Catalog

The four compositions here might seem very disparate: a string quartet; a piece for unaccompanied choir; a sextet with electronic ambience; and finally a trombone solo in which the electronic interventions come right into the foreground. On listening, however, the differences begin to dissolve, leaving behind them the outlines of a distinct creative personality. One feature they share is fearlessness; another is their rhythmic dynamism and another is the containment of rhythmic and harmonic tensions in small motifs. The composer, David Felder, has long been recognized as a leader in his generation of American composers. His works have been featured at many of the leading international festivals for new music and he earns continuing recognition through performance and commissioning programs.

Composer Mary Lee Taylor Kinosian is also the violinist for the Upton Trio. Her music draws on and celebrates the American experience. The Upton Trio was formed in 1989 to present chamber music concerts for schools in South Carolina. The Trio has performed at Weill Recital Hall in New York City, at the Kennedy Center, and has been featured on NBC Nightly News. The Trio maintains an active commissioning program and has recorded several compact discs. The Upton Trio is permanent artist-in-residence at the Nickelodeon Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina.

This disc marks the first commercial recording of the music of Donald Sur -- one that is long overdue. Donald Sur was born in Honolulu of Korean parentage. He studied at UCLA, Princeton and Harvard. He resided in the Boston area, teaching occasionally at Harvard, M.I.T. and Tufts. Among contemporary composers in New England, Donald Sur was one of the best known and best loved. His colleagues and friends have universally respected his eclectic style, which reflects a variety of interests but remains unmistakably personal. His music is permeated with a quiet, sometimes bemused expressivity, and simultaneously a structural firmness quite unlike anyone else's today.

Highlighting this recording is the chamber opera, The Birth of Something on a libretto by Will Eno. Commissioned by Da Camera of Houston, The Birth of Something represents an important, elegant, and highly personal contribution to the genre. An associate professor of composition at Rice University, composer Anthony Brandt earned his degrees from the California Institute of the Arts and Harvard. Among his many honors and awards are a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New England Foundation for the Arts. He is co-founder and artistic director of the Houston-based contemporary music ensemble Musiqa.

Robert Xavier Rodríguez is one of the most significant and often-performed American composers of his generation. His music has been described as "Romantically dramatic" and "richly lyrical" by the press. He first gained international recognition in 1971 when he was awarded the Prix de Composition Musicale Prince Pierre de Monaco for his Trio I heard on this recording. A student of Nadia Boulanger, Rodríguez also studied composition with Jacob Druckman, Bruno Maderna and Elliott Carter. He holds the Endowed Chair of University Professor at The University of Texas at Dallas. His music has been performed all over the world by orchestras and at chamber music festivals. This recording offers a much-welcomed survey of his chamber music.

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.

This second recording on Albany Records of the music of the distinguished American-born Canadian composer Michael Horwood features his music for percussion. The inspiration for the series of Piece Percussioniques, as well as the impetus for composing for percussion ensemble, came from two influential sources for the teen-aged Horwood: the innovative programming of Lukas Foss during his tenure with the Buffalo Philharmonic and from Horwood's exposure to the music of Edgard Varèse. These works for percussion ensemble span Horwood's compositional career: Piece No. 1 was written when he was 17 and Piece No. 6 is his most recent and final composition.

The Atlanta Chamber Winds led by Robert J. Ambrose, offer a sparkling concert of music for wind ensemble by composers who lived and worked in Paris. All but one (the Pierné) are world premiere recordings and offer a substantial addition to the wind ensemble discography. Perhaps most interesting is Francis Chagrin who was born in Bucharest as Alexander Paucker but moved to Paris in 1928 and changed his name. He was most famous for his film music but he also wrote chamber music, two symphonies and songs.

For their fourth recording on Albany Records, the Rawlins Piano Trio has once again uncovered gems of the American repertoire including three world premiere recordings of the Grasse, Risher and Wilson and a commissioned work from the brilliant young composer Daniel Bernard Roumain. Founded in 1987 the Rawlins Piano Trio performs regularly throughout the United States and abroad. They have formed a reputation as a preeminent interpreter of 19th and early 20th century American music.

A singular figure in today's new music scene, Janet Maguire was the recipient of the 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship. Distinguished by her arrangement of the Finale of Giacomo Puccini's Turandot and by her own opera, Hérésie, Maguire has worked in a wide variety of genres. Maguire was music critic for the Paris Herald Tribune and founded a new music ensemble in Venice, Musica in Divenire.

Called a "composer to watch" by Opera News, Elena Ruehr's music has been performed by the Borremeo String Quartet, the Shanghai String Quartet, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (where she was composer in residence from 2000-2005), and the Cincinnati Symphony, among others. Dr. Ruehr was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute in 2009 and she teaches in the music department at MIT.

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."

Peter Child is Professor of Music and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT. A graduate of Reed College and Brandeis University, Child has received fellowships and commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and the Harvard Musical Association, among others. His compositions have been awarded prizes from Tanglewood, East and West Artists, WGBH Radio, and New England Conservatory, to mention just a few. Child is presently composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic and his music was featured at the Lontano Festival of American Music in London in 2006 and 2008.

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.

Viva Concertante! showcases works for chamber orchestra involving soloistic display, and features the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Conservatory Studio for New Music, as well as the University of Iowa's Center for New Music Ensemble. The compositions were either written or revised in the last dozen years. And just as old- and new-world connections are forged by means of the performing groups, a like situation extends to the ethnicity of the composers, with Italian, German, and English contributors as well as Chinese-, German-, Macedonian- and Welsh-Americans.

This recording is a joint effort between American composers with ties to the Midwestern states and Russian performers associated with the Moscow Conservatory Studio for New Music, and as such represents a unique collaboration meant to deepen artistic and cultural bonds between the two nations in this early portion of the 21st century.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

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."

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.