Here of Amazing Most Now

Gerald Levinson was raised in Connecticut and has been increasingly recognized as one of the major composers of his generation. His principal teachers were George Crumb, George Rochberg and Richard Wernick at the University of Pennsylvania, and Ralph Shapey at the University of Chicago. This is the second Albany CD devoted to the music of Gerald Levinson, following TROY742, a collection of three chamber-orchestra works released in 2005. Critic Paul Griffiths has written, "What must thrill anyone who comes into contact with Gerald Levinson's music is its sheer joy in sound, and the decisiveness with which it sings or dances its way through time...In sympathy with sound, in sympathy with time, Levinson's music is close to the natural phenomena on which all music depends. Two things spring from this. One is that his music can easily evoke other natural phenomena: the sea, the stars, rugged landscapes. The other is that this music is in tune with other kinds of music from around the world. Levinson's resources are classical western: he writes for the symphony orchestra, for the piano, and for chamber groupings of conventional instruments. His disciplines, too, are those of the western tradition. But the east was present in his music even before his first trip there. His works, right through his career so far, exist on companionable terms with Mahler's music and with Bali's, with Ravel's and with Japan's, with Messiaen's and with India's, with Stravinsky's and with China's, with America's symphonic tradition and with Tibet's slow melody. Out of all this he is creating, piece by piece, a world of his own."