Catalog #: TROY0041
Release Date: December 1, 1990ChamberThis collection of chamber music for violin and other instruments includes works by Milhaud, Piston, Adler, Martinu, Rubbra, and Dvorak. Possibly the least known composer for American listeners is Edmund Rubbra, an Englishman who was born in 1901 and died in 1986 on St. Valentine's Day. He produced more than 160 works, a prolific output for a twentieth century composer, and made major contributions to all forms except opera. He developed a unique and unmistakable style which will increasingly be considered to be not a by-way but an integral part of twentieth century music history. Rubbra was born in Northampton of parents who were both music lovers. Cyril Scott heard of Rubbra performing a recital of his music and invited him to study composition. He eventually won a composition scholarship at University College where he studied composition with Holst. Thus Rubbra was taught by two composers with whom he had great natural affinities and interests. All three were interested in Eastern philosophy and mysticism, then highly fashionable in artistic circles, while Scott was an imaginative and at his best, highly original composer who was very sympathetic to Rubbra's aspirations. It was Holst, however, who released in Rubbra his enduring love of counterpoint and introduced him to the rich treasures of English Renaissance music, then only being slowly discovered.
Catalog #: TROY0554
Release Date: December 1, 2002ChamberPaul Ramsier's doublebass compositions have established the composer as a major figure in the evolution of the instrument. His larger compositions are the most widely performed contemporary works for doublebass and orchestra. These compositions have set new standards for the instrument through more than one hundred fifty performances with orchestras. In the fall of 1999, Ramsier moved from New York City to Sarasota, Florida, where, he says, "I discovered that John Miller, principal bass of the Florida West Coast Symphony, is a world-class soloist of rare gifts." During the summer of 2001, Miller suggested that he and Ramsier make a recording of some of the composer's compositions for doublebass that had not been recorded. Ramsier was initially hesitant to practice the piano again, but Miller and others felt that a composer's participation adds a touchstone for performers - especially when compositions are published - and becomes a historical reference as well. This new CD is the result of this collaboration.
Catalog #: TROY1191
Release Date: June 1, 2010ChamberMilos Raickovich, composer and conductor, has lived and worked in Belgrade, Paris, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Hiroshima and New York. He writes music in a unique style -- "New Classicism" -- that has been described as "...a combination of the American Minimalist style with European Classical and Romantic music." (John Schaefer, WNYC's "New Sounds") Love, passion and longing are the recurring themes in all the works on this disc. FAR AWAY includes six pieces, each based on a different type of scale, including various 3, 5, 6, and 7-note scales. The opening piece is the energetic and primal Flying Trio, for violin, cello and piano. The Romantic-sounding Sonata and Three Romances are works grounded in the Minimalist approach. A meditative, Asian influenced film score "El contorno" Variations is also included, as well as B-A-G-D-A-D, played by the RTS Symphony Orchestra from Belgrade. (Three other arrangements of the same piece are included in Milos Raickovich's antiwar CD B-A-G-D-A-D, Albany Records.) FAR AWAY concludes with the nostalgic Winter Waltz.
Catalog #: TROY0761-62
Release Date: June 1, 2005ChamberWhat a coup it is to have this significant live performance from 2003 performed by the music department at Curtis Institute where Ned Rorem first studied in the 1940's and has been a faculty member for over 20 years! As a major addition to the opera, we have a new work, Aftermath, where Rorem, as have so many other composers over the past four years, responds to the tragic events of September 11, 2001. As Rorem writes, "In the wake of the September 11th shock, I asked what a thousand other composers must have asked: what is the point of music now? But it soon grew clear that music was the only point. Indeed, the future will judge us, as it always judges the past, by our art more than our armies- by construction more than by destruction. The art, no matter its theme or language, by definition reflects the time: a waltz in a moment of tragedy, or a dirge during prosperity, may come into focus only a century later. As a Quaker, I was raised to believe that there is no alternative to peace. Perhaps it's wrong, perhaps right, but I am not ashamed of this belief..." Rorem, born in 1923, is one of our great lyrical composers, described by Time magazine as the world's greatest composer of songs. His output encompasses far more than that, of course: three symphonies, four piano concertos, chamber music, other works for orchestra, all of which display a wealth of melody and a distinctive, unique instrumental sound (listen sometime to the Symphony No.2, whose brief second movement is essentially an instrumental song). Rorem's prowess as a vocal writer (and author of 14 books) lead him, naturally, to this adaptation of the classic play by August Strindberg, presented here in a remarkable, vivid performance and recording.
Catalog #: TROY1120
Release Date: June 1, 2009ChamberA singular figure in today's new music scene, Janet Maguire was the recipient of the 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship. Distinguished by her arrangement of the Finale of Giacomo Puccini's Turandot and by her own opera, Hérésie, Maguire has worked in a wide variety of genres. Maguire was music critic for the Paris Herald Tribune and founded a new music ensemble in Venice, Musica in Divenire.
Catalog #: TROY0610
Release Date: October 1, 2003ChamberElizabeth Hoffman holds degrees in music from Swarthmore College, SUNY Stony Brook, and the University of Washington. She studied composition and analog electronic music with electronic music pioneer Bulent Arel at Stony Brook. During her doctoral composition studies at the University of Washington, she began using computers for musical ends. Elizabeth Hoffman's recognition includes awards from the Seattle Arts Commission; American Composers Forum Jerome Foundation; Bourges International Competition Residence prize; and Prix Ars Electronica Mention. She is currently Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science, Department of Music at New York University, where she also directs the Washington Square Computer Music Studio.
Catalog #: TROY0900
Release Date: February 1, 2007ChamberThis recording features works by members of the composition faculty of the University of Iowa School of Music: Michael Eckert, Lawrence Fritts and David Gompper. The six new works presented here, all composed in the 21st century, showcase a diversity of harmonic languages and musical materials, from Gompper's post-tonal centricity to Eckert's neo-classic atonality to Fritt's use of mathematical algorithms and computer-generated timbres. Lawrence Fritts is Associate Professor of Composition and Theory and director of the Electronic Music Studios at the University. His composition teachers were Shulamit Ran, John Eaton and Ralph Shapey. Another pupil of Ralph Shapey is Michael Eckert, also an Associate Professor of Theory and Composition. He has won the Bearns Prize for Composition from Columbia University and a Charles Ives Scholarship from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. David Gompper is Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University. Gompper has lived and worked as a composer, teacher, conductor and pianist in England, Nigeria and, most recently, Russia. The project was sponsored by a grant from the University of Iowa Arts and Humanities Initiative.
Catalog #: TROY1216
Release Date: September 1, 2010ChamberMorris Rosenzweig was born October 1, 1952 in New Orleans, where he grew up among the tailors, merchants, and strong-willed women of an extended family that has lived in southern Louisiana since the mid 1890s. His works have been widely presented throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Japan, Argentina, Mexico and Israel. His recorded compositions are available on Albany Records Centaur, and New World/CRI. Mr. Rosenzweig has received honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Argosy Foundation, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, and support from the Alice M. Ditson Fund. Presently Professor of Music at the University of Utah, he has formerly held positions at Queens College and New York University. He was educated at the Eastman School of Music, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University.
Catalog #: TROY0412
Release Date: February 1, 2001ChamberAbout Mountain Roads, the composer David Maslanka writes: "The music of Mountain Roads is a very personal statement. I feel very deeply about every bit of it. The musical plan of it follows the model of a Baroque cantata, and style and content reflect my years of study of the Bach chorales, and of Bach in general. Obviously there are no words in my "cantata" but the music revolves entirely around two chorale melodies. The title Mountain Roads comes from a dream I had while writing the piece". About his Sax Appeal David Stock writes: "The work was commissioned by the Amherst Saxophone Quartet by Summerfest, a music festival in Pittsburgh, for its 10th anniversary season. The premiere took place in July, 1990. The work is in four movements: Set Up, Blues, Sarabande, and jump. Jazz is clearly the primary influence, as befitting the genre that brought this wonderful instrument into its own". Russell Peck's Drastic Measures is the only piece on this disc that has been recorded before. About it, the composer writes: "During my brief university teaching career I came into contact with excellent saxophonists at Northern Illinois University who had a quartet and wanted a piece from me. That's how I came to write Drastic Measures in 1976. A year later I went to the School of the Arts in North Carolina where James Houlik had a great saxophone studio and a wonderful student quartet that became the New Century Saxophone Quartet. I touched up the piece for them and that became its final form."
Catalog #: TROY0884
Release Date: November 1, 2006ChamberThroughout her career, flutist Sue Ann Kahn has been acclaimed for her virtuosic and sensitive performances of music of all periods. She was honored with one of the first Solo Recitalist Fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts in recognition of her outstanding gifts as a flutist and received the American New Music Consortium Award for distinguished performances of contemporary music. She is a member of the Jubal Trio, the League ISCM Chamber Players and other ensembles. Ms. Kahn has received consistent praise for her solo and chamber music recordings (her highly popular disc of music of Jacques Ibert, Jacques Around the Clock, is on Albany TROY145). Formerly Professor of Music at Bennington College, Ms. Kahn teaches flute and chamber music at Mannes College of Music, at New York University, and in the Music Performance Program at Columbia University, and gives master classes and recitals nationwide. She has served as President of the National Flute Association, and has been consistently active as an advocate for the flute and its music.
Catalog #: TROY0234
Release Date: May 1, 1997ChamberNicolas Flagello was one of the 20th century's leading exponents of traditional late-Romantic musical values. Without ever repudiating this aesthetic outlook, he forged a personal musical language and a distinctive body of work shaped by his own temperament and embodying his own perspective on life. As a composer, he held with unswerving conviction to a view of music as a personal medium for emotional and spiritual expression. This unfashionable view, together with his vehement rejection of the academic formalist that dominated musical composition for several decades after World War II, prevented him from winning acceptance from the reigning arbiters of taste for many years. However, gradually Flagello's works have begun to win enthusiastic advocacy, as his music is recorded and performed with increasing frequency. In 1959 Flagello attained his mature compositional voice, ushering in the most productive period of his life. During the 1960s alone, he composed more than 30 works, maintaining a remarkable consistency of both vision and craftsmanship. The luxuriant romanticism of his youth now gave way to a sort of Italianate expressionism. Now, a deeper, more personal quality emerged - dark, brooding, restless, and often agitated. It was during this decade that all the works on this recording were composed.
Catalog #: TROY1228
Release Date: November 1, 2010ChamberThe Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 40 by Johannes Brahms reigns as one of the supreme works of chamber music that includes the French horn, and it is often thought of as the model for all of the succeeding works composed for this trio. The instrumentation is certainly unique, as there were no precedents of note in the major chamber music oeuvre. Paired with the Brahms on this recording are two rarely performed and previously unrecorded horn trios from the beginning of the last century. All three performers are internationally acclaimed and give exceptional performances of this repertoire.
Catalog #: TROY0784
Release Date: November 1, 2005ChamberHere we have an international collection of bassoon music, recorded in Edvard Grieg's house. The highly original wind music of Maslanka is surely known to you through his many releases on Albany, and this recent work is a significant contribution to the bassoon literature. James Lassen, born in Montana, has family roots in Scandinavia. Active in jazz and classical circles, he currently lives in Bergen, Norway and is co-principal bassoonist in that city's Symphony Orchestra, alongside principal Per Hannevold. Lassen's work shows the influence of special techniques he learned while playing the Japanese shakuhatchi and bamboo flutes. Oivind Westby, a trombonist and arranger, has composed a delightful work that shows influences from British light music. Per Hannevold has been with the Bergen Symphony from 1979 and is a member of the Bergen Wind Quintet. His performances have taken him all over the world and he is recognized as a preeminent authority on bassoon technique. This is a wonderful disc for wind specialists and those looking for something out of the ordinary.
Catalog #: TROY1730
Release Date: July 1, 2018ChamberViolinist Donna Fairbanks and guitarist Jon Yerby have recorded a delightful album of music for violin and guitar with music spanning four centuries. Ms. Fairbanks is on the faculty at Utah Valley University. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona, Eastman, and Brigham Young University.Ms. Fairbanks has appeared as a soloist with numerous orchestras and has presented recitals and master classes in South America, China, Europe and the U.S. Born in Germany, Jon Yerby has performed across four continents as an acclaimed soloist and chamber musician. He studied at Florida State University, New England Conservatory, and the University of Texas at Austin. He has held faculty positions at the University of Utah, Utah Valley University, and Westminster College.
Catalog #: TROY0763
Release Date: May 1, 2005ChamberAlec Wilder was a man of many parts, in every way unique and unforgettable. Always in coat and tie, possessing an almost Edwardian sense of courtesy, he lived a nomadic existence, traveling with most of what he owned in two suitcases. Enigmatically sophisticated to a degree impossible to describe, he could sit and talk to young children with a kind of innocent gravity, leaving them wide-eyed and attentive, then later he might blow bubbles down a staircase at a formal dinner party. Unspeakably well read, he would breeze through the London Times crossword puzzle (in ink), yet he never held himself above anyone, a genuinely humble man - albeit with no tolerance for pretension in anyone. As a musician, his discerning ears reacted immediately to a performer's style: a moment of his approval would remain a treasured memory for life. After all, he was revered by the likes of Eileen Farrell, Charles Mingus, and Frank Sinatra, and he really did know what was "right" and what was not. A composer of hundreds of songs and huge catalog of chamber music, Wilder created an oeuvre that is unusually diverse yet characteristically American. Categorizing his work has not been an easy task for musicians and critics, as it does not clearly "fit" into any one slot. That, along with his frequent use of popular and jazz elements and a penchant for writing lighthearted divertimento-like movements or entertainments, has often led to his being dismissed as not being a "serious" composer, while his craftsmanship and lyrical sentiment went largely ignored. In a society quick to put labels on things, he has been an enigma. While his music was championed by many of this country's leading performers during his lifetime, Wilder did little to further his own cause and shunned every opportunity to gain further recognition. Most of his chamber music was unpublished until the last years of his life. Now, nearly 25 years since his death, it is heartening to see new recordings by a whole younger generation discovering his music for the first time. This new Albany disc is just such an example.
Catalog #: TROY1544
Release Date: April 1, 2015ChamberTwo colleagues from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, oboist John Dee and bassoonist Timothy McGovern, join pianist Cara Chowning in a program of music for winds and piano. The composers hail from the U.K., Germany, Italy, Canada and the U.S. The program includes two trios for oboe, bassoon and piano; two works for oboe and piano and two works for bassoon and piano. All three performers have enjoyed active performing and academic careers. Dee served as principal oboe of the Florida Philharmonic and Florida Opera and McGovern is principal bassoon of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra as well as the bassoonist for the Prairie Winds Woodwind Quintet. In addition to her performance schedule, Chowning was music director of Opera Cleveland's Great Works Outreach Department.
Catalog #: TROY1127
Release Date: July 1, 2009ChamberThe Atlanta Chamber Winds led by Robert J. Ambrose, offer a sparkling concert of music for wind ensemble by composers who lived and worked in Paris. All but one (the Pierné) are world premiere recordings and offer a substantial addition to the wind ensemble discography. Perhaps most interesting is Francis Chagrin who was born in Bucharest as Alexander Paucker but moved to Paris in 1928 and changed his name. He was most famous for his film music but he also wrote chamber music, two symphonies and songs.
Catalog #: TROY1951
Release Date: December 1, 2023ChamberThis recording of music for violin by women composers comes from the first two volumes of a four-volume anthology compiled by Dr. Cora Cooper. Her intention is to offer an easily obtainable collection of short pieces by women that could be integrated with standard literature. This recording, then, will be a great resource for students, teachers, and performers. Canadian violinist Maureen Yuen has performed, taught, and adjudicated globally. A graduate of the University of British Columbia, and Columbia University, she is on the faculty at Drake University and enjoys an active career as a solo and chamber music performer. Her colleague, pianist Eric Ruple is on the faculty at James Madison University. An active member of the American Liszt Society, he has also been a regular adjudicator in Hong Kong.
Catalog #: TROY0258
Release Date: September 1, 1997ChamberAnthony Holland was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1955 and studied at The Cleveland Institute of Music and Case-Western Reserve University. He studied with Donald Erb, Hale Smith and Leslie Bassett. Since 1982 he has been a Professor of Music at Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York. Holland composed his Piccolo Concerto to demonstrate that the piccolo could be used as an expressive solo instrument. Pohadka a Variace was composed and premiered in the spring of 1997. The title means fairy tale in Czech. The guitar pieces were composed for Joel Brown, the soloist who performs them on this disc. Intensity 51.5+ is a light-hearted reference to Varese's Density 21.5. The original piece was 51.5 measures long. The + means the soloist repeats the piece as many times as they feel necessary. The New England Poems was commissioned by Sandy Schwoebel, long-time editor of The Flutist Quarterly, for performance at the National Flute Association Convention in Boston in1993. The Violin Concerto was commissioned and premiered by the great Czech violinist Frantisek Novotny. The music of Anthony Holland will appeal to anyone who enjoys mainstream American music. It is accessible and tonal.
Catalog #: TROY0163
Release Date: August 1, 1995ChamberThis disc features a sampling of the chamber music of Arnold Rosner who was born November 8, 1945. He is a prolific composer whose works have been performed in the United States, Europe and Israel. Today, his works exceed 100. As the notes point out, "he has managed to steer clear, generally, of both the post serial avant-garde movement of the sixties and the minimalist movement that followed. His treatment of harmony and counterpoint, along with the occasional recourse to an ethnic, Middle Eastern flavor, places his music in the esthetic milieu of Paul Hindemith, Ernest Bloch, and Alan Hovhaness. Rosner is currently on the faculties of Kingsborough Community College and Staten Island College of the City University of New York, where he teaches both standard and ethnic music. Having composed since the age of nine, he received advanced degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo while studying with Leo Smit, Allen Sapp, Henri Pousseur and Lejaren Hiller, a group from which in his own words, "I learned practically nothing." Of the works on this disc, "Of Numbers and Bells," was composed for two pianos in 1983, "Sonata for French Horn and Piano," was composed in 1979, "Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano," was composed in 1968 and revised in 1977, and "Nightstone" for tenor and piano was composed in 1979.
Catalog #: TROY1476
Release Date: February 1, 2014ChamberComposer Bevan Manson has received commissions for both classical and jazz music from numerous ensembles including the Sierra Chamber Society and the San Francisco Symphony. He is a founding member of the Los Angeles composers' group Improvisatory Minds, an organization that provides a platform for concert music written by composers who have jazz as an extensive part of their musical backgrounds. A noted jazz pianist, Manson was director of UC Jazz at Cal Berkeleyand has served on the faculties of New England Conservatory, Berklee College and the Thelonious Monk Institute. This recording, the first devoted entirely to his music, combines his classical and jazz roots in a unique style that is complex but very tuneful.
Catalog #: TROY0158
Release Date: June 1, 1995ChamberChris Theofanidis was born on December 18, 1967 in Dallas Texas. He studied with Sam Adler, Joseph Schwantner, and Jacob Druckman. His father, Iraklis, was a classically trained pianist and composer from Greece. These are the basic facts. At Albany Records we feel we have an obligation to search out new, young composers and bring their music to you. This recording contains a wide variety of music written in an accessible, tonal idiom.
Catalog #: TROY0106
Release Date: January 1, 1994Chamber"All the works on this recording are from the late 1970s and early 1980s," comments Dan Asia. "They reflect my interest then I combining the energy of vernacular music (pop and jazz), with the structural and linguistic possibilities of contemporary classical music, and all of this refracted through the sonic possibilities suggested by the current nascent world of electronic music. While some of the works presented are solely electronic, and others are for acoustic instruments alone, my interest was in the cross fertilization that can occur between these genres." Dan Asia, composer-in-residence with the Phoenix Symphony, was born in Seattle, Washington in 1953. He has been the recipient of the most competitive grants and fellowships in music including a Meet The Composer-Reader's Digest Commission, a Guggenheim Fellowship, four NEA Composers Grants and ASCAP and BMI composition prizes. After receiving his B.A. degree from Hampshire College, where he studied music and European History, Mr. Asia attended the Yale School of Music, receiving the Master of Music degree. His major teachers include Jacob Druckman, Stephen Albert, Gunther Schuller, Isang Yun, Arthur Weisberg, Bruce MacCombie, Ron Perera, and Randall McClellan. He presently teaches at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Catalog #: TROY1158
Release Date: December 1, 2009ChamberDonald Wheelock is the Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor of Music at Smith College, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1974. His works include five string quartets, several pieces for solo instruments, eleven song cycles, and many larger ensemble and orchestral works. Among his awards are a first prize in a competition sponsored by the Hartford Symphony, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the Guggenheim Foundation. This compact disc, a retrospective recording of Wheelock's music, offers a wide-ranging survey of his music for chamber ensembles.
Catalog #: TROY1086
Release Date: May 1, 2009ChamberThis volume of Albany Records' series of the music of Edward Joseph Collins features first recordings of songs, piano solo works and the Piano Trio, Op. 1. The Illinois-born Collins died in 1951, leaving an oeuvre comprised of 12 major orchestral works, three piano concerti, a secular cantata, an opera, several chamber works, more than 20 songs and a dozen piano solo and duo scores.
Catalog #: TROY0641
Release Date: February 1, 2004ChamberThis is the first recording of Collin's songs and instrumental duos, including the 1933 Suite for Violoncello and Piano, a major addition to the repertoire for this combination of instruments. Born in Joliet, Illinois, Collins studied piano with Ganz in Chicago and composition with Bruch and Humperdinck in Europe. A 1912 Berlin debut and subsequent concerts in the USA and Europe earned strong critical praise. Collins was hired as an assistant conductor for the Bayreuth Festival in 1914; that engagement was ended by World War I and service in the US Army. After the War, Collins began a teaching career in Chicago, continuing to conduct, perform and compose. His music attracted the attention of Chicago Symphony Orchestra Music Director Frederick Stock, who conducted many of Collins's orchestral compositions. Those include a symphony, three piano concerti, and a secular cantata. Collins also composed dozens of songs, piano solo works and other chamber music. The songs presented on this CD were composed between 1917 and 1944. As a former opera house assistant conductor at New York's Century Opera and at the Bayreuth Festival, Collins understood voices and had a thorough appreciation for the best of them. Having coached many singers, he knew what to expect in regard to range, color, tessitura and expression. He did not, therefore, approach song writing as if composing for instrumentalists. A man who was an avid reader of the classics, he brought a literate acuity to his choice of texts and even wrote some fine ones himself; the best songs merit the attention of any sensitive singer.
Catalog #: TROY1230
Release Date: October 1, 2010ChamberWith the exception of the Six Valses Caractéristiques, these are the first recordings of these compositions by Edward Joseph Collins. Born in Illinois, Collins studied piano with Ganz in Chicago and composition with Bruch and Humperdinck in Europe. Collins was hired in 1914 as an assistant conductor for the Bayreuth Festival, a brief engagement ended by WWI. After the war, his music attracted the attention of Frederick Stock, who conducted many of his orchestral compositions with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Catalog #: TROY0595
Release Date: October 1, 2003ChamberEdwin London's music, sometimes literary or sacred, often theatrical, and at times humorous, is the product of his broad experience in diverse styles. London has been a major figure in the field of new music for more than 40 years. Best described as "a champion of new American music" he has formed two highly acclaimed ensembles: Ineluctable Modality, a new music choral ensemble in 1968, and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in 1980. As a composer, conductor, teacher, administrator and persuasive advocate for the value of music as a civilizing force, his influence has been extraordinary. Born in Philadelphia, he began his career with characteristic disregard of rigid musical categories, as a horn player in both symphony orchestras and the Oscar Pettiford jazz band. Everything London has done in his long career has reflected his ability to move easily between the worlds of "concert hall" and "popular" music - with occasional stops at places in between.
Catalog #: TROY1031
Release Date: July 1, 2008ChamberThe moods of the works on this survey of Eleanor Cory's chamber music range from serious introspection (Three Songs) to playful exuberance (Chasing Time). Beginning to be recognized as a major force in contemporary music, Ms. Cory has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund and the Fromm Foundation, among many others. Her music is performed by orchestras and ensembles ranging from the Gregg Smith Singers to the New Jersey Symphony to Earplay. Ms. Cory is on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music Prep Division and Kingsborough Community College.
Catalog #: TROY0399
Release Date: October 1, 2000ChamberEzra Laderman writes: "The world I grew up in living in Brooklyn, always close to Ebbets Field and the Children's Museum, consisted of all those things kids did as first generation Americans. To that heady mix there was, as well, music. My parents, Isidor and Leah, were born in Galicia, Poland; came to the United States early in the 20th century, met, married, settled in Brooklyn, and when I arrived June 29, 1924, there was an upright Worthington piano in the apartment and my brother Jack practiced on it daily. When my younger brother Gabriel arrived in 1929, I was already deeply involved in music. When I was three I heard my first children's concert at Carnegie Hall led by the debonair Ernest Schelling. During the height of the depression I used to sit next to the fountain of the Sculpture Court at the Brooklyn Museum while the WPA Orchestra performed. On Saturday nights I would occupy an empty box overlooking the stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as some musicians from the pit Orchestra ate sandwiches and drank Chianti as the Salmaggi Opera Company performed Italian repertoire. On Friday afternoons at school we would hear Walter Damrosch take us on musical journeys over the airwaves. When we finally got our Atwater Kent radio, Sunday afternoons belonged to the New York Philharmonic (What a difference between children growing up then and children growing up now! Is it any wonder our classical music is in such trouble today?) One day when I was six, I was brought to the Brooklyn Community Music School, just down the street from BAM and suddenly my musical education in the guise of the Dalcrosse method began. This musical world competed with growing up a city boy, never knowing how desperately poor we were, going (on scholarship) to the Ethical Culture School, where learning Greek history was essential, moving, one step ahead of the landlord, to seven apartments the first decade of my life, and having the extraordinary sense that everything was possible. At four, I was improvising at the piano; at seven, I began to compose music, writing it down. I hardly knew it then, but I had at a very early age made a giant step to becoming a composer."
Catalog #: TROY1192
Release Date: June 1, 2010ChamberThe nine recordings of Ezra Laderman's chamber music on Albany Records are now offered in a slipcase edition at a special price. Included are his string quartets, music for piano, and chamber works for various instrumental ensembles. Performers such as the Cassatt String Quartet, violinist Erick Friedman, and flutist Ransom Wilson offer critically acclaimed performances of this distinguished American composer's music. Taking 10 years to complete, this series offers a comprehensive survey of Laderman's solo instrumental and chamber music.
Catalog #: TROY0434
Release Date: May 1, 2001Chamber"When I was accepted as a student at the High School of Music & Art, created in 1934 by Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York, my family decided to move a block away from the school in Manhattan. The move to 492 West 136th Street was significant because it brought us across the street from Lewisohn Stadium, the summer home of what was essentially the New York Philharmonic. It also brought me to within a fifteen minute walk of the old Juilliard School of Music. What precipitated the move was that living in Brooklyn we were one and one half hours by subway from the High School. I came home from school the first day in September 1936 lugging a full size double bass. The next morning my resolute mother paraded me to confront Alexander Richter, head of the music section at the School. Before my mother uttered a word, he calmly took away the double bass and handed me a flute." What an amusing incident from the life of the wonderful American composer Ezra Laderman. Here is another one. "When I reflect over the nineteen thirties and how I was shaped in those early years, the record library at Juilliard looms awfully large. For the first time in my young life I was able to listen to recordings while reading scores of the main body of music. Whether it was Sibelius's Second or the Grosse Fugue, it was absorbed with enormous excitement. I would spend countless hours listening, my ears covered by huge ear phones, my eyes buried in the print. Over and over again, score in hand, I would listen while the librarians, wonderful in helping and guiding me through this newly discovered wonderland looked on with amusement. I was hooked." A fine composer was born and you can now listen to his chamber music on this new CD. What goes around certainly does come around. (Hear also volume 1, TROY399.)