washington State in August, 1999. Sinfonia for Strings is a rich and resonant celebration of the world of string orchestra sonorities. Capable of both great virtuosity and smooth-as-glass legato lyricism, the string orchestra provides the composer with a world of colors and varied musical emotions."

Steinway Artist Yaroslav Senyshyn is a Canadian born pianist of Ukrainian ancestry. He was a prize pupil of Antonina Yaroshevich, who was a contemporary of Vladimir Horowitz at the Kiev Conservatory. Thus Senyshyn was trained in the grand tradition of piano playing. He was featured in a documentary program about great Canadian pianists and is an active recitalist and concerto soloist, having performed with orchestras around the globe. Lauded by critics as a pianist of "enormous power" (The Washington Post) and for his technical fluency, master of the composer's style, and an understanding of the music" (Fanfare), Dr. Senyshyn is Professor of Music and Moral Philosophy at Simon Fraser University. For his third recording on Albany Records, Senyshyn has chosen two of the most loved concertos for piano: Chopin's Concerto No. 2 and Liszt's Concerto No. 2.

Receiving its first commercial recording in 40 years, Sessions'work is a masterpiece, worthy of comparison to the Alban Berg Concerto. Bolle describes his work as "a group of fragments, some tiny, some larger, which are meant to be heard as a sequence...a ritual/processional that is both a public and private matter."

The works on this CD represent the rich, imaginative and varied scope of contemporary Black artists' landscapes and musical horizons. The composers, who represent various voices in style, generation and compositional approaches contained within the African American artistic experience, handle the cultural materials in ways that are not only cohesive but eloquent. These efforts further illuminate the attempt of contemporary artists to broaden, stretch, and expand the languages and forms of the modern orchestral culture. This partially live recording of the Prague Radio Symphony and Washington Symphony Orchestra, captures the essence of African American contemporary sacred and secular life through music. This recording does a great service to what composer T.J. Anderson calls, "the duty of the composer to document the culture." David Baker's Shades of Blue was commissioned by and written for the Roanoke Symphony, which premiered it in 1993 under Victoria Bond. The commission specified an orchestral work with a strong jazz influence but not requiring outside soloists. Leslie Adams' Ode to Life was commissioned by the Cuyahoga Community College of Cleveland on the occasion of its 15th anniversary. The composer considers it a "celebration of life itself." Stephen Newby's Gospel Songs were composed for Willis Patterson. They are really a compilation of four gospel songs.

A previous release on Albany TROY381 of vocal/orchestral works by Phoenix-born Robert Nelson revealed a composer with a rich, romantic style that could be compared to that of Howard Hanson or Samuel Barber. A pupil of Ingolf Dahl and Halsey Stevens, Nelson here reveals another side to his personality. Up South, suggested by both Krager and Marmolejo of the Moores School, reveals Nelson's affinity for both classical and jazz. The work is a veritable history of jazz, with each movement reflecting, respectively, the roots of jazz in the spirituals of the Old South, the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s, and the emergence of jazz-fusion in the 1960s. The jazz spirit also imbues the duo-piano piece Impressions/Expressions. A more overtly pop sound runs through the arrangements for voice and orchestra of Creole Songs, and the final work, Shadows and Music, applies the story of the famed acting sisters Dorothy and Lillian Gish to the changes music went through during their heydays. This is a highly revealing look at a composer who came of age during the 1960s and 1970s.

You are saying to yourself: Self! Why a disc with two short orchestral pieces and two major new piano concertos? The answer is simple. Each concerto is preceded by a short overture - a curtain raiser, if you will, to prepare the listener for what is to come. Andrew Bishop is a young American composer who studied in Michigan with William Albright, William Bolcom and Michael Daugherty. He is also an active saxophonist who has worked with Ray Charles, The Manhattan Transfer, and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra. "Crooning is a love song without words. Its inspiration is the Golden Age of American popular songs brought to life by Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra." Allen Shawn studied music with Leon Kirchner and Earl Kim at Harvard, in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and at Columbia with Jack Beeson. Since 1985 he has been on the faculty of Bennington College where he teaches composition. He wrote his Piano Concerto for Ursula Oppens who premiered it with the Albany Symphony on March 18, 2000 in the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. The great American composer Benjamin Lees wrote his Piano Concerto No. 2 for the Boston Symphony Orchestra who premiered it in Boston on March 15, 1968. It is great to see more and more of Lees' music showing up on disc. About the delightful Paul Creston Dance Overture, suffice it to say that here this infectious piece finally receives a performance that is worthy of its title.

World premiere recordings by the renowned composer Aaron Jay Kernis, performed by the stunning soprano Talise Trevigne with the Albany Symphony conducted by David Alan Miller, make this one of 2017's most distinctive releases. Winner of the 2002 Grawemeyer Award, the 1998 Pulitzer Prize, and the 2011 Nemmers Award, Aaron Jay Kernis is one of America's most performed and honored composers. His music appears on concert programs worldwide and he has been commissioned by America's preeminent performing organizations and artists. Vocal music and singing have been profoundly important to Kernis and breath, lyricism and line have held primacy for him as a composer. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the three song cycles on this recording that span 20 years of his writing. Talise Trevigne and the Albany Symphony are at the center of these premiere recordings.

This third recording of the Argentinian composer Florencio Asenjo's music to appear on Albany Records can be described as predominantly "night music," a meditative kind suitable to the dreamy tales selected from The Thousand and One Nights and Don Quijote, with the Sinfonia Concertante as an appropriate nocturnal interlude. Asenjo's music is written in the maximalist style Ñ meaning that his compositions are based on the creation of sequences of themes that, taken in succession, are each a development of the preceding music.

Acclaimed composer Michael Torke has brought fresh life to an old, but popular form, as these four concertos demonstrate. For Sky, a concerto for violin, Torke imposed classical forms on Bluegrass, evoking the music of the people who settled Kentucky. The other three concertos (for bassoon, oboe, and clarinet) test the limits of the instruments with unstale musical expression. Torke's music has been commissioned and performed by organizations such as the New York Philharmonic, the English National Opera, the London Sinfonietta, and the New York City Ballet, among many others. He has created a substantial body of works in virtually every genre. Award winning violinist Tessa Lark is a budding superstar in the classical realm and a highly acclaimed fiddler in the tradition of her native Kentucky. Bassoonist Peter Kolkay is on the faculty at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt. The recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, he is an active soloist and chamber musician. Oboist Ryan Roberts is a member of the New York Philharmonic and has performed as guest principal oboe with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. Weixiong Wang is principal clarinetist of the Albany Symphony and the winner of several international competitions.

This is a re-release of the great disc that was for a very short time available on EMI. From its Colonial period to the present, music has played an important role in America's cultural and social well-being. With the introduction of the recording as a consumer product (coupled later with radio), America's music was brought to the masses. Since American music was now able to travel to places on a global scale, between the two World Wars, its influence - particularly in its popular and jazz forms - was strongly felt in Europe. As a counterpoint to jazz and bold avant-garde trends, composers like Howard Hanson, Randall Thompson, Roy Harris, William Grant Still, and younger composers like Morton Gould and Norman Dello Joio, for example, were developing a distinctively American symphonic school. This golden era witnessed an unprecedented flourishing that is beginning to be recognized and re-established in our current time. However, composers from that period were certainly not the first to receive national - if not international - recognition. Apart from John Alden Carpenter, whose music is clearly a product of the twentieth century, John Knowles Paine, Dudley Buck, Edward MacDowell, Arthur Foote, as well as a host of others, like Amy Beach, Gottschalk and Chadwick, were truly Romantic American composers. This disc makes a fine introduction to the music of the wonderful American composers from this period. The American conductor, Kenneth Klein, has an especial affinity for this music and the Orchestra plays gloriously for him.

Thomas Sleeper enjoys as active career as both a composer and conductor. He began his professional career as a member of Fermata, a group of composer/performers who presented annual series of interdisciplinary concerts throughout the state of Texas. At age 22, he was appointed Associate Conductor of the Dallas Civic Symphony and the SMU Chamber Orchestra and Opera Theater. "Hauntingly Mysterious," "Richly Lyrical," "Soaring Melodies" - all phrases used to describe the music of Thomas Sleeper. His output includes three operas, four concerti, an orchestral suite, three orchestral song cycles, works for chorus with orchestra, two string quartets and numerous other vocal and instrumental chamber works. Sleeper has developed a unique compositional voice whose vocabulary is clearly from, but not limited to, this century. Currently he is Director of Orchestral Activities and Conductor of the University of Miami Symphony Orchestra and Opera Theater and Music Director of the Florida Youth Orchestra. About Specters John Van Der Slice writes: "The title, Specters, reflects two aspects of the work. First, it uses a "spectrum" of thirteen pitches, descending from small intervals to large, which provides the genetic material for harmonic and melodic organization. (This serves as a surrogate overtone series and betrays my admiration for the natural sonic beauty of French "Spectral" music). Secondly, the work is a kind of abstract ballet of sound involving a mysterious play of "ghostly" timbres and textures, occasionally disturbed by sudden, more violent apparitions." Frank Ticheli joined the faculty of the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music in 1991, where he is Professor of Composition. From 1991 to 1998 he was the Composer-in-Residence of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. He received his doctoral and masters degrees in composition from the University of Michigan where he studied with William Albright, Leslie Bassett, and William Bolcom. He began his Symphony No. 1 in the fall of 2000 in Pasadena, California, and completed it the following year at the MacDowell Colony. Its four movements represent a kind of journey of the soul - from innocence, to introspection, to darkness and finally to enlightenment.

Created by conductor Frederick Harris, Jr., in the fall of 1999, the MIT Wind Ensemble is comprised of MIT undergraduate and graduate students studying a wide variety of fields including Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering and related fields for which MIT is world-famous. The central mission of the MIT Wind Ensemble is the enhancement of the musical education and artistic sensitivity of its members through large and small wind ensemble performances of music of diverse styles from the 16th century to the present day. A secondary mission is the creation and nurturing of new music, such as the recent works on this disc that vary considerably in style and aesthetic ideas. Since 2001 the Ensemble has commissioned 18 original works by Boston-based and nationally recognized composers such as Gunther Schuller, John Harbison, Ran Blake (best-known as a third-stream artist) and Joe Lovano.

Julius P. Williams is an award-winning conductor, composer, recording artist, educator, author and artistic director. A prolific composer, Williams has created dozens of works for virtually every genre of contemporary classical performance. His film score for Lifetime TV's Fighting for our Future won the Gracie Allen Documentary Award in 2003. Williams included the composition by Joe Westmoreland (Somewhere Far Away) as a tribute to him and to his mentor Coleridge Taylor Perkinson, who orchestrated Westmoreland's work.

The presidents honored in this album fundamentally altered the structure and development of the United States. Composer Victoria Bond, in collaboration with librettist Myles Lee, MD, has written four concertos for soloist and narrator: "Soul of a Nation" (from which the title of the album was derived) is a portrait of Thomas Jefferson; "The Indispensable Man" illuminates Franklin Roosevelt; "The Crowded Hours" presents Theodore Roosevelt; and "Pater Patriae" honors George Washington. As portraits of personal character, each piece illustrates the inner turmoil each man endured on his journey to immortality. Soloists from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (Frank Almond, Concertmaster), and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (John Bruce Yeh, assistant principal clarinet and Mark Ridenour, assistant principal trumpet), and Gabriela Vargas (flute) join narrators Adrian Dunn, Henry Fogel, Ray Frewen, and David Holloway. Emanuele Andrizzi and Stephen Squires conduct the chamber orchestra and wind ensemble from the Chicago College of performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

This second recording of orchestral works by Narong Prangcharoen on Albany Records includes three works, one inspired by the composer’s experiences in Orange County, California; the second by the relationship between humans and fire; and the third by the relationship between sound, echo, and silence. Narong Prangcharoen enjoys an international reputation and is recognized as one of Asia’s leading composers. His music has been performed in Asia, America, Australia, and Europe by many renowned ensembles. Prangcharoen is a dean of the College of Music at Mahidol University and composer-in-residence of the Thailand Philharmonic.

Roberto Sierra notes in his comments that "The unifying factor of all the works on this CD is that in one way or another they relate to variation form, as is the case of Antonio Soler's Fandango. This work from the Spanish Baroque has always fascinated me for its strange and whimsical twists and turns. My Fandangos is an orchestral fantasy that takes as a point of departure Soler's piece." Sierra's Reflections on a Souvenir and Variations on a Souvenir both take as their inspiration Gottschalk's Souvenir de Porto Rico. Ian Hobson serves as both pianist and conductor for these inspired performances.

For those of us involved in Albany Records, we feel that the music of Don Gillis is really "cross-over" music - music that can indeed make the interested listener cross-over to our side of the street where those of us are found who enjoy "serious" classical music. Real "cross-over" classical music is music that can be enjoyed by all who love serious music. There ARE many sides to classical music: Schoenberg and Charles Wuorinen are one side, Beethoven and Brahms are another and Don Gillis is another. They ALL can be loved by the serious listener! American Light represents music by composers we feel are legitimate composers of lighter music or music that will appeal immediately to a larger audience. Don Gillis knew the craft. He could make an orchestra sound as good as anyone. Toscanini knew this. This is why he hired him as the arranger for his NBC Orchestra. He could create memorable tunes with the best of them; tunes that would stick with you in your mind; tunes you would want to hear over and over again. And Gillis had his own unique character more so than so many other composers. You hear a piece of music by Gillis, you know it is by Gillis from almost the first measure. Actually, this is the second volume of the music of Don Gillis on Albany Records. Volume 1 is on Albany (TROY391) and is conducted by David Alan Miller with the Albany Symphony Orchestra. If you know that volume than you know what to expect from Gillis' music. If you do not, get this volume and go back and get the first one. Happily, here is music that is infectious, music that truly belongs to the "cross-over" genre in the best sense of the word.

Steve Margoshes is the composer of the international hit musical Fame. The inspirational musical about New York City's High School of Performing Arts (written with lyricist Jacques Levy) has been performed on every continent in the world in many languages. This CD continues Steve's collaboration with Fame creator, David De Silva, to produce a new body of work for symphony orchestra. He has composed and orchestrated these "symphonic pop" pieces under the banner Symphonic Fame. Steve's work as an orchestrator in the theater includes The Who's Tommy, Smokey Joe's CafT (the songs of Leiber and Stoller), the Elton John/Tim Rice musical, Aida, and the Boy George musical, Taboo. The Romantic Suite from Fame - The Musical features the lyric and ballad side of Fame. The Dream Symphony (for piano and orchestra) is inspired by the idea of a youthful dance company performing a contemporary version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Ballade for Trumpet is an uplifting and romantic melody developed in a free-form style. It is performed by Gyorgy Geiger, Hungary's most respected trumpet soloist. This is Forever is inspired by Mildred Cram's novella, Forever (1935). In Search of Hidden Treasure is a Symphonic Adventure inspired by Paolo Coelho's enchanting novel, The Alchemist.

A student of Mario Davidovsky, Jacob Druckman and William Thomas McKinley, Meira Warshauer has devoted much of her creative output to Jewish themes and their universal message. As she writes, “The Torah, Jewish teaching and tradition, is likened to water. It is the source of blessing and goodness, filling all who drink from its well with the knowledge of God. I hope this recording will help to satisfy our thirst and encourage us to continue opening our hearts to the Eternal Spirit in each of us.”

This recording is taken from live performances of the distinguished Sinfonietta of Riverdale and includes works by American composers Karel Husa and Steven Stucky as well as works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Edward Elgar, and Anton Bruckner. Large enough to perform chamber symphonies, it is also small enough that each of its world class musicians is a featured soloist. Their recordings are on the Arabesque and Albany labels. Conductor Mark Mandarano enjoys an international career as a conductor that has included performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and other major venues in the U.S. and abroad. He has served as principal guest conductor of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, and is now director of the Macalester Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the Minnesota Youth Symphonies.

A student of Lukas Foss and Lejaren Hiller, Horwood writes music with an individual stamp, drawing from academic or popular styles, or ranging from Romantic yearnings to avant-garde experimentation. Born in Buffalo, Horwood studied composition and theory at the State University of New York at Buffalo. From 1972-2003 he was a professor of music and humanities at Humber College of applied Arts and Technology in Toronto. His more than 70 compositions constitute a kaleidoscope of the traditional and the avant-garde. His music has been performed in North America, Europe and Japan. The four orchestral works on this CD provide a concert program revealing a composer of substantial musical thought.

From the pen (or computer) of a composer to the written and printed page is only the beginning of a meaningful musical passage. The resulting scores must be heard in order for the journey to be complete. Such is possible only when scores are transmitted to listeners by way of interpreters, roles well assumed on this recording by the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic, tenor soloist Everett McCorvey and conductor Julius P. Williams. The focus of this compact disc is the music and the five men who wrote the music. African-American composer Arthur Cunningham said, "Call me what you will; call my music music." African-American composer Hale Smith wrote, "We must be a part of the mainstream in this country...We don't even have to be called black. When we stand for our bows, that fact will become clear when it should - after the work has made its own impact." The fact that the five composers on this recording (Adolphus Hailstork, Henry Burleigh, Julius P. Williams, Gary Powell Nash, David N. Baker) are of African descent will become clear only when viewing their photographs. The music should already have made an impact.

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.

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.

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.

Here is an interesting package of contemporary music, highlighted by a performance of the Symphony No. 2 by Karel Husa in its world premiere recording. The Bowling Green Philharmonia was founded in 1918 by decree of the university president. It is a combined student-faculty ensemble. In the last several years the orchestra, with conductor Emily Freeman Brown, has established a wider reputation through its performances at the Bowling Green New Music and Art Festival. Don Freund was born in Pittsburgh and studied at Duquesne University and the Eastman School of Music. His teachers included Darius Milhaud, Charles Jones, Wayne Barlow, Warren Benson and Samuel Adler. Chris Theofanidis was born in Dallas, Texas and holds degrees from Yale, Eastman and the University of Houston. His piece On the Edge of the Infinite was composed to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the Grimaldi Empire in Monaco. Sam Adler's Requiescat in Pace is dedicated to the memory of John. F. Kennedy and was written in Dallas during November, 1963, immediately after the assassination. The Canadian composer, Jeffrey Ryan, studied both in his native Canada and at the Cleveland Institute with Donald Erb. Writes Mr. Husa: "Although not written in a classical or romantic style, my symphony nevertheless reflects symphonic form.'' Marilyn Shrude is professor of music composition and director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at Bowling Green. Into Light was written at the request of Henry Charles Smith for the World Youth Symphony Orchestra and the opening concert of the 67th season of the Interlochen Arts Camp in 1994.