Catalog

A largely self-taught composer, Byron Richard O'Keefe takes his inspiration from the American countryside, particularly its rivers. An American Smetana, in the sense that his music evokes the rivers, hedgerows, and forests of the eastern United States, O'Keefe's compositions can be characterized as neo-pastoral Romanticism.

Pianist/composer John McDonald and clarinetist Ray Jackendoff have performed as a duo for more than 10 years. This recording represents some of their many collaborations including the world premiere of John McDonald's two compositions for clarinet and basset horn. Jackendoff was principal clarinet of the Boston Civic Symphony for 20 years and has performed as a soloist with the Boston Pops and other Boston-area orchestras. McDonald's compositional output includes works for voice, chamber ensembles and solo instrumental works. Both Ray Jackendoff and John McDonald are on the faculty at Tufts University.

This recording emerged from a series of personal Scottish connections of tenor Justin Vickers; his Scottish heritage; his collaboration with Scottish pianist Geoffrey Duce; and his scholarly work with Jennifer Oates on the composer Hamish MacCunn. The first recording of MacCunn's Cycle of Six Love-Lyrics, is paired with a selection of his other songs, along with works by Scottish composer Judith Weir, and Britten's cycles set to the poetry of Robert Burns. Justin Vickers has a distinguished career as a recitalist, opera singer, chamber musician, and educator. He is on the faculty of Illinois State University, Normal. His collaborator Gretchen Church is on the faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University at Bloomington. Pianist Geoffrey Duce is on the faculty at Illinois State University.

The Iranian-born Reza Vali is just now gaining much attention in the musical world, with works steadily appearing on CD. This recording by the renowned Cuarteto Latinoamericano presents significant contributions to the string quartet literature. Vali studied first in Vienna but came to the United States, receiving his Ph.D. in composition in 1985. He has been a faculty member of Carnegie-Mellon University since 1988. His music has been performed by the Seattle Symphony, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Orchestra 2001 and many other new-music ensembles. The works on this disc are a departure from his earlier, experimental works of the 1980's. Here, the music reflects influences of Persian folk music. Of special interest are the three Calligraphies; the material is derived entirely from Persian traditional music. The tuning, rhythm, form, as well as polyphonic constructions relate to the Persian modal system, the Dastgah. This fascinating music, combined with the performances of the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, one of the major exponents of new music today, should have strong appeal to the modern music specialist as well as the world-music listener.

Composer Judith Lang Zaimont is internationally recognized for the expressive strength, color and dynamism of her distinctive style. Many of her 100 works are prize-winning compositions; these include three symphonies, chamber opera, oratorios and cantatas, music for wind ensemble, a wide variety of instrumental and vocal chamber works for varying ensembles, and solo music for string and wind instruments, piano, organ, and voice. Her major works for piano are primarily recent, most of them composed since 1998. This is perhaps unusual in that the piano is her own instrument (she began studying at the age of five), and one might have reasonably expected considerable creative attention on her part from the very first to an instrument she knows so well.

Eric Whitacre received his M.M. in composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied composition with John Corigliano. In 1996, Gary Green approached him about a possible commission for the University of Miami Wind Ensemble. The composer began work on the commission on July 1, 1997, but two years later, little progress had been made. "That is not to say I had not written anything. On the contrary, I had written about 100 pages of material for three different pieces, but I wanted to give Gary something special and just could not find the perfect spark." The spark finally did come and the piece was premiered in March, 2000. Ney Rosauro was born in Rio de Janeiro. He composed his Concerto for Marimba and Wind Ensemble during the winter of 1986 in Brazil and it was dedicated to his son. The music was originally written for marimba and string orchestra. The version heard on this recording was made several years later. Mark Camphouse is a product of the rich cultural life of Chicago. He was born in Oak Park, Illinois, studied at Northwestern University, and his First Symphony was premiered by the Colorado Philharmonic when he was 17 years old. Mark Camphouse writes: "Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1954, Ivy Green (the birthplace of Helen Keller) is located on a lovely 642 acre tract in historic Tuscumbia, Alabama. Truly America's first lady of courage, Helen Keller's powerful and wonderfully lyrical writings (ideally suited to musical dramatization) are just as compelling now as they were when they first appeared over half a century ago." It is these words that are set to music by Mr. Camphouse for soprano and wind orchestra in his piece Symphony from Ivy Green.

Amy Beach was a member first of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Boston and later of St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in New York. Early in the century, a movement had begun in Oxford to renew in the Anglican church the Catholic traditions of the ancient past. The Church restored the ancient practice of singing the liturgy for the services and designed the rituals of worship to express the awe and mystery of the Christian faith. Choirs proliferated and there was a great demand for new liturgical music and anthems. During the years of Beach's marriage to Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, her publisher issued 14 separate pieces, including most of the music contained on this wonderful CD. The origin of The Canticle of the Sun is interesting. In 1924, she went to the MacDowell Colony. Here, she came across the text of St. Francis of Assisi's Canticle of the Sun. In a 1943 interview published in The Etude, she told this story. "I took it up and read it over - and the only way I can describe what happened as that it jumped at me and struck me, most forcibly! As if from dictation, I jotted down the notes of my Canticle. In less than five days the entire work was done." The first performance of the work with Organ accompaniment took place on December 8, 1928 at St. Bartholomew's in New York. The Toledo Choral Society, performing with the Chicago Symphony, gave the premiere of The Canticle with Orchestra on May 13, 1930. "The Canticle of the Sun by Mrs. H.H. A. Beach proved the sensation of the evening. This biblical hymn of praise and jubilation, set in a glorious musical expression of majestic melody... literally brought the audience to its feet in a desire to honor the composer."

The wonderful draw of this album, besides the music of Samuel Adler is the great artistry of the various musicians involved in this project. What talent lies in American Orchestras! This disc proves it beyond question. Samuel Adler was born in Mannheim, Germany in 1928 and came to the United States in 1939. He holds a B.M. from Boston University and an M.A. from Harvard University. During his tenure in the U.S. Army, he founded and conducted the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra and because of the Orchestra's great psychological and musical impact on the European cultural scene, he was awarded the Army's Medal of Honor. His catalogue includes more than 400 published works in all media. He has also published three books. From 1966 to 1994 he was professor of composition at the Eastman School. He was the chairman of the department since 1974. He is currently on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music. The pieces on this disc were all composed at the request of and for all the friends Dr. Adler has made in America's Orchestras over the years.

So, what is Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines? Is it an opera? Yes, it is, but more specifically it is "A Romantic Comedy in Music." Based on the play by Clyde Fitch, Sheldon Harnick wrote the libretto for this opera that was first performed in 1975 by the Kansas City Lyric Theatre. Born in 1921, Jack Beeson became interested in opera after listening to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and as a teenager wrote a five-act libretto. His interest in opera revived while teaching at Columbia University and he has gone on to write 11 operas as well as works for orchestra, concert band, vocal and choral groups and solo and chamber music. He is the MacDowell Professor Emeritus of Music at Columbia. This recording, originally issued on Columbia and long out of print, brings this delightful opera back to the catalog.

The texts for this magnificent oratorio, The Revelations of Divine Love, are adapted primarily from the writings of Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-1416); an excerpt from the Book of Margery Kempe; two poems by Robert Herrick and one by Elizabeth Kirschner. The primary concept underlying this oratorio is the presence of two distinct discourses. One is a sequence taken from Julian's religious visions and the other is a "sonic geography" of Nantucket Island.

For seven years, the New York-based contemporary music ensemble Sequitur has been re-defining the concert by finding new contexts for new music. Through staging events incorporating theater and dance, or producing tantalizing cabarets on themes like lust and greed, Sequitur turns the traditional sanctimonious contemporary music experience upside down. On this disc, they re-examine the contemporary American concerto. Although it dates back to Baroque composers in the late 17th century, the concerto reached its artistic pinnacle with Romantic composers of the 19th and early 20th century. But what does the concerto mean in the United States at the beginning of the 21st century, when personal freedoms are threatened both by indiscriminate acts of terrorism and by responses that many find necessary in order to preserve safety and stability? For starters, the paradigm of “us versus them” – the message behind the concertino and ripieno of the Baroque concerto grosso as well as the heroic romantic solo concerto – seems outmoded. We shun the model of a group controlling an individual, just as we shun this model turned inside out. And our view of an individual now is rarely one of hero, or anti-hero, or even of complete self-determination. All of these ideas affect the concerto of today, where the role of the soloist is not always clearly defined, where other players may rise as soloists at times and then disappear again into the fabric, where sub-groups may compete with the soloist and with each other for prominence, where the soloist may not be poised to interact and hopefully to triumph. Even the word “concerto” may be suspect: Only Elliott Carter’s work among the four on this disc employs the word “concerto” in its title.

Carver Blanchard is the former lutenist for the Smithsonian Institution and now teaches guitar and lute at Wesleyan University. He has divided this recording into three sections. The first, Audubon, is a tone poem for solo lute by Blanchard inspired by a poem of Robert Penn Warren by the same name. The second section, Heartsongs, is a recreation of a late 19th-early 20th century home musicale and the third is a group of hymns from the 1940 Episcopal hymnal arranged by Blanchard for solo lute.

Composer Matt Cataldi first conceived of these 24 Preludes as live improvisations. Teaching during COVID, he used the Op. 28 Preludes as the basis for a class on improvisation. In the weeks that followed he decided to formally plan a composition and over the next two years, he arranged and recorded them. His goal was to create unique and innovative pieces that would stand on their own while still being related and inspired by Chopin's Preludes. Dr. Matthew Cataldi enjoys a versatile career as a soloist, collaborative artist, conductor, composer, and educator. He studied at Florida State University as well as Indiana University. He currently is on the faculty at Radford University, where he is the director of piano studies.

Composer Jan Krzywicki is on the faculty at Temple University's Boyer College of Music and Dance, and conductor of the new music ensemble, Network for New Music. This new collection of his music radiates a virtuosic craft and flowing lyricism that emphasizes the blending of color shading in instrumental and vocal timbres, and the illusion of light in music. The recipient of numerous awards and commissions from prestigious performers and ensembles, his music has been heard throughout the United States. This is the third recording on Albany Records to feature his compositions.

The 21st Century Consort, founded in 1975, performs an annual concert series at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Under the direction of its founder and conductor, Christopher Kendall, the Consort's artists include principal players from the National Symphony Orchestra, along with other prominent chamber musicians from the Washington, DC area. In addition to its history of touring, broadcasts and recordings, the Consort's four decades of performances have been recorded live and comprise a growing archive of contemporary music. For this recording, they have chosen three major works, two of which (Christopher Patton's Out of Darkness and James Primosch's Sacred Songs and Meditations) were commissioned by the 21st Century Consort. Stephen Albert's music has long been championed by the 21st Century Consort so the inclusion of his Cathedral Music on this recording is especially fitting.

Composer Cecil Price Walden says that Hours “is a journey through a dark night of the soul,” with inspiration taken from the Book of Hours — an exact guide for how and when to pray. Born in 1991, Walden draws on the rich musical, literary, and culinary legacies of the South to create work that is both familiar and new. Mezzo-soprano Alice Anne Light is known for her expressive, limpid singing and sound technique across a broad variety of repertoire. She is a frequent performer on the opera stage, in musical theater, and in recital. She is on the faculty of Texas Tech University.

Pianist Pola Baytelman performs works for piano by American composers Joseph Fennimore, George Crumb and Lowell Liebermann. She is joined by flutist Jan Vinci in Katherine Hoover's Medieval Suite. Born in Chile, Baytelman has studied at the University of Chile's National Conservatory, the New England Conservatory and the University of Texas, Austin. She is an active recitalist who has toured extensively in China, Europe, Hong Kong, South America and across the United States. Her recording on Centaur of Schumann's Humoreske was listed by American Record Guide as one of the top performances of the work. This is her second recording for Albany Records. The first, From Chile to Cuba (TROY1116) received high praise from the press. Jan Vinci, Baytelman's colleague at Skidmore, where both are artists-in-residence, has been hailed as an "exquisite performer" by High Performance Review. She appears on two other recording on Albany Records, including a solo recording titled Global Flutescapes (TROY947).

Over the last four decades as a composer, Robert Sirota has developed a distinctive voice, clearly discernable in all of his work. The New York Times has described his style as "fashioned with the clean angular melodies, tart harmonies, lively sncopations and punchy accents of American Neo-Classicism." His music has garnered praise from audiences and critics alike throughout the United States and Abroad and he is the recipient of numerous commissions and awards. A graduate of Juilliard, Oberlin, and Harvard, Sirota studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. He served as Director of The Johns Hopkins University's Peabody Institute, Director of Boston University's School of Music and most recently as President of Manhattan School of Music. Married to the noted organist Victoria Sirota, Sirota has collaborated over the years with her in creating a body of work for organ, as well as liturgical and concert works for organ with choir, orchestra, and chamber ensembles. All the works on this recording were composed for, and are performed by Ms. Sirota.

Cendrillon opened at the Paris Opéra-Comique on February 22, 1810, and brought unprecedented success to composer Nicolo Isouard and his librettist Charles-Guillaume Étienne. However, beginning in 1817 Rossini's La Cenerentola superceded Isouard's opera and Cendrillon fell into obscurity.The head of Opera Music Studies at Manhattan, William Tracy along with Jennifer Gliere, conductor Pierre Vallet and director Dona D. Vaughn have prepared an entirely new edition and production for this recording. In fact, orchestral parts could not be located, nor the original score. Working from the original manuscript and the first printed edition, Mr. Tracy and Ms. Gliere created the present edition heard here. You can now hear Isouard's brilliant "perfect little jewel box" opera, Cendrillon, last performed in the United States on July 13, 1827 at the Park Theater by a French company from New Orleans.

This recording celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Pro Arte Quartet -- the oldest string quartet continuously in existence and the first university-ensemble residency in the United States -- plus the dramatic story of how a prominent European quartet became an American one. Founded in Belgium in 1912, the Pro Arte Quartet became stranded while on tour in Madison, Wisconsin in 1940 when the Nazis invaded their country. The University of Wisconsin offered this quartet in exile a permanent home at the university, where it has remained ever since. Six new chamber works were commissioned to celebrate this occasion -- now all available on compact disc. This disc contains String Quartet No. 3 by Benoît Mernier (b. 1964), the leading Belgian composer of his generation and Pierre Jalbert's (b. 1967) work for clarinet and string quartet. Jalbert is the recipient of many awards, including the BBC Masterprize and teaches composition at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music. Mernier, also the recipient of commissions and awards, is also a virtuoso organist. He was inducted into the Royal Academy of Belgium in 2007.

Morris Rosenzweig was born in New Orleans, where he grew up among tailors, merchants and strong-willed women of an extended family which has lived in southern Louisiana since the mid 1890s. His catalog of over 50 entries features works for orchestra, various chamber ensembles, compositions for live instruments and electronics, two song cycles, two piano cycles, solo pieces and one opera. This current Albany compilation represents his latest approach to an array of chamber music genres. The University of Utah named him University Professor in 1999, and additionally honored him with a Distinguished Scholarly and Creative Research Award in 2003. He is an active conductor and coach, and has worked for many years with the Chamber Players of the League-ISCM in New York and the Canyonlands Ensemble in Utah. Presently Professor of Music at the University of Utah - where he teaches composition, theory, contemporary performance practice, and directs the Maurice Abravanel Visiting Composers Series - he 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.

Robert Baksa is one of America's most prolific composers with more than 500 works to his credit. He was born in New York City in 1938 but grew up in Tucson, Arizona. Baksa attended the University of Arizona, then returned to New York to live after spending a summer at Tanglewood. Currently he serves as Resident Composer and Coordinator of New Music for the Pleshakov Music Center in Hudson, New York. The Octet for Woodwinds was completed in 1972 and takes its inspiration from the wind serenades of the early classical period. The Quintet for Flute and Strings, written in 1973, was premiered at the National Flute Association Convention. The 1974 Nonet for Winds and Strings was commissioned by the Chamber Music Conference of the East at Bennington, Vermont. It was written to be presented during the period of the composer's tenure as Composer-in-Residence that summer and was later taken up by other chamber ensembles across the country including the Bronx Arts Ensemble, which has premiered and recorded more than a dozen of Baksa's chamber works.

The youngest of eight children raised by a widowed mother, Lawrence Dillon grew up in Summit, New Jersey, just outside of New York City. In 1985, he became the youngest composer to earn a doctorate at the Juilliard School, winning the coveted Gretchaninoff Prize upon graduation. He studied privately with Vincent Persichetti, and in classes with Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, David Diamond and Roger Sessions. Upon graduation, he was appointed to the Juilliard faculty. In 1990, he was offered the position of Assistant Dean at the North Carolina School of the Arts where he is now Composer-in-Residence and conductor of the contemporary music ensemble. "The three compositions on this album grew out of my increasing dissatisfaction with post-modernist techniques. Connected to so many surfaces, I found myself longing for depths. I began composing works that contained clear connections with Western musical tradition, both because of my love and respect for the greatest accomplishments of Western music and because I felt a growing number of people had lost touch with that amazing heritage. The result was a series of works that combined Western music traditions and popular idioms in nontraditional ways. Unlike the shocking disjunctions of postmodernism, however, the works on this recording aim for a seamless fusion, a common ground between genres where similarities convey specific meanings, and distinctions become irrelevant."

The chamber music repertoire for horn may not be vast, but it can boast of exceptional works that employ the instrument in myriad intriguing ways as so elegantly demonstrated by Richard King on this recording. King, principal horn of the Cleveland Orchestra since 1997, has been featured numerous times as soloist with Cleveland as well as with the Tokyo Symphony and Auckland Philharmonia. A graduate of Curtis, King was a member of the Center City Brass Quintet. He is on the faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music. King is joined on this disc by his colleagues from the Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Institute.

The composer writes: "Attracted I guess to the Dvorak Sextet and the two by Brahms, I ventured in 1970 to write a Sextet of my own. From the outset, I wanted the added symphonic richness afforded by six parts, but with each of the players having plenty of developmental and contrapuntal linear activity. The Lutheran hymn, Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland stimulated me, much more in the mid-Baroque setting by Praetorius than in the fully-tonal (and thus predictable if better known) J.S. Bach version. I decided to make this tune the crown of the Sextet. My Spanish Songs Besos sin Cuento resulted from two motivations, and it should be admitted from the outset that I have absolutely no knowledge of the Spanish language other than certain culinary terminology. For some time, I was drawn to the remarkable songs in the Sephardic tradition more than 500 years old and my motivation was to find some poetry of this heritage that had not yet been musically set. As I have felt driven to compose songs in as many languages as possible, I have also wanted to write sonatas or concertos for all the standard orchestral instruments. Over many years, I realized I had come fairly close, and decided in the mid 90s to fill in the gaps, at that time clarinet, bassoon, trombone and double bass. As of this writing (2002) only bassoon and double bass remain. The power and nobility of the trombone cannot and should not be denied, and my sonata, therefore, is rather

All the performances on this disc are world premieres. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was born and educated in Florence. He studied composition with Ildebrando Pizzetti and was noticed by Alfredo Casella when he was still a young man. He worked as a pianist and freelance composer until 1939. Then, sensing the approaching danger of the Second World War, he fled fascist Italy and settled in Beverly Hills, California, where he lived and worked until his death in 1968. His early music, with its distinctive use of Italian lyricism combined with the techniques of French impressionism, made him a welcome member of the Italian progressive school. He found his greatest sources of inspiration in the Bible, his Jewish heritage and in his native Tuscany. He was a great melodist and continued to compose right up until the end of his life. Towards the end he also composed music for films. His music was performed by Toscanini, Heifetz, Segovia and Piatagorsky.

Professor of Composition and Chair of the Composition Department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, David Conte serves on the faculty of the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, the board of the American Composers Forum and as Composer in Residence with Cappella SF as well. A graduate of Bowling Green State University and Cornell, Conte studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, where he was one of her last students. He has composed more than 80 works, including six operas and has received commissions and performances of his music from many noted performing ensembles in the United States. In recent years, he has turned his attention to instrumental music and this recording of three of these represent his longest and most ambitious essays in this form. The performances by distinguished new music performers in San Francisco reveal dramatic and lyrical melodies.

In 1927, Bernard Herrmann was a sixteen year old student at DeWitt Clinton High School in New York. Bored by his instructors, he eagerly sought out other rebellious spirits among his peers, and found one - a fellow composer, no less - in his German class: 14 year old Jerome Moross. A close friendship began, and for the next several years the two friends explored the musical by-ways of New York together, attending concerts and seeking out such composers as Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, George Gershwin and Morton Gould. In the early 1930s, as members of the Young Composers Group - a small band of New York composers modeled after the Russian Five, and led by Copland, Herrmann and Moross gave the first public performances of their music. Both composers were inspired by the vigorous American idiom of Ives, Copland and others; but while Herrmann's music was increasingly shaped by European models, Moross was most drawn to American folk music and other popular forms. Now, all these years later, here these two friends are joined in their music on this delightful disc.

Ted Hoyle, the cellist on this recording that includes two sonatas for cello and piano observes: "Of the four chamber works by Joseph Fennimore on this recording, two are programmatically linked to Marcel Proust's monumental Remembrance of Things Past. For half of the 1970s, Fennimore was obsessed with the work, and viewed the world through Proust-colored glasses. His first composition to reflect its input was the Quartet (after Vinteuil)...Swann in Love is the second homage to Proust. A sonata in one movement, there are two theme groups in the tonic and dominant respectively, development of this material, and a restatement of these themes in the tonic. Fennimore's First Sonata for Cello and Piano is full of epithets as to its interpretation. Both have four movements and modify traditional forms...Dominated by the piano, The Second Sonata with its Spanish cast, is a more complex work. The composer considers the four movements to be elements of a large-scale sonata form in which 'moods, melodic fragments - even keys themselves - are returned to for the sake of their peculiar color.'"

The music of the young Iraqi-American composer Karim Al-Zand has been called "strong and startlingly lovely" by the Boston Globe. His compositions are wide-ranging, from settings of classical Arabic poetry to scores for dance and pieces for young audiences. Many of his works explore connections between music and other arts. He holds degrees from Harvard and McGill Universities and is currently on the faculty of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. This recording, his first for Albany Records, shows his love for chamber music and small instrumental ensembles.

Peter G. Davis writes: "Spanning the years 1978 to 2001, the music on this disc gives a useful overview of the musical aims and stylistic development of a prominent, productive, and often provocative American composer between the ages of 17 and 40. It is a useful mini-survey and a revealing one as well. All five works are written for small instrumental combinations, an exposed medium in which no composer has ever found an easy place to hide. In chamber music every note counts, and the composer must make the performer as well as the listener feel actively engaged with the music's substance and forward progress at all times, if the piece is to emerge as a fully satisfying listening experience. Anyone who listens closely to Lowell Liebermann's scores has to be impressed by their ability to do precisely this in music notable for its clarity and textural lucidity. Some will be tempted to call these works neo-romantic, neo-classical, post-modern, or any number of other fashionable terms, most of them not very helpful. Labels are often misleading, but one thing is certain; Liebermann is not concerned with startling his audiences by experimenting with radical new structures, never-before-heard musical sounds, or extended instrumental techniques. Indeed, he adopts a more conservative stance that apparently stings certain critics for whom novelty is absolutely essential if a new work is to be considered artistically valid. So much the worse for them. Liebermann is too busy composing to enter into such aesthetic arguments. The title of each piece on this disc honestly describes what it is, and in terms that composers as far back as Haydn and Mozart would recognize. Liebermann's music falls gratefully upon the ear, but it is filtered through the sensibility of a composer who clearly lives in our time and is fully aware of the tumultuous musical upheavals of the past century, even as he consciously makes the choice to offer us something that rises above the fray. Liebermann writes music that above all strives for balance and beauty - and braininess as well, for all those who care to dig beneath the surface. It is a healthy sign of the times that a composer can once again choose to be accessible in this way and not be automatically squashed and discouraged by the mandarins of contemporary music. Such was the fate of many American composers active in the generation that preceded Liebermann, and the new music scene is still in recovery from those bad old days."

A native of Detroit, Paul Schoenfield began musical training at age six. He holds a degree from the Mellon University, as well as a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Arizona. A man of broad interests, he is also an avid scholar of mathematics and Hebrew. He held his first teaching post in Toledo, has lived on a kibbutz in Israel, was a free-lance composer and pianist in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and ultimately moved to Cleveland and then to Israel. Schoenfield and his family now divide their time between Israel and the United States. He has produced a large body of work for soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestra and recently completed a full-length folk opera, The Merchant and the Pauper, commissioned by the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Six British Folk Songs, a six-movement suite for cello and piano, was written in the summer of 1985 as a tribute to the cellist Jacqueline du Pre. It was commissioned by the Sewell family and premiered by cellist Laura Sewell, who had been a student of Du Pre. Sparks of Glory was written in 1995 for the Sea Cliff Chamber Players. It was commissioned by the Tilles family, who had specifically requested a work for narrator commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. For this purpose, "I could think of nothing more fitting than the accounts written by the Polish-Israeli journalist Moshe Prager."