Catalog

Throughout her career, flutist Sue Ann Kahn has been acclaimed for her virtuosic and sensitive performances of music of all periods. She was honored with one of the first Solo Recitalist Fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts in recognition of her outstanding gifts as a flutist and received the American New Music Consortium Award for distinguished performances of contemporary music. She is a member of the Jubal Trio, the League ISCM Chamber Players and other ensembles. Ms. Kahn has received consistent praise for her solo and chamber music recordings (her highly popular disc of music of Jacques Ibert, Jacques Around the Clock, is on Albany TROY145). Formerly Professor of Music at Bennington College, Ms. Kahn teaches flute and chamber music at Mannes College of Music, at New York University, and in the Music Performance Program at Columbia University, and gives master classes and recitals nationwide. She has served as President of the National Flute Association, and has been consistently active as an advocate for the flute and its music.

The Ibis Camerata was formed in 2001 at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music and is made up of four of the school's most talented and accomplished doctoral graduates. Coming from varied cultural and musical backgrounds, they have been able to combine their unique talents to form one of North America's premier young ensembles. As the group explains, "The idea for this project slowly evolved as a result in our involvement in the musical life of the University's School of Music. Since our formation in 2001, the group has actively performed the works of composers at the University of Miami, most notably those of Dennis Kam, who is the chair of the department of music theory and composition. All of the composers featured on this CD are in some way linked to the University. Dennis Kam, Peter MacDonald and Lansing McLoskey are currently faculty members of the School of Music. Sofia Kraevska and Raina Murnak are graduate students and teaching assistants to Kam, and Frederic Glesser is a former student of Kam. Our ultimate goal was to create a CD that represented the diversity of sounds and variety of styles that have developed from the University of Miami's composition department."

Several currents in modern music have contributed to the present body of chamber music that includes trombone. Without question, jazz trombonists have influenced composers with their persuasive presence and ear-catching explorations of the trombone's technical and expressive capabilities. Other influences include academia, producing exceptional brass players, and the instrument's affinity for theatricality and offbeat sounds have led to the increasing presence of the trombone in the music of our time. Naturally, with the prominence of such players as Stuart Dempster, John Swallow and Christian Lindberg, major composers have been prompted to write with the trombone in mind. Hence, the remarkably diverse and striking works on this CD. David Gier began his professional career as a member of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Symphony Orchestra and with orchestras and ensembles in the northeast. He currently teaches trombone and brass at the University of Iowa and has been an active performer and clinician at various venues and workshops. Gier's students have been prizewinners in numerous solo competitions and have won trombone positions with many professional ensembles. Before moving to Iowa, Gier served for six years on the faculty of the Baylor University School of Music.

It's been nearly a decade since the music of the Common Sense Composers' Collective first surfaced on CD. Their first disc challenged the rarified asceticism of the then still-reigning though waning contemporary music orthodoxy with joyous abandon. Even the disc's cover, featuring eight clearly fun-loving folks, already dented the wall of solemnity that is suggested by the ubiquitous dour tweed-suit mug shots on the covers of many contemporary music recordings. But, ultimately, it was the sheer persuasiveness of the music that crashed down those walls. This group is now entering its second decade and so far has commissioned 62 new works. The pieces contained on this new release were originally written in 1996 in collaboration with the members of the Alternate Currents Performance Ensemble. They are joined on this CD by the New Millennium Ensemble, a mixed sextet of winds, strings, piano and percussion founded in 1990. The mission of all the performers heard on this disc, remains one of collaboration and community. They workshop the compositions through a process one would find more in the dance world than in the classical music world. Many of these works, which began with Common Sense, have found a new home with The New Millennium Ensemble, underlining a new collaborative dynamic and sense of joy in music-making.

This recording features works by members of the composition faculty of the University of Iowa School of Music: Michael Eckert, Lawrence Fritts and David Gompper. The six new works presented here, all composed in the 21st century, showcase a diversity of harmonic languages and musical materials, from Gompper's post-tonal centricity to Eckert's neo-classic atonality to Fritt's use of mathematical algorithms and computer-generated timbres. Lawrence Fritts is Associate Professor of Composition and Theory and director of the Electronic Music Studios at the University. His composition teachers were Shulamit Ran, John Eaton and Ralph Shapey. Another pupil of Ralph Shapey is Michael Eckert, also an Associate Professor of Theory and Composition. He has won the Bearns Prize for Composition from Columbia University and a Charles Ives Scholarship from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. David Gompper is Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University. Gompper has lived and worked as a composer, teacher, conductor and pianist in England, Nigeria and, most recently, Russia. The project was sponsored by a grant from the University of Iowa Arts and Humanities Initiative.

Looking back over the past 100 years, it would seem that the string quartet has been the most popular outlet for contemporary composers' most intimate thoughts. It may have taken longer for the unique blend of violin, piano and cello to catch up in terms of repertoire, but this remarkable disc displays the diverse voices that can be heard in this form. The Finn Segerstam has been best known as an orchestral conductor and a very prolific composer (as of January 2nd of this year, he had composed 173 symphonies). This Trio is a perfect example of the free-flowing, almost improvisational style he calls "free-pulsative." Needless to say, Hans Werner Henze has now achieved status as one of the world's most significant composers, and his early Kammersonate reflects the neo-classical influences of the post-War era. Both Sharafyan and Mansurian are Armenian. Sharafyan's music is rooted in ancient Armenian culture, while Mansurian's approach is in a more personalized, mystical vein. Finally, the Baird Trio's cellist, Jonathon Golove, has contributed a work using material from an opera based on Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest. The Baird Trio, in residence at the University of Buffalo, performs a wide range of repertoire, devoting particular attention to rarely heard and recent original works for their medium. The members believe the piano trio has a significant role to play in 21st century musical life.

During one of his recital tours to Edinburgh during the 1860s and 1870s, Anton Rubinstein bluntly told Alexander Mackenzie Sie haben keine Komponisten (You [Britain] have no composers). From his account in his engaging memoir A Musician's Narrative (1927), Mackenzie apparently let the comment pass unanswered. After all, the Russian virtuoso was simply voicing a view widely heard in continental Europe - and even in Britain as well. Many years later, as he surveyed a career that had spanned six decades, Mackenzie noted with "many gleams of satisfaction" the number of important musicians and composers of high merit who had come along. In company with his slightly younger contemporaries, Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford and Edward Elgar, Mackenzie was himself part of the generation of musicians born in the mid-19th century who first demonstrated that Britain did have composers - and fine ones. Their successors - among them Vaughan Williams, Frank Bridge, Herbert Howells and William Walton - completed the transformation of European opinion. Along with presenting a compilation of signal British contributions to the piano quartet repertoire, this set offers a sample of the music of some of the very composers who helped deliver British music from its lowly state as a source of jests to a place of international recognition and esteem.

Wayne Peterson's music is that of a composer who embraces and takes delight in the hands-on process of making music, especially as it relates to the combinations and interactions of various instruments and their sonic possibilities. In a very real sense the musical ideas appear to evolve naturally from these capabilities without in any way being limited by them. As he writes in the program notes for Duodecaphony for viola and cello, "I welcomed the opportunity to address anew the problems of melody, counterpoint, harmony and timbre as they applied to this somewhat restricted choice of strings." A winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his orchestral work The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark, Peterson's music is marked by a wonderful rhythmic fluidity, which derives from his experience as an accomplished jazz pianist. Perhaps most importantly, Wayne Peterson's musical language is at once sophisticated and direct in its approach to the listener; it never compromises its basic integrity. In his hands the instruments are agents of luminous beauty, beckoning us to even deeper aesthetic pleasures. Peterson's music can also be heard on TROY601, 689 and 766.

Here is a brilliant new CD release by one of the masters of California's thriving new music scene...filled with melodic invention and fluid rhythmic tapestries, this is music of the Heart guided by a keen intelligence - Terry Riley. Howard Hersh was born in Santa Monica and studied piano and composition at Stanford University. Steeped in 20th century modernism, his music has expanded to embrace a variety of tonalities, dance rhythms and quotations, dramatic narratives and explorations of the social conscience. According to the composer, his work is driven by a search for "the nexus of musical abstraction and representational humanity." A recipient of grants and awards from organizations that include Meet the Composer, the American Symphony Orchestra League, the American Composers Forum and the Rex Foundation (the non-profit wing of The Grateful Dead), his works have been performed at Tanglewood, Grace Cathedral and throughout Europe. Together with his compositional work, Hersh has directed many new music groups, including Music Now and the San Francisco Conservatory New Music Ensemble, which he founded, and has served as Music Director of radio station KPFA-FM.

Ross Bauer attended New England Conservatory and Brandeis, studying with John Heiss, Martin Boykan, Arthur Berger and Luciano Berio. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Fromm Foundation commissions and a Koussevitzky commission. Bauer is a master composer of deeply expressive, highly charged music in a wide variety of genres. Throughout his works, whether they are orchestral, concerti with orchestra or chamber ensemble, or vocal or chamber music, his sense of form and instrumental writing is exquisitely idiomatic and his orchestration crystal clear and dazzling in its color. His vocal writing is particularly beautiful. He pays close attention to the meaning and sound of the texts that he sets, as well as to the formal implications of those texts. This CD, featuring music written in the 1990's for voice with instruments and for instruments alone, makes an excellent introduction to Ross Bauer's work, which traverses a wide range - from tender lyricism to tremendous ferocity. Bauer writes true chamber music in which every part is an essential element of an unfolding line and harmony. While the surface relationships may seem complex, the underlying harmony is always clear, and the pacing of that harmony masterful.

Ever since 16th century France the term tombeau (French for "tomb" or "tombstone") has denoted a set of poetic or musical compositions honoring the memory of a person, whether eminent or ordinary, real or imaginary. While the authorships of literary tombeaux were quite often collective, music tombeaux were usually created by individual composers and performers (i.e. Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin). It is no surprise that the death of the profoundly influential Claude Debussy (1862-1918) prompted Revue Musicale, a foremost music publication in Paris, to commission pieces from some leading European composers and performers, for a collection of works eulogizing the great composer. Each one of these musicians contributed to Tombeau in a unique and innately personal way, most of the works later becoming known as both individual pieces and parts of larger compositions). Encouraged by the success of Tombeau de Claude Debussy, Revue Musicale came up with another collection honoring the preeminent French composer and pedagogue Gabriel Faure (1845-1924). Composed by seven of Faure's best-known pupils (all French except for the Rumanian Enesco), the suite was completed and published by 1922, while the composer was still alive.

One of the most telling indications of a composer's worth in our glutted musical marketplace is the response of one's fellow music-makers: those who create it as well as those who perform it. And in this regard, Alla Borzova, a Russian-trained composer-pianist from Belarus, is fortunate to claim the global microcosm of New York as her adopted backyard. When a composer of exalted stature praises one's music, the informed public tends to take notice. And well they should, when a modern master like John Corigliano speaks of Borzova's "extraordinary voice" and her "arresting and dynamic" music. David del Tredici finds "genius" (it takes one to know one) and "huge emotional impact" in her work. This engaging CD, preserving some of Alla's finest smaller-scale creations, reveals her sponge-like knack for soaking up far-flung musical influences wherever she goes. Arabic flavors - complete with third-tones, vocal quavers and other idiomatic touches - help to bring out the stark tragedy and outright insanity of her lovelorn Majnun Songs. Her American exposure has left her with a new-found taste for American jazz, as heard in her Pinsk and Blue - an amazing piece for accordion and piano. It is not easy to pin Borzova down stylistically - you'll hear everything from unaffected folk-tunes to cunning and sophisticated tone-rows from her.

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).

Fetherolf's music has been premiered throughout the Americas and Europe. He writes, "I have a special love for the cello; I started life as a cellist. My first large orchestral work was a Concerto for Cello and Orchestra." His affinity for string instruments is beautifully demonstrated by the renowned members of the Gamavilla Quartet of Moravia.

Armand Qualliotine was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of seven he started his instructions in Jazz Guitar and Electric Bass as well as Music Theory. In 1967 he began his studies of Classical Guitar and Music Theory at Hofstra University. After earning degrees in composition and theory from the Hartt College of Music, SUNY at Stony Brook and Brandeis University, his post-doctoral activities included studying with Pierre Boulez and Milton Babbitt. He has taught guitar, theory, history and composition at Stony Brook, Northeastern University, Brandeis and the Berklee College of Music where is now an Associate Professor of Composition. Awards in his field have included residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Composers Conference and the Tanglewood Music Center where he was the Leonard Bernstein fellow in composition. He also received the C.D. Jackson Award for outstanding achievement as a composer, First Prize in the Boston ISCM Composition Competition, commissions from Harvard's Fromm Music Foundation, the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players and a 1988 Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2004 he was nominated to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Gerald Levinson was raised in Connecticut and has been increasingly recognized as one of the major composers of his generation. His principal teachers were George Crumb, George Rochberg and Richard Wernick at the University of Pennsylvania, and Ralph Shapey at the University of Chicago. This is the second Albany CD devoted to the music of Gerald Levinson, following TROY742, a collection of three chamber-orchestra works released in 2005. Critic Paul Griffiths has written, "What must thrill anyone who comes into contact with Gerald Levinson's music is its sheer joy in sound, and the decisiveness with which it sings or dances its way through time...In sympathy with sound, in sympathy with time, Levinson's music is close to the natural phenomena on which all music depends. Two things spring from this. One is that his music can easily evoke other natural phenomena: the sea, the stars, rugged landscapes. The other is that this music is in tune with other kinds of music from around the world. Levinson's resources are classical western: he writes for the symphony orchestra, for the piano, and for chamber groupings of conventional instruments. His disciplines, too, are those of the western tradition. But the east was present in his music even before his first trip there. His works, right through his career so far, exist on companionable terms with Mahler's music and with Bali's, with Ravel's and with Japan's, with Messiaen's and with India's, with Stravinsky's and with China's, with America's symphonic tradition and with Tibet's slow melody. Out of all this he is creating, piece by piece, a world of his own."

"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.

Founded in 1998, the Equinox Chamber Players Ensemble is one of St. Louis' most dynamic musical groups. They celebrate community life by performing commissioned works inspired by environmental surroundings, historical and present day culture, and everyday heroes. They have appeared on PBS and NPR and have performed for thousands of adults and students. Members of Equinox include Paula Kasica, flute; Jeanine York-Garesch, clarinet; Ann Homann, oboe; Donia Bauer, bassoon; and Carole Lemire, horn.

Award-winning flutist Jan Vinci presents a wonderfully diverse program of works from around the world, in all styles and moods. As she writes, "My hope is that this eclectic program of rare gems and premieres will exude passion, create intrigue and fascinate both audiences and performers." First Prizewinner of England's International Performance Competition, Jan Vinci has performed at Alice Tully, Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall and Symphony Space, to mention only a few of the worldwide venues where she has given concerts. With a chamber music career spanning more than 20 years, Ms. Vinci performs with Iridescence (flute and harp duo) and Tritonis (flute, guitar and cello). She has commissioned over 15 works and appears on Five Premieres: Chamber Works with Guitar (Albany Records). Dr. Vinci is Senior Artist-in-Residence at Skidmore College. She holds a D.M.A. from The Juilliard School, an M.M. from Cleveland Institute of Music, and a B.M. from Bowling Green State University.

This debut recording of the Stentorian Quartet reveals how popular the trombone has become as an ensemble instrument. Their exceptional playing of works by some of America's most important composers (including three Pulitzer Prize winners) has created an indispensable disc for fans and performers of brass music. Members of the Stentorian Consort include David Begnoche, Barney McCollum, Brent Phillips, and Jonathan Whitaker.

Daniel McCarthy is a composer whose music defies categorization in the usual sense. With his background in opera, chamber music, rock and jazz, his music is full of rhythmic energy and excitement, with a fresh appeal for today's audiences. As USA Today's David Patrick Stearns has written, "(his works) have the vigor of pop music and the spontaneity of jazz." This recording is a hybrid surround sound recording and can be played on all cds players as well as super audio equipment.

Born in Buenos Aires, Jorge Liderman has studied under Mark Kopitman, Ralph Shapey and Shulamit Ran. He writes: "This album is a collection of solos, duos and trios I wrote during the last 20 years. They are all inspired by, based on, quote, or make reference to pre-existing musical sources...in this disc the sources range from tango to William Byrd, and from Guillaume de Machault to Andean folklore."

Eric Ewazen's music is influenced by a variety of styles and eras, including the motoric rhythms of the Baroque, the formal clarity of the Classical period, and a harmonic language that uses diatonic and even modal voicings. This disc displays his exceptional talent for brass writing, and makes a perfect companion for the Stentorian Ensemble CD (TROY948) that features his Myths and Legends.

Cindy Cox's music emerges from a century whose loyalty oscillates between its concern for pure sound and pure form. But her deep attention to the sound world is held, shaped, and engaged through its purposeful structure, a synthesis that provides a third way. What Cox offers is more than a mere rapprochement one side with its other  but a deep conjunction between them. Cox studied with, among others, Donald Erb, John Eaton, Bernard Rands and John Harbison. Cox's own music is experimental yet has a "grounding" in traditional means of expression, dealing with issues of timbre and musical resonance. She is also an excellent pianist and interpreter, having studied with the famed Lili Kraus.

This CD celebrates both the 1966 founding of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa, and the many accomplishments made over four decades. The composers have all been affiliated with the School of Music in one capacity or another, and each presents a unique voice to this collection. This is now the oldest and most successful among such collegiate ventures in the United States.

William Bolcom, one of America's most innovative and original composers had an interest in the violin from a young age. This complete collection spans his entire career. We hear his early experimental works through the chromaticism of the 1970's up to the neo-Classical leanings of the 1990s. This music is perhaps the most important contribution by an American composer to the violin and piano repertoire.

Chris Gekker is Professor of Trumpet at the University of Maryland. For 18 years he was a member of the American Brass Quintet, as well as being Principal Trumpet of the Orchestra of St. Luke's and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist, he has specialized in new American music for his instrument. This release is a companion to his earlier Albany disc, Winter (TROY670).

The music of Milos Raickovich is political, or, more precisely, it carries an antiwar message. He writes moving music, at times purposely naive, at times horrifying. The pieces range from the meditative and minimalist (Little Peaceful Music) to spiritual (Parastos--an Eastern Orthodox Requiem); from dramatic (B-A-G-D-A-D) to documentary (United States, Stop the War!); from ritualistic (Litany of Iraq) to symbolic (Alarm). The CD is titled after a piece, B-A-G-D-A-D, Music on a six-note theme. The composer explains, "This work is a musical dedication to the ancient city, Baghdad. The name of this capital (spelled the European way, without the letter H) is used as a musical theme made of six notes: B-flat, A, G, D, A, D." Milos Raickovich has lived and worked in Belgrade, Paris, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Hiroshima and New York. He studied composition with Olivier Messiaen and David Del Tredici, and has taught at several universities in the U.S. and Japan. The Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed describes Raickovich's music as "a unique postmodern response to both minimalism and multiculturalism."

Joshua Rosenblum has composed extensively for both the concert hall and the theater. In addition to the works on this CD, he has written pieces on commission for trumpeter Philip Smith of the New York Philharmonic, flutist Kathleen Nester of the New Jersey Symphony and for French hornist Eric Ruske, one of Albany's premiere artists. For the theater, Rosenblum wrote the score for the acclaimed cult hit Off-Broadway musical, Fermat's Last Tango. He has also conducted the orchestras for such Broadway shows as Miss Saigon, Wonderful Town and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The works on this disc are a melding of both classical and popular idioms, with many inspired by or commissioned from several of the musicians involved.

Brian Fennelly was a pupil of Mel Powell, Donald Martino, Gunther Schuller and George Perle. The music on this disc grows out of strong European and American traditions: it echoes the highly charged chamber music of early 20th century Austria; it recalls the visceral excitement and structural integrity of Sessions and Carter as well as the rhythms and harmonic richness of sophisticated jazz and swing. It is music for listeners with open minds and receptive ears.

Born in Chicago, William Kraft has had a long and active career as a composer, conductor, timpanist/percussionist and teacher. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he served for 11 years (1991-2002) as Chairman of the Composition Department and Corwin Professor of Music Composition. He is of that generation of American composers who came to prominence starting in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s whose music is characterized by a distinct brashness, tinged with the energy of jazz and a definite sense of the dramatic. As an avid percussionist, many of the works which first brought him fame spotlight that part of the orchestra, and as director of the Los Angeles Percussion Ensemble, he premiered many now important works. This diverse collection, ranging from solo to orchestral works, exemplifies the wonderful range of this dynamic American composer.

Eric Ewazen writes, "In the Spring of 2006, I was delighted to find out that the extraordinary chamber ensemble, Ibis Camerata, was interested in recording a CD of my music (from the mid-80's through the mid-90's)...they chose works of mine which showcase the melodic, rhythmic and harmonic language I was focusing on at that time...The Ensemble has brought my music to life beautifully and I am very grateful to them for introducing this collection of pieces to you."