Catalog

The Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 40 by Johannes Brahms reigns as one of the supreme works of chamber music that includes the French horn, and it is often thought of as the model for all of the succeeding works composed for this trio. The instrumentation is certainly unique, as there were no precedents of note in the major chamber music oeuvre. Paired with the Brahms on this recording are two rarely performed and previously unrecorded horn trios from the beginning of the last century. All three performers are internationally acclaimed and give exceptional performances of this repertoire.

Radical, traditional, original, archetypal, Cindy Cox derives her "post-tonal" musical language from acoustics, innovations in technology, harmonic resonance, and poetic allusion. Naturally unfolding through linked strands of association, timbral fluctuation, and cyclic temporal processes, her compositions synthesize old and new musical designs. This is the second disc of Cox's chamber music to appear on Albany Records. Cindy Cox is the Evelyn and Jerry Chambers Chair Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

With the exception of the Six Valses Caractéristiques, these are the first recordings of these compositions by Edward Joseph Collins. Born in Illinois, Collins studied piano with Ganz in Chicago and composition with Bruch and Humperdinck in Europe. Collins was hired in 1914 as an assistant conductor for the Bayreuth Festival, a brief engagement ended by WWI. After the war, his music attracted the attention of Frederick Stock, who conducted many of his orchestral compositions with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Modern brass chamber music is dominated by quintets and the relative scarcity of trio performances is belied by the number of outstanding compositions for that ensemble, some of which are presented on this recording. Worth noting is the daunting challenge inherent in the ensemble itself Ñ the transparency of the three voices demands that even secondary lines project with identity and color. When performed on a high level, as on this disc, there is a deeply gratifying intensity to the experience, shared by the listener and the performers.

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.

Although the six pieces that make up this program were not composed with this purpose in mind, each work explores different ways to combine the sounds of flute and percussion. Two of humanity's oldest instruments, they remain favorites of contemporary composers. Stylistically, the pieces on this recording vary greatly, but they also complement each other by showing manifold possibilities that flute and percussion duos offer.

Morris Rosenzweig was born October 1, 1952 in New Orleans, where he grew up among the tailors, merchants, and strong-willed women of an extended family that has lived in southern Louisiana since the mid 1890s. His works have been widely presented throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Japan, Argentina, Mexico and Israel. His recorded compositions are available on Albany Records Centaur, and New World/CRI. Mr. Rosenzweig has received honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Argosy Foundation, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, and support from the Alice M. Ditson Fund. Presently Professor of Music at the University of Utah, he has formerly held positions at Queens College and New York University. He was educated at the Eastman School of Music, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University.

Born in New York, Peter Ivan Edwards studied at Northwestern University and at the University of California, San Diego. His work has been performed throughout the world by numerous ensembles and at major international festivals. He is assistant professor at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore where he teaches composition and theory. His music is influenced by two strands of music thinking -- the American experimentalists and the European avant-garde. Edwards takes many different things from these traditions and creates an original music that builds off their discoveries.

Clarinet trio CDs aren't the most mainstream kind of CDs around. However there are always clarinetists like the distinguished artists from Chicago performing on this recording who are always searching for fun, interesting new music to perform. The music was selected with these criteria in mind and the hope is the listeners will find the "fun" in this music -- four works of which were written specifically for this ensemble.

Albany Records in cooperation with the Center for Black Music Research is initiating a series undertaking to document the musics of the African diaspora. This first volume features two orchestral works Ñ one by Mary Watkins, who is an eclectic composer and pianist of the classical and jazz traditions and the other by Olly Wilson, one of the most distinguished composers of his generation. Watkins' work swings, grooves, and hearkens to the roots of African-American musical expression. Elements of jazz, traditional African music and popular forms are merged with contemporary techniques and colorful orchestrations. A veritable tour de force, Wilson's multimovement song cycle features three vocal soloists and a chamber ensemble that highlights extensive percussion. Drawing from sources such as spirituals and African-American poets, Wilson uses musical and textual emblems from African-American poetry in inventive ways that both surprise and entice.

Violinist Mark Rush offers a contemporary program of music for violin and percussion assisted by the Arizona Percussion Ensemble and percussionist Norman Weinberg. With Michael Daugherty's Lex, based on Superman's most vexing foe, Lou Harrison's innovative concerto mixing "junk" percussion instruments with traditional European one, Craig Walsh's work for violin and percussion based on ecobiological ideas expressed in purely abstract musical ways, and Kevin Puts' work for violin, clarinet and marimba, we have exciting music for a non-traditional combination.

A graduate of Harvard and Yale, Martin Boykan counts Walter Piston, Aaron Copland and Paul Hindemith as his composition teachers and Eduard Steuermann as his piano teacher. He founded the Brandeis Chamber Ensemble and was pianist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has written for a wide variety of instrumental combinations including four string quartets, many trios, duos and solo works, song cycles as well as instrumental ensembles and choral music. His music is widely performed by ensembles like the New York New Music Ensemble, Earplay, Music Viva, Collage New Music and Speculum Musicae, to name a few. The recipient of many awards and commissions, Martin Boykan is an Emeritus Professor of Music, Brandeis University and was Composer in Residence at the Composer's Conference in Wellesley and the University of Utah. His music appears on the CRI and BMOP record labels.

The Palisades Virtuosi (Margaret Swinchoski, flute, Donald Mokrynski, clarinet, Ron Levy, piano) lays claim to a special achievement with this recording. Their mission of commissioning and recording works for the instrumentation of their ensemble has resulted in more than 40 new pieces, six of which are heard on their third recording in this series for Albany Records. No other ensemble has done as much to enhance the repertoire for flute, clarinet and piano. Their musical and heartfelt approach coupled with their dazzling virtuosity has endeared them to audiences and composers alike.

The distinctive character and originality of Bernard Rands' music have been variously described as "plangent lyricism: with a "dramatic intensity" and a "musicality and clarity of idea allied to a sophisticated and elegant technical mastery." Through more than 100 published works and many recordings, Rands has been firmly established as a major figure in contemporary music. The recording include "now again" -- fragments from Sappho, a work commissioned for the Network for New Music, the brilliant ensemble based in Philadelphia with a 25 year history of adventurous and innovative programming.

The nine recordings of Ezra Laderman's chamber music on Albany Records are now offered in a slipcase edition at a special price. Included are his string quartets, music for piano, and chamber works for various instrumental ensembles. Performers such as the Cassatt String Quartet, violinist Erick Friedman, and flutist Ransom Wilson offer critically acclaimed performances of this distinguished American composer's music. Taking 10 years to complete, this series offers a comprehensive survey of Laderman's solo instrumental and chamber music.

Milos Raickovich, composer and conductor, has lived and worked in Belgrade, Paris, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Hiroshima and New York. He writes music in a unique style -- "New Classicism" -- that has been described as "...a combination of the American Minimalist style with European Classical and Romantic music." (John Schaefer, WNYC's "New Sounds") Love, passion and longing are the recurring themes in all the works on this disc. FAR AWAY includes six pieces, each based on a different type of scale, including various 3, 5, 6, and 7-note scales. The opening piece is the energetic and primal Flying Trio, for violin, cello and piano. The Romantic-sounding Sonata and Three Romances are works grounded in the Minimalist approach. A meditative, Asian influenced film score "El contorno" Variations is also included, as well as B-A-G-D-A-D, played by the RTS Symphony Orchestra from Belgrade. (Three other arrangements of the same piece are included in Milos Raickovich's antiwar CD B-A-G-D-A-D, Albany Records.) FAR AWAY concludes with the nostalgic Winter Waltz.

Mallarmé Chamber Players, the distinguished ensemble based in Durham, North Carolina presents a program of chamber music by African American composers. Spanning several generations of composers, the recording includes works by Undine Smith Moore (1904-1989); Thomas Jefferson Anderson (b. 1928); William Banfield (b. 1961) and Anthony Kelley (b. 1965). Six-time Grammy Award-nominee Nnenna Freelon joins Mallarmé to perform Soul Gone Home by William Banfield, which, along with Grist for the Mill by Anthony Kelley, was commissioned by the ensemble. You can go to this link to hear a fascinating interview done by WUNC Radio in Chapel Hill with Nnenna Freelon, William Banfield and representatives from the Mallarmé Chamber Players and Videmus Records, who produced the recording.

The distinguished composer/conductor David Stock is Professor Emeritus of Music at Duquesne University, where he conducted the Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble. He has been Composer-in-Residence of the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Seattle Symphony, and is Conductor Laureate of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, which he founded in 1976. He retired as Music Director of PNME at the end of the 1998/99 season, after 23 years of dedication to new music and the living composer. His compositions have been performed throughout the world and he is the recipient of many awards, honors and commissions. This recording of his last three quartets includes one commissioned by the Cuarteto Latinoamericano (the Seventh), who have been an integral part of Stock's musical universe for the past two decades.

Most of the music on this recording honors artists whose works are going or have gone, and each work is either a song or composition in the lyrical mode. The compositions celebrate the work of departed masters--Yehuda Amichai, Gyögy Ligeti, Johannes Brahms and Willie Dixon (among others) and the title honors the last album recorded by Walter Becker and Donald Fagin of Steely Dan. The distinguished American composer Martin Bresnick's compositions are performed throughout the world and he is the recipient of many prizes and commissions including The Rome Prize, The Berlin Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among many others. Recognized as in influential composition teacher, Martin Bresnick is a member of the faculty at Yale University's School of Music.

The three concertos on this recording are representative of a contemporary renaissance in concerto writing. The challenge for composers is how to tackle the range of technical and expressive problems. Ross Bauer, Steven Burke and Martin Matalon have each responded to that question with music that is fresh, imaginative, technically brilliant and dramatically convincing. Though not one of the works actually bears the title, each is a true concerto, albeit in a recognizably contemporary way.

The Ibis Camerata consists of four internationally acclaimed musicians of the new generation. Their unique ensemble of violin, cello, clarinet and piano enables them to command a much more varied repertoire than the traditional piano trio. Avid supporters of new music, the Ibis Camerata concentrates on Boston composers for their third recording on Albany Records. All of the composers have a relationship to the New England Conservatory, either as former students or as faculty and administrators.

Featuring performances by Grammy Award winners Gloria Cheng, Masumi Rostad (Pacifica Quartet) and Oto Carillo (Chicago Symphony), the four pieces on this recording are all inspired by our relation to the world, both natural and invented. The Machine Awakes is about technology and where it's leading our spirit. Seven Memorials is inspired by Maya Lin's elegy to our planet; Quark Shadows and Nebulae are about the world untouched by us. Stephen Andrew Taylor, born in 1965, teaches music at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

This recording, a collection of performances by some of the most celebrated performers of our time that Leon Kirchner considered extraordinary, continues the series on Albany Records devoted to this distinguished composer's music. Leon Kirchner, who died in December of 2009, performed regularly both as a pianist and conductor, but was always first and foremost, a composer. He left a legacy of masterworks and made an indelible mark on the history of contemporary music.

Donald Reid Womack is the composer of more than 80 works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments and voice. He received a Fulbright Scholar Fellowship to live and work in Japan. His work with Japanese and other Asian instruments has placed him at the vanguard of East-West cross-cultural fertilization and has enabled him to make a significant contribution to the body of new literature for Asian instruments, both alone and in combination with Western instruments. His music combines a rich tonal language with an intricate use of color and texture and an exploration of multiple perceptions of rhythm.

Lawrence Dillon is best known for his chamber music, with commissions, performances and recordings by the American, Borromeo, Cassatt, Daedalus, Emerson and Mendelssohn String Quartets; this recording is the first to feature some of his many works combining words and music. Composer in Residence at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Dillon began composing at the age of seven, despite the complete loss of hearing in one of his ears due to a childhood illness. Appendage and Other Stories is a collection of Dillon's works that combine words and music. Entrance and Exit use spoken text, Still Point is sung and Appendage alternates between spoken and sung text.

Composer/pianist Ketty Nez joined the composition and theory department at the Boston University School of Music in the fall of 2005. Ms. Nez completed a residence of several months at the École Nationale de Musique in Montbéliard, France, prior to the premiere of her chamber opera An Opera in Devolution: Drama in 540 Seconds, at the 2003 Seventh Festival Avantgarde in Munich. She comments: "The five recent chamber works on this recording, Postcards from the 1930's, timed curves, between, before, and wind down ii, were written for myself to play, and were composed after moving to Boston in 2005 to start teaching at Boston University while the most recent work on this recording, and marking a departure of sorts, Postcards from the 1930's was the byproduct of my everlasting curiosity for the sounds and rhythms of my own ethnic backgrounds, a mixture of Slovenian and Slavic Macedonian.

Described by the Chicago Tribune as "an ensemble that invites you--ears, mind, and spirit--into its music," the Avalon String Quartet has established itself as one of the country's leading ensembles. Formed in 1995 at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Quartet came to the fore after participating in Isaac Stern's Chamber Music Workshop at Carnegie Hall in 1997. As a result, Mr. Stern invited the Avalon Quartet to perform in the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Encounters in Jerusalem and presented the ensemble's Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall. The quartet captured the top prize at the ARD Competition in Munich (2000) as well as the First Prize at Concert Artists Guild Competition in New York (1999). The quartet is in residence at Northern Illinois University. Their recording on Channel Classics won the Chamber Music America/WQXR Record Award in 2002.

Rarely has a composer exhibited such an extraordinarily heightened awareness of the very details of music-making, every physical, acoustic and emotional gesture of performance, painstakingly arrived at and indicated with astonishing clarity in the score. Nuance -- that is what Donald Martino wished to capture in his music and to pass on -- it's the demand he makes of the performer and it's the poignant, comprehensive, detailed world that draws the listener in. The ultimate result is a musical intimacy of great and intricate energy. Some of the best performers of 20th and 21st century music offer beautiful performances of this great composer's music.

Victoria Bond is the only woman composer/conductor to receive commissions from major organizations and also hold music director positions with leading ensembles. Her extensive catalog includes works written for the Houston, Shanghai, and Richmond Symphony Orchestras, the Saint Paul and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestras, American Ballet Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet and Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. This recording highlights some of her enchanting music, including Bridges, a work for two clarinets and two Chinese instruments, the Erhu and the Pipa.

William Kraft (b.1923) has had a long and active career as composer, conductor, timpanist/percussionist and teacher. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara and was a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 26 years, where he also served as composer-in-residence. His music has been performed by major orchestras throughout the United States and he has been commissioned by many distinguished ensembles. This is the sixth disc devoted to his music on Albany Records.

Donald Wheelock is the Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor of Music at Smith College, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1974. His works include five string quartets, several pieces for solo instruments, eleven song cycles, and many larger ensemble and orchestral works. Among his awards are a first prize in a competition sponsored by the Hartford Symphony, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the Guggenheim Foundation. This compact disc, a retrospective recording of Wheelock's music, offers a wide-ranging survey of his music for chamber ensembles.

Laderman comments, "This ninth cd with Albany Records brings me to the end of a musical exploration started October 1, 2000. This culminating cd, the final three string quartets I will ever compose represent the most recent evolution of my compositional esthetic...The excitement, the fun, the joy that composing has afforded me is due in no small measure to the unknown path traveled each morning as I sit before the blank sheet of music paper. It's a great way to spend a life. I recommend it without reservation."