Catalog

Recognized as a "major talent" by the Chicago Tribune, Larry Bell has been awarded the Rome Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and the Charles Ives Award. A student of Vincent Persichetti and Roger Sessions, his music has been widely performed in the United States and abroad, and as a pianist he has championed the works of American composers.

Born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, Ileana Perez Velázquez earned her degrees from the Higher Institute of Arts, Havana, in 1987. When she moved to the United States in 1993, she was already receiving acclaim as one of the bright lights of Cuban composition, having won several awards. She would later continue her studies at Dartmouth College and Indiana University, where her teachers included John Appleton, Charles Dodge, Claude Baker and Eugene O'Brien. She writes music that, while challenging for both performer and listener alike, is deeply expressive and accessible; her music may be uncompromising in its demands, but it also remains intensely dramatic and poignantly evocative. What's more, her rich harmonic language and rhythmically intricate, multi-layered textures reveal a true debt to her Cuban heritage.

To bring together two pieces by Charles Wuorinen with seminal works of Arnold Schoenberg is, in part, to underline a continuity. Wuorinen, exceptionally among his generation, has developed implications of Schoenberg's 12-tone method to his own musical ends with a strong awareness of the works of others of his predecessors, including Stravinsky, Webern, and Milton Babbitt. Wuorinen's two pieces date from the mid 1970s, a period during which Wuorinen was reconciling serialism with tonally-centered music. Schoenberg's work is represented by his pupil Webern's 1912 two-piano arrangement of the Five Pieces for Orchestra and Wuorinen's arrangement of the Variations. In these arrangements, the important details of pitch, rhythm and motivic relationships stand out in relief.

In the nearly 30 years that Hi Kyung Kim has been living, studying and composing in the Western World, her music has established itself as Asian-American in voice and spirit. But for all the recognizably Korean musical ideas, rhythmic and sonic, in her music these seem to occur not as flags or labels but appear integrally in the music's fabric. And in the hearing of it, a personality emerges that is individual and not specifically or necessarily identifiable as Korean-American. As she has admitted, these Korean elements come into her music unbidden, unselfconsciously, and cites a conversation she had with the late Korean-born composer Isang Yun, in which he said "That he did not have to think about his musical elements intentionally utilizing Korean music, since (these were) already imbedded in him."

Jay Reise composes in all genres, and his teachers included musicians with a wide variety of stylistic approaches: George Crumb, jazz player Jimmy Guiffre, Carnatic (South Indian) violinist Adrian L'Armand, and Richard Wernick. As critic Peter Rabinowitz has written, "His work is firmly in the Western tradition. But because of the fresh perspectives offered by his study of Indian music, he has been able to rethink some specific problems facing contemporary Western art music..." Many disparate elements of classical musical technique are employed in the three works on this recording, including rhythms based on concepts freely derived from the study of Carnatic music and the juxtaposing of chromatically-treated modes (folk-derived and symmetrical) with quasi-functional tonal music.

Formed in 2004 the trio Neoteric, made up of faculty members at Southern Illinois University, began their relationship with Bernard Hoffer through a request for works in the American Music Center newsletter. After writing two works for their ensemble, Hoffer suggested the idea of more substantial works, hence the Concerto di Camera and Divertimento included on this recording. Born in Switzerland, Hoffer is a graduate of Eastman where he studied composition with Bernard Rogers and Wayne Barlow. He has written extensively for films, television, and commercials for which he has won several Emmy nominations and Clio Awards. He scored the hit children's cartoon series Thundercats and Silverhawks.

The Palisades Virtuosi was established in 2003 to promote and enrich the repertoire for flute, clarinet and piano. Their programs combine standard repertoire with works that are a product of its aggressive and zealous commissioning program. More than 20 composers have received commissions and this recording, their second on Albany Records, highlights five of these. From the oldest composer, Frank Levy, born in 1930, to Carlos Franzetti and Allen Shawn, both born in 1948, to Caroline Newman and Gary Eskow, sharing 1951 as their birth years, this recording give us a range of styles and generations, all exquisitely performed by the ensemble.

Leon Kirchner's life has been liberally peppered with moments of recognition for his powerful and innovative music. Both the first and second quartets heard on this recording received the Critics Circle Prize; the third received the Pulitzer. While still an undergraduate, he was accepted into Arnold Schoenberg's graduate composition seminar at UCLA. He has received many honors and prizes, including membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was a professor at Harvard University for 25 years. This recording includes his fourth string quartet, written in 2007 when Kirchner was 87, for the Orion String Quartet, who are able champions of his music.

The moods of the works on this survey of Eleanor Cory's chamber music range from serious introspection (Three Songs) to playful exuberance (Chasing Time). Beginning to be recognized as a major force in contemporary music, Ms. Cory has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund and the Fromm Foundation, among many others. Her music is performed by orchestras and ensembles ranging from the Gregg Smith Singers to the New Jersey Symphony to Earplay. Ms. Cory is on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music Prep Division and Kingsborough Community College.

Since its inception the Mirror Visions Ensemble has explored song repertoire from a number of angles. The initial interest was the back-to-back performance of multiple settings of a single text, leading to programs built around favorite portraits. This has been followed by musical travelogues and concerts at museums that feature music with a connection to the exhibit or museum. During the last decade, the ensemble has commissioned 69 new works, two of which are presented on this recording. Berg's Lincoln Letters is set to texts more personal than political, while Hagen's Songs from Dear Youth are set to letters from the Civil War. Platt's From Noon To Starry Night is a cantata based on a selection of Walt Whitman's poems, including the roughneck Whitman, the democratic Whitman, the transcendentalist Whitman, Whitman the "lover of comrades," and Whitman the bard of war.

The exceptional clarinetist Sean Osborn gives magnificent performances of these staples of the chamber music repertoire. Sean Osborn has traveled Europe and the US as a soloist and chamber musician, and traveled the world during his 11 years with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He has also performed as guest principal clarinet with the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and the American Symphony Orchestra. Recently appointed Clarinet Teacher at the University of Washington, Sean is currently based in Seattle, composing, teaching, and touring.

Edmund Campion completed his doctoral work at Columbia University with Mario Davidovsky before attending the Paris Conservatory to study composition with Gérard Grissey. He has explained his approach to composition in an interview with the Computer Music Journal: "Emerging technologies have been the generative source for most of my musical explorations...There is nothing new here. For Chopin, it was the modern piano, and for Schaeffer, it was the tape recorder. Finally, there is no distinction between acoustic sound, natural sound, or electronic sound. Everything is integrated with the full spectrum of all possibly sounds...I hope I am coming full circle, back to the essential musical material, it music that is made just for hearing."

The works from On Course represent a broad cross section of sonic and stylistic moments created over an almost 24 year period by composer Laurie Altman. The generative links between all the pieces seem to be an overarching lyrical sentiment coupled with the interplay of animation, dance and drama. Laurie Altman attended Mannes, studying with Lester Trimble and William Sydeman. Influences abound with Altman: The Village Vanguard (Bill Evans), the Five Spot (Monk and Trane); the Chicago Symphony, jazz performances at The Blue Note and Soundscape -- a joining of classical and jazz.

Lansing McLoskey (b.1964) came to the world of composition via a somewhat unorthodox route. The proverbial "Three B's" for him were The Beatles, Bauhaus and Black Flag. His first experiences in composition were as a guitarist and songwriter for punk rock bands in the Bay Area in the early 1980s. It was through these years in the visceral world of punk that he first developed a love for classical music. Hailed as "one of the best composers of (his) generation," McLoskey has had his music performed to critical acclaim across the U.S. and in 12 other countries on five continents. His music has an emotional intensity that appeals to academic and amateur alike, defying traditional stylistic pigeonholes.

The works on this recording span 25 years -- from the Sonata for Cello (1982) to unaccompanied minor (2007). Joel Hoffman comments that, "Like so many composers of my generation, I have worked, over these years, with a number of stylistic dialects -- from a hybrid serialism to a tonal/pan-tonal mix to a folk-inspired modal work to a post-minimalist framework. While I'm arguably the least qualified to describe the threads of continuity...I do observe two persistent qualities...a pervading lyricism and a rhythmic vitality." Hoffman is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, where he is also Artistic Director of its annual new music festival, MusicX.

Craig Walsh, born in New Jersey in 1971, is a composer on the rise, widely performed across North America and Europe. He is also a composer plugged into new media while simultaneously writing music for traditional acoustic instruments. He is associate professor at the University of Arizona and has received numerous awards and fellowships. The works on this recording represent more than a decade of Walsh's acoustic chamber music. This is bold, compelling music with a distinctive voice that draws the listener in. Walsh has a knack for instrumental combinations that pack a great deal of information into textures that are spare yet timbrally rich. His music is well conceived while pushing the boundaries of performance techniques.

For all the differences among them, Joaquín Turina, Alexandre Tansman, and Carlos Surinach were alike in one regard: each was sympathetic to making his music an affirmation of his cultural heritage. At the same time, their lives spanned a period when modernism was sweeping away the romantic tenets that had upheld 19th-century nationalism. Hence, each came to fashion a distinctive amalgam of nationalist tendencies and newly emergent techniques and modes of thought. Given beautiful performances by the Ames Piano Quartet, the recording ends with a work by Astor Piazzolla that was written as part of the incidental music for a play by Alberto Rodriguez Muñoz.

The extraordinary tuba player Timothy Buzbee has put together a unique program of music by American and Swedish composers that reflects his eclectic interests and passions. His phenomenal technique and command of the instrument have won him principal tuba positions with a number of orchestras and he has recorded more than 20 CDs. A native of Texas, he has been a featured soloist with the Singapore Symphony, Acapulco Philharmonic and other orchestras and has performed throughout North American and Asia with several different brass quintets and brass ensemble.

"I have had a life-long love affair with the borough of my birth -- Manhattan -- in the city of New York. Here many of my friends live, and here the compositions on this CD originate. Each piece tells its own story." Ms. Silverman holds a BA from Barnard College, an AM from Harvard and a DMA from Columbia. Currently on the faculty of Mannes College The New School for Music, she is a founding member of Music Under Construction and the International Women's Brass Conference. She is the recipient of many awards and commissions and her music has been performed by the Baltimore Symphony and the Brooklyn Philharmonic among many other orchestras and chamber ensembles.

Two internationally renowned soloists, David Shifrin and Ransom Wilson, are featured in this eighth volume of Albany Records' series devoted to the music of Ezra Laderman. Laderman remarks: "I have been among those who move from writing for orchestra to chamber music, to vocal, and solo and operatic works -- feeling the need to explore and stretch my musical language as I go -- to reach for a new constellation. My most recent works for flute and clarinet attest to that and this cd clearly shows the path I have traveled."

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

The two programs on this double CD were presented at the Pacific Rim Music Festival in 2003. They were offered as part of the Festival's tribute to Chou Wen-chung in honor of his 80th birthday. What brought these works together is their relationship to Chou Wen-chung. Some were students; some associates and in the case of Varèse, Chou's teacher.

The works presented on this compact disc exhibit three manners in which Jeremy Gill has explored the musical past. 25, through its use of quotation and occasional imitation, represents the most common of the three. Suite for Brass deals with musical and poetic forms that were precursors to the music of Bach. Parabasis is an exploration of an imagined musical past, based solely on contextless titles and fragmentary descriptions. A graduate of Eastman and the University of Pennsylvania, Gill worked with George Crumb, George Rochberg, Joseph Schwantner, Christopher Rouse, Donald Erb and Samuel Adler. He is also active as a conductor and keyboardist.

This recording of brass and organ music by the noted American composer Larry Bell features Chris Gekker, trumpet, the Cambridge Symphonic Brass Ensemble and Richard Bunbury, organ. Recognized by The Chicago Tribune as "a major talent," Bell has been awarded the Rome Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and the Charles Ives award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among many others. His music has been commissioned and performed by a distinguished array of performers and has been the subject of documentaries on National Public Radio and Radio Amsterdam.

This recording contains the work of six contemporary composers either currently active in, or with some connection to the American Midwest. The works were composed during a six-year span, from 2001-2007 and are performed by Stacey Barelos, a DMA student in piano and composition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Noted for her presentation of music of the 20th and 21st centuries, her performances of the music of Henry Cowell have attracted special recognition and acclaim.

Richard Wilson writes: "The music on this compact disc spans my entire composing career...The three short pieces for piano from my senior year in college reflect an enthusiasm for Boulez, who was teaching at Harvard that year. Quite different in style are the herbal pieces that were intended as teaching material for young piano students but are, without doubt, a bit too complex for that purpose. My propensity for technical challenge is even more evident in the solo works for bass and oboe. Chamber music has always been my preferred milieu."

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

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.

Formed in 1995 the Corona Guitar Kvartet's repertoire spans music written in the Renaissance to music written in this century. The Kvartet has worked with composers from Denmark, the US, Latvia, Germany, Italy, Canada and Lithuania and actively promotes new compositions for their medium. This second recording for Albany Records is a recital of works that reflects their musical interests.

This volume of Albany Records' series of the music of Edward Joseph Collins features first recordings of songs, piano solo works and the Piano Trio, Op. 1. The Illinois-born Collins died in 1951, leaving an oeuvre comprised of 12 major orchestral works, three piano concerti, a secular cantata, an opera, several chamber works, more than 20 songs and a dozen piano solo and duo scores.

Irwin Bazelon's percussion writing is known and performed by percussionists the world over and is truly unique. With this recording, Albany Records continues its commitment to present Bazelon's works (the sixth since his death) and the first to be devoted solely to chamber works with percussion being the binding element.

Brian Hulse says in his notes on the music: "If the music on this recording is "for" anything, besides simply being for itself, it is for remembering the quirky, the impure, the rogue, and the ambulant of music. It is for a vision of music as a theater of sound-sensation in which what happens is not determined in advance and not bound by neat categories." Hulse, a PhD in composition from Harvard is currently assistant professor of music at the College of William & Mary. Among his compositions are numerous chamber and choral works, film scores and several chamber operas.