Elliott Schwartz: Darwin’s Dream

Born in 1936, the eminent American composer Elliott Schwartz has had a distinguished career as a composer, professor and writer. He is the Robert K. Beckwith Professor of Music Emeritus at Bowdoin College, where he taught from 1964 to 2007. His music has been performed by major orchestras and ensembles around the world and he has held visiting appointments at Oxford University, the Royal Danish Academies, and the Rotterdam and Amsterdam Conservatories, among many others. His style is marked by a fondness for unsynchronized layers of activity, highly dramatic -- even theatrical -- gestures, and brilliant instrumental colors. Although the three works on this recording appear to be widely contrasted in certain surface ways, they also share important features. Each was conceived as the response to a personal experience and each explores a layering of textures.