Catalog

Christopher Pegis, cellist is the founder and Artistic Director of Amici Chamber Players and a cellist with the Florida String Quartet. He writes: "This recording is in many ways a product of my large extended musical family, my work with the Florida West Coast Symphony, and indeed the very nature of creative collaborations. Although it was not planned this way, the performers and composers are all linked to one another in some way by family, friendship and work. I was lucky to have met Soulima Stravinsky and his wife, Francoise, and was involved in earlier recordings and performances of his music before they both passed away. Through the Stravinskys, a link was made to his father Igor and to fellow composer Charles Jones. Although my memory of this is dim, apparently I did shake Jones' hand at a reception in New York City following my ensemble's concert to honor Soulima's chamber music compositions. Thomas Massella and Efrain Amaya are former college classmates of myself and my wife, respectively; Paul Ramsier came to us via the Florida West Coast Symphony and his collaborations with Symphony bassist John Miller. When we started to physically record this music, we jointly decided to try to avoid cutting and splicing at all costs. Our aim was to impart the excitement and sweep of a live performance to our audience. This put extra pressure on all of the performers, but the result is that what you are hearing is 98% splice free from beginning to end. In fact, nine of the eleven compositions are complete takes from start to finish."

It was Biljana Milovanovic, pianist for the Ibis Camerata ensemble, who conceived this project of recording a group of compositions by Yehudi Wyner. Mr. Wyner performed in one piece (with Richard Stoltzman) and conducted another, but his major contribution was in coaching performers in matters of his style. The music spans 50 years of Wyner's compositional output beginning with the Partita for Piano of 1952 and arriving at Commedia for Clarinet and Piano of 2002. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, Yehudi Wyner is one of America's most versatile musicians. His compositions include more than 60 works and he has received many commissions and honors in addition to the Pulitzer. He has taught at Yale, SUNY Purchase, Cornell, Harvard and Brandeis. This is the fourth recording by the Ibis Camerata to appear on Albany Records.

Robert Lombardo was born in Hartford, Connecticut to Sicilian immigrants. He graduated with a master's degree in composition from the Hartt School of Music where he studied with Arnold Franchetti. He was awarded a Ph.D. in composition from the State University of Iowa. Lombardo holds the title of Professor Emeritus from Roosevelt University where he was Professor of Theory and Composition and Composer-in-residence from 1965 until 1999. The composer writes: "Although the mandolin has occasionally been used by composers in contemporary literature, e.g., Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Crumb, I always thought of the instrument in the folk category. About a dozen years ago, my perception of the use of the mandolin changed. In 1991, Dimitris Marinos, a student who recently arrived from Greece, came to my studio at Roosevelt University for his first composition lesson. He had a mandolin case tucked under his arm. After his lesson, I was curious and asked him if he wouldn't mind playing his mandolin for me. I guess I expected him to play a folk tune, and was pleasantly surprised - amazed would be a better word - when he played a very complex work replete with multiple stops, fast chromatic passages that covered the entire range of the instrument - in an apparent effortless fashion. I was captivated by this young man's musicality and virtuosity. After he showed me some of the instrument's technical capabilities, I thought about writing a short composition for him." That is the origin of how the compositions that appear on this disc came about.

Richard Wilson is the composer of some eighty works in many genres, including opera. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, Mr. Wilson holds the Mary Conover Mellon Chair in Music at Vassar; he is also Composer-in-Residence with the American Symphony Orchestra for which he gives pre-concert talks. He has been a member of the program committee of the Bard Music Festival since its inception. His String Quartet No. 3 was commissioned for the Muir String Quartet by the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation. The Muir gave the first performances at Yale and Vassar in April, 1983 and recorded the work for CRI. In July, 1984, the Delme Quartet gave the London premiere in Wigmore Hall. The String Quartet No. 4 was commissioned for the Chicago String Quartet by the Prince Charitable Trusts and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. The world premiere of the four-movement version took place at the 92nd Street Y, New York City, on January 17, 1998. The five-movement version (the version presented here) was premiered at Vassar College on February 17, 2001. In both instances, The Chicago String Quartet performed. Canzona for Horn and String Quartet was written in 2001 in memory of Luise Vosgerchian, who died in March, 2000. The composer writes: "Ms. Vosgerchian taught music at Harvard for thirty-one years beginning in 1959, the year I became a student there. A charismatic performer, lecturer and mentor, she was an inspiration to hundreds of young musicians at Harvard, Tanglewood and in the Boston area." The work received its first performance at Vassar College on February 8, 2002, by the same performers who have recorded it here.

William Kraft was appointed to the Dorothy and Sherrill C. Corwin Chair in Music Composition at the University of California at Santa Barbara in September, 1991, in recognition of his long and distinguished career as a composer, conductor and teacher. He served as percussionist and timpanist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1955-1981 and he was the Orchestra's first composer-in-residence. He also served as regular guest conductor and was assistant conductor for three seasons. His music has been performed by every major American Orchestra and he has won numerous awards. Established in 1969 by music director Richard Pittman, the Boston Musica Viva is one of the oldest, most distinguished new music ensembles in the United States. With rare exceptions, a new work is premiered at each one of their concerts, usually from an American composer. Jane Manning has long been established internationally as a leading exponent of contemporary music, with more than 300 premieres to her credit. Her extensive discography includes works by Messiaen, Schoenberg and Ligeti, with conductors such as Boulez and Rattle. It is a pleasure for Albany Records to bring you such a distinguished group of performers giving us Mr. Kraft's music. All the works recorded here are world premieres.

Composer by character and performer by temperament, James Scott Balentine brings a complex mix of multicultural and eclectic experiences to his music. Professor of Music at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Balentine has received awards, grants and commissions from the Barlow Endowment, the Opera Guild of San Antonio, and many chamber ensembles and soloists. For this recording, clarinetist Robert Walzel has assembled works for clarinet and piano; clarinet and bassoon; and clarinet ensemble. Most of these works have received performances at the annual ClarinetFest conferences that take place around the world. Performer Robert Walzel has been featured at music festivals and other venues around the world for more than 25 years and was principal clarinet of the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra before becoming Dean of the School of Music at the University of Kansas.

Fetherolf's music has been premiered throughout the Americas and Europe. He writes, "I have a special love for the cello; I started life as a cellist. My first large orchestral work was a Concerto for Cello and Orchestra." His affinity for string instruments is beautifully demonstrated by the renowned members of the Gamavilla Quartet of Moravia.

Lewis Spratlan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, was born in Miami. His music is performed regularly throughout the United States. A number of works have toured widely, as far afield as Russia and Armenia. Spratlan's work has been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim and Massachusetts Artists Foundations, the NEA, Tanglewood and the MacDowell Colony. His opera Life is a Dream won a top prize in the Rockefeller Foundation-New England Conservatory Opera Competition and appeared on the New York City Opera's "Showcasing American Opera" series in 2002; his Apollo and Daphne Variations won the New England Composers Orchestra Competition. Among recent works is the one-act opera Earthrise, on a libretto by Constance Congdon, which was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera; a piano quartet commissioned by the Ravinia Festival; and Sojourner for ten players, commissioned for Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress. Since 1970, he has been on the music faculty of Amherst College and has also taught and conducted at Penn State, Tanglewood and the Yale Summer School of Music. It is a great pleasure to welcome this distinguished composer to the Albany Records catalog.

The Manhattan Wind Quintet was founded in 1985, while several of its members were earning degrees at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City and playing in the prestigious National Orchestral Association. From the beginning, the ensemble has been active in advancing the cause of new music for winds. It is not surprising then, that this, their first recording, is a collection of contemporary works composed by young Americans with whom they have collaborated over the years. Judith Zaimont composed When Angels Speak during November and December 1987, while she was flat on her back recovering from a broken leg. It is an 11 minute work, in one movement with four large sections. From the beginning it was conceived as an ensemble work, using the five players almost all the time, almost as a miniature band. Since 1992 she has been professor of composition at the University of Minnesota School of Music in Minneapolis. Peter Susser composed his Till Drumlin Waves in 1989. Today he is a member of the faculties of Columbia University and the School of Continuing Education at New York University. The composer Stephen Wisner wrote his Nocturne for Wind Quintet in August 1993 in honor of his mother who had recently died. "My objective was to commemorate my mother with an enjoyable and romantic piece, they type she would have enjoyed. The music of mine that she liked best involved uncomplicated key signatures and pretty melodies. I have incorporated one of her favorite melodies into this Nocturne: the "Children's Prayer" from Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel." Wisner studied at the University of Michigan with Leslie Bassett and William Bolcom. He is a professional bassoonist. David Maslanka's Quintet No. 2 for Winds was commissioned by the Manhattan Wind Quintet, which gave the work its first performance in 1987 at the Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall in New York City. It has three movements. David Maslanka currently lives and composes on a ranch in Missoula, Montana.

A native of Washington, DC, composer and pianist Jessica Krash was awarded a Wammie (Washington Area Music Association’s Grammy) in 2010. Her work has been presented in both traditional and experimental settings in New York, Germany, Austria and all the major performance venues and museums in Washington, DC. She lectures on topics of music and the brain, music history and the insights we get from dangerous, banned and provocative music. She is on the faculty at George Washington University and has previously been a faculty member at George Mason University and the Levine School of Music. Se is a graduate of Harvard, Juilliard and the University of Maryland, where she earned her doctorate in composition. The major work on this recording, Be Seeing You, for string quartet and piano, was commissioned by the National Gallery of Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts and is inspired by 14 depictions of women found in these two museums.

The title of this recording explains what it is: West Meets East—clarinet music by Western composers influenced by Chinese culture. Clarinetist Jun Qian, himself Chinese-American, has long been fascinated with cross-culturalinfluences, as this CD of world premiere recordings so aptly demonstrates. He established the East Meets West Project in 2010 to commission and record new compositions for clarinet that are inspired by Asian cultures and that combine Chinese musical elements with Western art music. This is Qian's third recording for Albany Records, the first two concentrating on Chinese composers influenced by Western culture. A member of the faculty at Baylor University, Jun Qian enjoys an international career as a soloist, recitalist and educator. He studied at Baylor University and the Eastman School of Music.

This recording has its impetus in a retrospective concert of Chou Wen-Chung's music that took place at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City on April 1, 1993, in honor of his 70th birthday. Chou was born in China in 1923. He developed an early fascination with music and was educated in the 1920s through the 1940s against a backdrop of upheaval in a country recovering from Western colonialism, Eastern feudalism, and World War II. Urged to help rebuild China, he studied civil engineering instead of music, earning his degree in 1945. He came to the United States in 1946 on a four-year architecture scholarship to Yale. He gave this up to pursue his career in music. He studied with Varese, Martinu, Slonimsky, and Luening, attending the New England Conservatory of Music and Columbia. In 1978, he founded the Center for U.S. China Arts Exchange. It has designed and implemented many far-reaching projects in the arts. Writing in "Contemporary Composers" in 1992, Brian Morton noted: "It is difficult to overestimate Chou Wen-Chung's importance His work is of considerable significance in the slow rapprochement of Western and Eastern musics in the second half of he 20th century." In the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Edward Murry wrote, "Chou's music is a remarkably successful fusion of Chinese tradition and sophisticated Western vocabulary and style. Almost all his major works take as points of departure Chinese poetry, painting, calligraphy or philosophical and aesthetic ideas, and he is conscious of his place in the long tradition of Chinese art."

Don Walker's second recording for Albany Records features some of his chamber works for mixed ensembles -- ranging from a work for flute, violin, and piano to a piano quartet to larger ensembles such as the last work on the program for flute, bassoon, trumpet, horn, violin, and cello. These compositions also display a range of style with Soul Music containing 12-tone elements combined with a traditional Blues melodic style; to the Piano Quartet where Walker's sense of humor led him to imagine Arnold Schoenberg compositing a twelve-tone piece in honor of John Cage's 100th birthday; to the Divertimento which features a second movement that borrows material from Schubert. Now retired, Don Walker had a distinguished career as a composer, teacher, organist, and archivist.

This is the third release in Albany Records' continuing series of recordings devoted to the music of the American composer George Walker. This release presents a further selection of Mr. Walker's chamber music. For this recording, Walker is joined by other members of his family who are also performers. His son Gregory, a violinist, is the concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra. He is also a Professor of Music and Director of Ensembles at the University of Colorado in Denver. He joins his father in a performance of the Violin Sonata No. 1. Ian Walker has pursued a career as an actor, director and producer of numerous theatrical performances. He is the speaker in the Poem for Soprano and Chamber Ensemble.

This recording contains some of William Mayer's finest music. "William Mayer's music sings out with real beauty, both in the vocal writing (he is especially known for his operas and songs) and the instrumental settings," wrote John Rockwell of the New York Times on the occasion of the composer's sixtieth birthday. And indeed this recording gives the listener a rich sampling of his vocal music; opera, songs and choral compositions. But, just as importantly, it contains two purely instrumental works - Abandoned Bells for piano and Inner and Outer Strings for string orchestra - which must count as two of the composer's most haunting scores. Mayer's career has contained such memorable events as Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt narrating his Hello World, a musical trip for orchestra and Leopold Stokowski premiering his Octagon for Piano and Orchestra.

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 seeks to celebrate the eclectic American music of the recent past. In 1994 John Sampen and Marilyn Shrude initiated a commissioning project designed to represent this diversity. Seven major American composers were invited to contribute "postcard pieces" highlighting their unique musical styles. The resulting collection, which comprises an interchangeable suite for saxophone and piano, demonstrates serialism, aleatory, improvisation, and a variety of other musical languages, styles and genres. In addition to the postcard pieces, this compact disc includes five works complimenting the musical and cultural melange of late 20th century America. Internationally-recognized saxophonist John Sampen has premiered more than 60 works, including commissions by Rands, Subotnick, Cage, Adler and Babbitt. A clinician for the Selmer Company, Sampen has presented master classes at important universities and conservatories in Asia, Europe and North America. Dr. Sampen is presently Distinguished Artist Professor at Bowling Green State University and president of the North American Saxophone Alliance.

"Inspired", says the San Francisco Chronicle of flutist Barbara Leibundguth. Former Co-Principal Flutist of the Minnesota Orchestra, Ms. Leibundguth also wins praise from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: "Bright, gleaming tone...evocative...both stylish and adroit." One of the finest flutists of her generation, Ms. Leibundguth was invited by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as by the major orchestras of Atlanta and Houston, to appear as guest solo flutist. She has also held principal positions with the San Francisco Symphony, the Chicago Opera Theater, and the Omaha Symphony. As a soloist and chamber musician, Ms. Leibundguth has performed at the Marlboro, Grand Teton, and Blossom Music Festivals, and in her hometown of Chicago on the Dame Myra Hess Recital Series. Ms. Leibundguth and award-winning composer/pianist Carl Witt have worked together since 1994, and their musical chemistry creates electric, intelligent performances. In 2002, they received a $25,000 McKnight Performing Artist prize. Visionary Duos was recorded in the world-renowned acoustical space of Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis. This CD presents a collection of passionate and beautifully crafted works, featuring virtuoso counterpoint, radiant melodies, bracing intensity, jazz riffs, and gypsy flair. Here we have an intriguing and expansive view of flute music in the 20th century.

Horn soloist Eric Ruske has established himself as an artist of international acclaim. Named associate principal horn of the Cleveland Orchestra at the age of 20, his impressive solo career began when he won the 1986 Young Concert Artists International Audition at 22. In 1987, he won the first prize in the American Horn Competition, and in 1988, the highest prize in the Concours International d'Interpretation Musicale in Reims, France. Mr. Ruske gave the 1990 world premiere of Gunther Schuller's Concerto for Horn and Orchestra with the San Antonio Symphony with Mr. Schuller conducting. He has performed as soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Milwaukee Symphony and the Boston Pops. Mr. Ruske was educated in his native Croatia and at Juilliard and the Curtis Institute.

Inspired by a work for viola and clarinet by Rebecca Clarke, clarinetist Elizabeth Crawford and violist Katrin Meidell formed Violet and began working on expanding the literature for this sorely underrepresented genre of classical chamber music. All the works on this recording were written for their duo. Since its inception in 2015, Violet's efforts have produced more than 100 new compositions. Elizabeth Crawford is on the faculty at Ball State University. Prior to this appointment, she was a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. She has performed and taught at festivals around the world and has transcribed a number of works for E-flat clarinet. Her recording of music for this instrument appears on the Albany Records label. Violist Katrin Meidell enjoys a prolific career as a performer, pedagogue, and lecturer, traveling around the world to perform and present. She is on the faculty of Columbus State University.

William Kraft (b.1923) has had a long and active career as composer, conductor, timpanist/percussionist and teacher. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara and was a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 26 years, where he also served as composer-in-residence. His music has been performed by major orchestras throughout the United States and he has been commissioned by many distinguished ensembles. This is the sixth disc devoted to his music on Albany Records.

America began forging its own cultural identity in the 19th Century with music reflecting a vast array of cultures coming together. By the time the first music conservatory opened in 1865, European classical music had begun to be mingled with music influenced by Native American themes, African-American styles of ragtime and spirituals, Latin American and rural American folk music, and the traditional military band. With Vintage America, Calico Winds showcases these American musical roots. Known for exploring the full palette of tone colors available to the wind quintet, Calico Winds plays "in perfect balance with each other, each [member] contributing lovely tone quality and flawless intonation..." (The Times Herald, Olean, NY) It is with these attributes that Calico Winds brings to life America's rich musical legacy.

This intriguing and ingenious album by Gernot Wolfgang bridges sophisticated Viennese elements with edgier and rawer textures found in more contemporary American works. Wolfgang is taking us on an autobiographical safari with this "groove-oriented" classical album that will be a pleasure for the listener to explore. The compositions are for eclectic chamber groups, beginning with a bassoon-piano opener and concluding with a piano quartet. These many forms reveal the multiplicity of Wolfgang. Described as a "master composer with important things to communicate to his listeners," Gernot Wolfgang was born in Austria in 1957. Currently he lives in Los Angeles where (among many other musical activities) he works as an orchestrator in the film and TV music industry. He has been a lecturer at the University of Music in Graz and offered master classes at numerous universities in the U.S. and Mexico. He has received more than 40 commissions from organizations such as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Jazz Festival of the European Broadcasting Union, and the Debussy Trio. This is his fourth recording for Albany Records.

Victoria Bond is the only woman composer/conductor to receive commissions from major organizations and also hold music director positions with leading ensembles. Her extensive catalog includes works written for the Houston, Shanghai, and Richmond Symphony Orchestras, the Saint Paul and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestras, American Ballet Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet and Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. This recording highlights some of her enchanting music, including Bridges, a work for two clarinets and two Chinese instruments, the Erhu and the Pipa.

Wayne Peterson's music is that of a composer who embraces and takes delight in the hands-on process of making music, especially as it relates to the combinations and interactions of various instruments and their sonic possibilities. In a very real sense the musical ideas appear to evolve naturally from these capabilities without in any way being limited by them. As he writes in the program notes for Duodecaphony for viola and cello, "I welcomed the opportunity to address anew the problems of melody, counterpoint, harmony and timbre as they applied to this somewhat restricted choice of strings." A winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his orchestral work The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark, Peterson's music is marked by a wonderful rhythmic fluidity, which derives from his experience as an accomplished jazz pianist. Perhaps most importantly, Wayne Peterson's musical language is at once sophisticated and direct in its approach to the listener; it never compromises its basic integrity. In his hands the instruments are agents of luminous beauty, beckoning us to even deeper aesthetic pleasures. Peterson's music can also be heard on TROY601, 689 and 766.

Russian-born pianist Rose Shlyam Grace has collaborated with flutist Katherine Fink, euphonium player Ed Morse, and pianist Kristie Born to record six works by contemporary American composers — all of which have been written since 2000. The works include two solo piano pieces by Gregory Fritze and M. Shawn Hundley; two works for euphonium and piano by Gregory Fritze; a sonata for flute and piano by Philip Wharton; and a piece for two pianos by Zack Browning. Ms. Grace has concertized throughout the U.S. as a soloist and chamber music recitalist. She is a graduate of Oberlin, the University of Chicago and Eastman and is on the faculty at Bethune-Cookman University as well as teaching at Daytona State College.

Just as we did a few years back with the music of Andrei Eshpai, we now undertake a series of recordings devoted to the music of Boris Tchaikovsky in honor of what would have been his 80th year. The series will contain forgotten masterful performances by famous musicians, some of them now deceased, including recordings from the private archives of the performers as well as brand new world premiere recordings organized by the Boris Tchaikovsky Society in Russia. The perception of contemporary Russian music in the West is currently under revision. The post-Shostakovich era was once thought of as no more than a haven for the avant garde, with names such as Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, and more recently, Sophia Gubaidulina, Galina Ustvolskaya, and others, claiming the limelight. But times are changing. A handful of lesser-known composers whose work stands at a stylistic crossroads between Shostakovich and their more celebrated counterparts are gradually coming into focus. These composers - they include such figures as Mieczeslav Weinberg, Andrei Eshpai, Boris Tishchenko, Georgi Sviridov, Gavriil Popov, Nikolai Peiko, and Revol Bunin - demonstrate that Russian music in the latter half of the 20th century is far richer and more varied than was previously imagined. Included in this distinguished company is Boris Tchaikovsky, hailed by such eminent figures as Shostakovich and Rostropovich as one of the most original voices of his generation (he bears no family relation to his famous 19th century namesake). His work offers an ever-fresh source of lyrical inventiveness and new formal possibilities, written in a contemporary style that embraces beauty, depth of expression, and accessibility. He was trained at the Moscow Conservatory at the worst of times: during Stalin's notorious postwar assault on the arts. To his credit, he refused to take part in the officially authorized tirades against the terrorized Shostakovich, who was banned from the Conservatory at the time, and whose former students, Tchaikovsky being one of them, were branded as "contaminated." He graduated in 1949, not totally unscathed himself, yet having studied under three of the most prominent masters of instrumental music of the time - Shostakovich, Miaskovsky and Shebalin. The cultural thaw of the early 1960s opened many doors for Soviet composers. Tchaikovsky's own artistic development was also in flux. The lyricism that lay at the base of his musical thinking was undergoing profound metamorphosis. That lyricism was progressively becoming couched within a fresh, mosaic style whereby the music's surface is carved into a succession of bold, accentuated utterances. The curious rhythmic rigidity of these utterances - a Tchaikovsky hallmark - is offset by considerable flexibility in the music's other variables, such as increased levels of dissonance and colorful instrumental contrasts. He had now found his own mature voice, which allowed him to create a powerful new language that was distinctly Russian in sound, thoroughly up-to-date, and capable of a wide range of expression. It is the language for all his future compositions and can be heard in this wonderful new CD.

Eric Moe, composer of what the New York Times calls "music of winning exuberance," has received numerous ,grants and awards for his work. As a pianist and keyboard player, he has performed works by hundreds of composers, from Anthony Davis to Stefan Wolpe. He was educated at the University of California at Berkeley and at Princeton University. He is currently Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh, where he directs the graduate program in composition and the department's eclectroacoustic music studio. He is equally skilled at writing and performing new art music. At the core of his "maximal-minimalist" compositional technique is the ability to look at musical material as one would a complex crystal. Although trained and rooted in classical music, Moe's rhythmic and melodic conception draws as much from West Africa and Bud Powell as it does from Stravinsky and Chopin.

This recording commemorates the assassination of President John F. Kennedy through three works. The Julius Quartet, based in Dallas, still sees the remnants of the assassination and its effects throughout the city. Two of the works (One Red Rose and The Sixth Floor) were commissioned in commemoration and the third, Samuel Barber's famous Adagio, was performed on a nationally broadcast radio concert on the day after the assassination. Commended for leaving audiences "mesmerized by its resonant sounds" The Julius Quartet has cultivated a distinguished voice since its formation in 2012. They have performed all over North America and shared in numerous collaborations with celebrated artists. Winners of numerous awards, The Julius Quartet served as ensemble-in-residence at Southern Methodist University and continues an active performance schedule.

Born in Poland, composer Jakub Polaczyk graduated from the Penderecki Music Academy, Jagiellonian University, and Carnegie Mellon. He lives in New York City and is on the faculty at the New York Conservatory of Music. His music has won numerous awards, including the American Prize in Composition, and the Iron Composer First Prize. His music has been performed around the world in concert hall and music festivals. This recording features his chamber music, most of which was composed in New York City. Union Square, the title of the recording as well as one of the compositions, is a special place to Polaczyk. He goes there for inspiration, to play chess, and enjoy the intermingling of many cultures. He often describes his compositional approach as playing a game of chess.

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.

Composer Jeremy Haladyna has created compositions inspired by his trips to the Mayan region and his research of more than 35 years into Precolumbian thought. His Mayan Cycle now stretches to 37 pieces, some of which are heard on this recording A laureate of the Lili Boulanger Prize, he taught at the University of California Santa Barbara for 29 years and was director of their Ensemble for Contemporary Music. His music has been heard at major venues around the world and his discography includes recorded performances of him as a pianist, conductor, and organist.