The Promise of the Far Horizon

Jeffrey Mumford was born in Washington, D.C. and has been conspicuously active in that city's musical life. His music has been performed throughout the United States and abroad and the present CD was preceded by one on the CRI label, similarly devoted to his chamber music. Honors, awards, fellowships and commissions have come to him from many prestigious sources. Following a year as composer-in-residence at Bowling Green State University's College of Musical Arts, Mumford joined the faculty of the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music in the fall of 2000. Two of Mumford's orchestral works - the celebratory fanfare Within a cloudburst of echoing brightness (1995) and Amid the light of quickening memory (2003) were commissioned and introduced by the National Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin. These titles are characteristic for Mumford. He has shunned traditional sonatas and symphonies in favor of music that tends to define its own shape and substance, and his titles allude to the impressions or moods behind the creative impulse. References to light, radiance and resonance are as abundant in his titles as references to angels in the works of Einojuhani Rautavaara and Augusta Read Thomas. Mumford has stated that his music in general is "inspired by cloud imagery, light and the unique aspects of the energy that characterize the various times of day." While his works are generated from such impressions, they are not tone poems in the conventional sense of "painting pictures" or delineating action, and listeners would be well advised to avoid seeking or expecting specific images in them.