Catalog

This collection of recordings of works for cello and violin represents a long-time collaboration between Curtis Macomber and Norman Fischer. Their respective careers have featured countless contemporary music performances and recordings, so it was only natural that they would record these duos, composed by five renowned creators of new music. Both Macomber and Fischer have enjoyed stellar careers. Macomber is hailed as one of the most versatile solo and chamber musicians before the public today, with a discography ranging from complete Brahms String Quartets to the Roger Sessions Solo Sonata. Fischer is a Grammy-award winner and has concertized on five continents and 49 of the 50 United States.

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."

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.

Ned Rorem composed his End of Summer during the late summer of 1985 in Nantucket. "The trio follows in the wake of my septet, Scenes from Childhood. The pieces are about the same length and are formed from souvenirs. But while the septet contained 12 movements describing geographical landmarks of my youth, the trio is in but three, each suggested by musical works of yore. There are suggestions of Satie, Brahms, hopscotch ditties and Protestant anthems." An Oboe Book was commissioned for the 30th anniversary of the Martha's Vineyard Chamber Music Society and premiered in July 1999 by the guest soloists on this CD. Ariel, Five Poems of Sylvia Plath was composed in New York during May 1971 and was presented as a gift to Phyllis Curtin. The poems that make up the text are among Plath's last writings and vividly reflect that tumultuous period in her life and the suicide that soon ended it. In assembling a set of songs for clarinet, double bass and piano, Gotham Ensemble music director Thomas Piercy asked composer Rorem if he had any songs whose vocal line seemed particularly suitable for the clarinet. Piercy wrote: "Ned suggested any number of his songs would be appropriate. Playing through more than fifty, we settled on the four heard here. After listening to a rehearsal in preparation for the recording, Rorem decided to title the set Four Poems without Words."

David Claman is on the faculty of Lehman College-CUNY. A graduate of Wesleyan, the University of Colorado, and Princeton, he has received grants, commissions, and fellowships from numerous organizations, including the Fromm Foundation and the American Institute of Indian Studies. This recording offers an overview of his passions and interests — including the poetry and sentiments of Tamil sayings from the first century A.D., the compositions of South Indian composer Syama Sastri; Moby Dick; and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. His composition armory includes consumer electronics, conventional instruments, and live improvisation.

The selected solo instrumental works on this recording by Boston composer Graham Gordon Ramsay span a 30 year time frame and are autobiographical, reflecting the influences and personal events that shaped the works. Ramsay is in demand as a creator of choral and instrumental works for a range of venues, including numerous church congregations in the United States and Europe. He studied at the Tanglewood Institute, Boston University and the Fontainebleau School in France with such masters as Theodore Antoniou, David Del Tredici, and Joyce McKeel. Known for his modern yet tuneful style, Ramsay writes predominantly for solo voice, chorus, solo instruments, and chamber ensemble. This recording, performed by some of the best-known Boston musicians, complements his first recording on Albany Records—a disc of his sacred music for chorus.

The Gramercy Trio (Sharan Leventhal, violin; Jonathan Miller, cello; Randall Hodgkinson, piano) tours the country presenting concerts and residencies, with programs that include standard repertoire and new works. Their performances are met with critical acclaim with the New York Times calling their performances "distinctive and memorable beautifully wrought and sensitively balanced." Their recordings can be heard on the Newport Classic, Naxos, Parma, and Albany record labels. The three trios performed on this recording are all world premieres. Written in 2012, Schuller's trio is one of his last works; Nicholas Underhill's trio was written in 2005 and came out of a long association with Randall Hodgkinson; and Matthew Aucoin's trio is the most recent composition, having been written in 2015 at the invitation of Jonathan Miller. The Gramercy Trio has made an impressive addition to the piano trio repertoire with these works by three generations of American composers.

Continuing Albany Records' series of music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Walker, this recording focuses on his chamber music. The music ranges from his first string quartet composed in 1946 to the piano sonata composed in 1985. Walker is the recipient of six honorary doctoral degrees and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2000.

Robert Xavier Rodríguez’s (b. 1946) music has been described as “romantically dramatic” and glowing with a physical animation and delicate balance of moods that combine seductively with his all-encompassing sense of humor.” He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Goddard Lieberson Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among many other prizes. He has served as composer-in-residence with the San Antonio Symphony and the Dallas Symphony. His music appears on more than 20 recordings. The music on this recording includes a song cycle for mezzo-soprano and string quartet based on poems from Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire. The second work, Romance With a Double Bass is for narrator, double bass, and piano and is based on a comic short story by Anton Chekhov. Performers include the Amernet String Quartet, mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway, bassist Daniel Nix, pianist Mikhail Berestnev, and narrator Mary-Margaret Pyeatt.

This recording is the first to draw attention to the compositional creativity of violist, teacher and choral director Harold Brown (1909-1979). He is remembered as one of the pioneers of the early music movement in North America, performing and recording Renaissance choral music in the mid 20th century. A graduate of Columbia, Brown taught at New York's High School of Music and Art and at Mansfield State College, and enriched the lives of a whole generation of New York singers with his promotion of the early choral music repertoire. The founder of the Renaissance Chorus of New York, the organization continues to be active today under the name of the Renaissance Chorus Association. Brown's chamber works for strings were composed mostly in the early to mid-1930s, and represent Brown's youthful, passionate style.

Among the oldest of all musical instruments, the harp remains an under-utilized instrument in contemporary compositions. Composer David S. Lefkowitz thrives on pondering the nature of the harp and exploring the harp's unique limitations in new and imaginative ways. The music presented on this recording includes prize-winning compositions, commissions, as well as music written for the composer's friends and spans 20 years of Lefkowitz's compositional efforts. A graduate of Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania and Eastman, Lefkowitz has won international acclaim, having works performed in Europe, Asia, Russia, and throughout North and South America. He is a two-time winner of the Fukui Harp Music Awards Competition as well as having received awards from the National Association of Composers, the Society of New Music's Brian M. Israel Prize and the ALEA III International Competition, among many others. This is the second recording of his music to appear on Albany Records.

The six compositions on this recording by the Armenian-American Hayg Boyadjian, cover a six-year period of his compositional output. Each was written for and is dedicated to specific musicians, although not all of them figure as performers on this recording. The musical language reflects Boyadjian's diverse background. Born in Paris of Armenian parents, he grew up in Buenos Aires and then relocated to the United States. He has drawn musical inspiration and materials from all these different cultures. Inspired by Boyadjian's interest in astronomy, the last work on the recording (Pleiades) was written for James Pellerite, who has dedicated himself to the native American flute.

You may already be familiar with Mr. Martin from his collection of Preludes and Fugues that have appeared on other labels. He is currently professor of music at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and has pursued a career as a composer-pianist specializing in jazz and Western tonal tradition. His teachers have included Milton Babbitt and David Del Tredici. The works on this disc exemplify Martin's attraction to past influences and how tonality is still a viable form of expression. The Piano Trio is his own take on the Brahms works in that form; the Sonata for Solo Cello, which he describes as one of his darker works, was inspired by the Bach Cello Suites. A more "modern" work, This Living Hand is based on the writings of John Keats, which also influence Sweet Converse. The three members of Innisfree all have musical connections to the Northeast; all are members of or have performed with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and its associated String Quartet. This is an exceptional disc for those who believe that the Romantic impulse is still alive in today's music.

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."

Here is a delightful sound - four trombones; mellow, rich. Admittedly, this will have appeal mainly to your customer who enjoys brass music. Hopefully, they will give this disc a try. Steven Witser has served as Assistant Principal Trombone of The Cleveland Orchestra since 1989 and is a member of the Center City Brass Quintet. Edward A. Zadrozny is an Associate Professor of Trombone at the University of Akron and Principal Trombone of the Akron Symphony Orchestra. Paul Ferguson has been director of Jazz Studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland since 1988. Raymond Premru was Professor of Trombone at the Oberlin Conservatory from 1988 until his death in 1998.

This recording was sparked by concerts in New Hampshire and North Carolina performed by the Ciompi Quartet with guest artists, Susan Narucki and Steven Tharp. The Quartet loved working with both singers, and had the idea that a disc of music featuring a solo singer with string quartet would be both unusual and intriguing. Each of the four works on this disc is wonderfully evocative, and each exploits the medium extremely well. The title for the CD, Melancholie, is taken from the Hindemith cycle, but it also expresses the overall feeling of the four works. The two larger pieces on this CD, Hindemith's Melancholie and Vaughan-Williams' On Wenlock Edge, have interesting parallels. Both are works by young men who went on to have long and distinguished careers, both works represent a coming of age for their respective composers, and both composers must be counted among the major figures of 20th century music with many works now in the standard repertoire. Both of the other works, by Kim and Part continue the theme of melancholy.

Members of the renowned Boston Musica Viva perform three works by Bernard Hoffer, including a work commissioned by them, Concerto di Camera that features their spectacular cellist Jan Müller-Szeraws. Born in 1934 in Zurich, Switzerland, Bernard Hoffer attended Eastman where he studied with Bernard Rogers, Wayne Barlow, Paul White and Herman Genhart. After serving as arranger for the U.S. Army Field Band of Washington, D.C., he settled in New York, working as a freelance musician, composer, conductor and arranger. He is known not only for his chamber and orchestral music but also for works written for films, television and commercials, including the theme for the PBS New Hour, PBS's The American Experience and the hit children's cartoon series Thundercats.

Born in Kharkov, USSR, Alexander Meshibovsky began violin lessons at the age of five. He studied at the Special School of Music for Gifted Children and graduated from the Kharkov Conservatory. After graduation, he was invited to be represented by te Russian Concert Agency, later becoming represented by the Moscow Concert Agency, under whose auspices he toured the USSR performing as a recitalist and soloist. He has studied with both renowned violinists Adolph Lestchinsky, Boris Goldstein and Jascha Heifitz. Since leaving Russia, he has continued his careeer performing with major European and American orchestras and has performed as a recitalist in Germany, Austria, France, and Norway. As a composer he has concentrated on works for violin and this debut recording of his music receives virtuoso performances from him and his colleague, pianist Raisa Kagramanova.

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.

Gary Smart notes: The three duo sonatas on this recording are "hot" in that they flow out of the American jazz tradition, "sonatas" in that they utilize classical sonata form and its associated developmental techniques. Composer Gunther Schuller coined the term "third-stream music" to label the musical fusion of the jazz and classical musical traditions. I like his term. I think it suits these sonatas of mine better than most other labels."

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.

Flutist Don Bailey and harpist Laura Logan Brandenburg offer a charming program of music for flute and harp that includes works from the standard repertoire as well as newer works by British and American composers. Don Bailey has enjoyed a diverse career as a performer, professor, festival planner, and board member of several arts organizations. He was solo flutist for Cunard Cruise Lines and has performed at festivals in Aspen, Nice, and Spoleto, among many others. His discography includes recordings on the Summit, Genuin, Parnassus, International, and Albany Records labels. Laura Brandenburg served as harp instructor at Texas Christian University School of Music. A highly regarded freelance harpist, she enjoys a wide variety of collaborative performance opportunities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Active as a camp clinician specializing in harp ensemble repertoire, Laura presents workshops locally and nationally. The duo has been performing together since 2017 and are committed to exploring and transcribing new music for flute and harp that expands the boundaries of the repertoire while feeding the artistic soul.

Composer and conductor Anthony Iannaccone studied at the Manhattan School of Music and the Eastman School of Music. His principal teachers were Vittorio Giannini, Aaron Copland and David Diamond. During the early part of his career, he supported himself as a part-time teacher at the Manhattan School of Music and as an orchestral violinist. Iannaccone's catalogue of approximately 50 published works includes three symphonies, smaller works for orchestra, several large works for chorus and orchestra, numerous chamber pieces, large works for wind ensemble, and several extended a cappella choral compositions. In 2001, his Waiting for Sunrise on the Sound was chosen as one of the five finalists in the BBC-London Symphony Masterprize competition from a field of 1151 orchestral works submitted. Anthony Iannaccone enjoys an active conducting career in both new music and standard orchestral repertory. Since 1971, he has taught at Eastern Michigan University, where he received the Distinguished Faculty Award and, for thirty years, conducted the Collegium Musicum in late eighteenth-century music for chorus and chamber orchestra.

Composer and conductor Anthony Iannaccone studied at the Manhattan School of Music and the Eastman School. His principal teachers were Vittorio Giannini, Aaron Copland and David Diamond. During the early part of his career, he supported himself as a part-time teacher at the Manhattan School of Music and as an orchestral violinist. His catalog of approximately 50 published works includes three symphonies, smaller works for orchestra, numerous chamber pieces, several large works for chorus and orchestra, large works for wind ensemble and several extended a cappella choral compositions. He enjoys an active conducting career in both new music and standard orchestral repertory. Since 1971, Iannaccone has taught at Eastern Michigan University, where he received the Distinguished Faculty Award and, for thirty years, conducted the Collegium Musicum in late 18th century music for chorus and chamber orchestra.

Joshua Rosenblum is a composer, pianist and conductor. He is a graduate of Yale College and the Yale School of Music. He is the composer and co-lyricist of the cult hit musical Fermat's Last Tango, which enjoyed a successful Off-Broadway run at the York Theater, as well as the forthcoming musical Einstein's Dreams, based on the best-selling novel by Alan Lightman. Equally comfortable in the contemporary classical idiom, he has written numerous commissions and has received awards from ASCAP and Meet the Composer. His choral setting of "Jabberwocky" won the Ithaca College Choral Composition Contest, out of 200 entries nationwide. Rosenblum has conducted ten Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, including Miss Saigon, The Music Man, Anything Goes and Falsettos. He has appeared as pianist with the New York Pops and the American Symphony Orchestra. He is also highly sought after as an exponent of experimental, innovative, and unusual works of new music theater. He is also a music journalist who has written articles for Newsday, Stagebill and reviews for Opera News.

George Enescu was an extraordinary musician. One of the most acclaimed violinists of the last century, he was also an accomplished pianist, conductor, and composer. As a composer he is still too little known and his music too little analyzed outside his native Romania. His music exhibits a very personal blend of time-honored procedures, forward-thinking techniques, and ethnic intimations. The works on this recording belong to the last period of his career and show a rare maturity and depth that contribute to a unique and sometimes difficult to define language.

Steven Stucky has written commissioned works for many of the major American orchestras, including Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Philadelphia, St. Louis and the National Symphony. As a conductor, he appears frequently with the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group and Ensemble X, a contemporary music group he co-founded in 1997. Mr. Stucky's work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic comprises the longest composer residency of any American orchestra. First appointed composer in Residence by Andre Previn in 1988, he has worked closely with Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen since 1990. Since 1980, Mr. Stucky has taught at Cornell University, where he serves as Given Foundation Professor of Composition, and where he chaired the Music Department from 1992 to 1997. He was Visiting Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music in 2001-2, and Ernest Bloch Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003.

JoDee Davis is professor of trombone at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and second trombone of the Santa Fe Opera. She has served on the faculties of Kent State University, where she was a member of the Kent Brass Quintet, and Eastern Washington University. Formerly principal trombone of the Spokane Symphony, Dr. Davis has also performed with a number of other orchestras including the Akron, Canton and Youngstown Symphony Orchestras in Ohio, and the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. She has presented solo recitals and master classes throughout the United States and has performed and given clinics at International Trombone Festivals, the Eastern Trombone Workshop, the Mid-West International Band and Orchestra Clinic, the Arizona Low Brass Symposium, and the Ohio and Texas Music Educators Conferences. She received the Doctor of Music degree in BrassLiterature and Performance from Indiana University, and the Masters degree in Trombone Performance and Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education from the University of Northern Iowa. Ms. Davis is a clinician for the Selmer Company, Inc. The compositions gathered for this recording represent some of the best works from the trombone literature, as well as some outstanding transcriptions. Ms. Davis gives the listener a colorful, engaging feast of music and talent.

The composer, violinist George Perlman, taught violin in Chicago for the better part of the 20th century. He was born in Kiev and at the age of four, moved to Chicago where his principal violin teachers included Leon Samatini, Adolph Weidig and Leopold Auer, with whom he studied for one year. The violinist on this recording, Lawrence Golan, was a pupil of George Perlman. He also studied at Indiana University where he worked with Josef Gingold and Yuval Yaron. In 1995, he became the first violinist to graduate from the New England Conservatory of Music with a doctorate. There he studied with James Buswell. Today his is the concertmaster of the Portland Symphony Orchestra and the Director of String Studies at the University of Southern Maine.

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

Composer Ingrid Arauco comments that "The word vistas conjures up a panorama of vivid images; however, it also signifies a broad perspective encompassing many experiences over time. The works on this album, written over a 13-year period, comprise a series of strong musical images embracing a variety of styles. Yet together they project a unified artistic vision." A faculty member at Haverford College, Ms. Arauco's music has been performed by many distinguished musical organizations including the Atlanta Symphony, the Colorado Quartet and the Network for New Music. She is the recipient of numerous honors including awards from the American Guild of Organists. This program, performed by some of the best-known instrumentalists in the U.S., shows Arauco's music to be engaging and compelling.

Three phenomenal musicians (Michael Thornton, horn; Yumi Hwang-Williams, violin; Andrew Litton, piano) perform a program of works for horn, violin, and piano inspired by Brahms’ famous composition. The four movements of Eric Ewazen's Trio are modeled after the Brahms, with a four-movement, slow-fast-slow-fast scheme. Daniel Kellog's A Glorious Morning was commissioned by horn player Michael Thornton to accompany the recording of Brahms' Trio. Thornton is principal horn of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and is an avid chamber musician and a recognized soloist internationally. Yumi Hwang-Williams is concertmaster as well as frequent soloist with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and was concertmaster of the Cabrillo Music Festival for 12 years. Conductor/pianist Andrew Litton is newly appointed music director of the New York City Ballet as well as music director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Their performances of this repertoire are exciting and inspired.