Brass Knuckles

While the music on this recording is not Scott Joplin, it most certainly does capture the flavor of old time rags. Sydney Hodkinson, the producer for this series of Eastman recordings says: "From roughly the late 1930s through the early sixties, most serious American composers worked within one of two basic musical encampments, continuing and expanding upon traditions established by the 20th century giants Schoenberg and Stravinsky. In striking contrast to this earlier era, today's younger generation of composer benefits from exposure to what has been called a +veritable salad bowl of styles,' marked by an extremely wide range of character, aesthetics and musical cross-currents. The works represented in this Eastman American Music Series of new music recordings bear eloquent testimony to the effect this healthy and diverse musical diet has had on the work of American composers. Various auditory repasts offer composers a choice of forms and influences from such divergent sources as jazz, non-Western music, romanticism, dodecaphony, minimalism, pop and rock, asceticism, cross-over, and spiritualism and all on the same menu! This variety serves both as a high-calorie, vibrant sign of our own creative times, and as a demanding burden placed upon American composers seeking, indeed groping for, their own unique voices: +Red or green peppers? Radish? How much onion? What kind of lettuce? How do I choose my OWN language that will allow me to speak what I need to say?' The works recorded on this disc present the distinct and often unusual offerings of a few leading, contemporary American +workers' in this sonic kitchen." The pianist for this disc, Tony Caramia, is associate professor of piano at the Eastman School of Music, where he is director of piano pedagogy studies and coordinator of the class piano program.