• Catalog #: TROY0672

    Release Date: June 1, 2004
    Orchestral

    Neal Gittleman writes: “The Dayton Philharmonic’s Wright Brothers Centennial Commissioning project dates back to 1997. At that point, more than five years before the actual 100th anniversary of Wilbur and Orville’s first successful powered flight, it was already clear that something big was called for. 2003 would also be the Ohio state bicentennial, the orchestra’s seventieth anniversary and the DPO’s first season in the new Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center. Given our commitment to the music of today, a major commissioning effort seemed the way to go, bringing to life four new medium-length pieces addressing the broad theme of the Wright Brothers. How do you do that? Easy. You find fearless composers like Bill Bolcom, Robert Xavier Rodríguez, Mike Schelle and Steve Winteregg and turn them loose. They attacked the challenge with the same vigor as Orville and Wilbur tackled the challenges of powered flight. Technical problems had to be solved. For the Wrights there were issues of wing and propeller design, inventing a control mechanism, finding a light but powerful motor and conquering the multidimensional challenges of lift, yaw and roll. For the composers, there were questions of genre, language, piece-d’occasion – or piece-for-the-ages and “How many percussionists can I have?” In the end, what made both endeavors successful was imagination and inventiveness – the imagination to envision the end result and the inventiveness to make it happen. More than anything else, this CD and the four works it contains reflect the spirit of Wilbur and Orville Wright, the greatest sons of Ohio’s great city of inventors”. Allison Janney, of The West Wing fame, was raised in Oakwood, a small suburb of Dayton. She attended Kenyon College in Ohio and landed a role in a play directed by alumnus Paul Newman. Newman’s wife, Joanne Woodward, encouraged Janney with her acting and suggested that she consider studying at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse. She has won three Emmy awards for her work in television.

  • Catalog #: TROY0675

    Release Date: June 1, 2004
    Instrumental

    Beth Wiemann was raised in Burlington, Vermont and studied composition and clarinet at Oberlin and Princeton University. She teaches composition and clarinet at the University of Maine, and splits her time between Maine and Massachusetts, where her husband, composer David Rakowski, teaches at Brandeis University. On this compilation of works for voice, clarinet, piano and electronics, Beth Wiemann brings together in compelling fashion three important facets of her life as a composer: a fascination with setting words, broad experience as an active performer of her own music and that of her colleagues, and an ongoing interest in the incorporation into her work of electronic and digital technology. Wiemann has been fascinated for years with the already heightened speech of poetry and its translation into the still more heightened speech of song. Among her earliest musical memories is that of hearing original cast recordings of Broadway musicals played in her home as a child. Unlike a number of composers of her generation, the Broadway idiom has exerted a far greater influence on her than later pop and rock styles, though not in an immediately obvious way. While genuinely admiring the craftsmanship of such composers for the stage as Gershwin, Kern, Porter, Rodgers, Bernstein and Sondheim, however, she has not sought to introduce superficial characteristics of their styles into her music in any literal sense. Instead, she has cultivated a harmonically subtle, more chromatic and less obviously tonally grounded pitch language. Her clearest connection with mid-twentieth century American musical theater is in her treatment of the declamation of the text. Consequently, from the songs recorded here to her recent opera, Deeds, her vocal compositions, like the best American popular songs, reflect a penchant for capturing the rhythms and nuances of vernacular speech. In keeping with that tendency, she is often drawn to poetry that is intimate and conversational in tone or concerned with aspects of everyday life. In travels to artists' colonies over the years she has had the good fortune to meet and befriend a number of poets, who often provide her with new material for musical setting. Most of this disc consists of selections from Weimann's collection Simple Songs, a project she began in 1990. Included are the first songs of the set, "No Moon, No Star" and "Night Thought." At the time of their composition, she was also engaged in setting them for women's chorus. She was prompted to make solo settings partly in response to a request from the soprano Karol Bennett for some songs to perform on a concert planned for the fall of 1990. Over time, Wiemann added other songs to the collection as she came across poetry that interested her. The latest song from the collection that appears on this disc is "Seamstress" composed in 2001.

  • Catalog #: TROY0676

    Release Date: June 1, 2004
    Choral

    You might still hear Yiddish songs today, in concert or at social gatherings of Yiddish speakers. But their natural venue was the village or shtetl of Eastern Europe or America where you could hear them through open windows in courtyards, or from busy people humming their way from place to place. They were born and flourished in a world that is no more. They represent the joys and sorrows, dreams and aspirations of ordinary folk, the Jewish mother's dreams for her child, the poverty of the rebbe, the Jewish teacher, the freshness of young love and revolution, the joy of Jewish holidays which provided a welcome respite from the drudgery and hardships of daily life for Eastern European Jewery. Yiddish song reflects the richness of Jewish folklore, as old, vast and varied as the numerous regions which the thousand-year-old language and culture inhabited. It reached its greatest artistic expression in the latter half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. There are songs of work, love and lullabies; songs about great Jewish heroes and parodies about the same, songs about Hassidic rabbis, pogroms, the Messiah, the longing for redemption and the return to Zion, and of revolution. Political parodies abounded in the 20th century as did Yiddish theater songs in various genres: operetta, art song and Vaudeville. There were writers, poets and musicians throughout the ages who created this treasure trove, much of it still waiting to be culled. The Yiddish street singer was a common sight in the cities and towns of Eastern Europe, well into the 20th century. The broder zinger from Galicia heralded in an age of Yiddish folksong creativity that reached every continent on which Jews lived in the 19th and 20th centuries. The poet Itzik Manger and, of course, Mordechai Gibertig, the most famous and popular of the Yiddish folk-poets, were heirs of that tradition. Gibertig "S'Brent," a vision of burning cities and a call to arms, written in 1938, proved to be all too prophetic. During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Jews were confined in ghettos across German occupied Eastern Europe. In the ghettos and even concentration camps, members of the terrorized Jewish population engaged in remarkable, organized acts of defiance. Determined to leave a record of their history for posterity, they secretly created archives, diaries, drawings, photographs and songs to document Nazi crimes against their communities. During the same period many European Jews defied their Nazi oppressors by actively taking part in an underground war of resistance. This partisan warfare, carried out by clandestine, irregular forces operating inside enemy territory, was particularly widespread in the dense forests and nearly impassable marshlands of Eastern Europe. In 1942, the Supreme Partisan Headquarters in the Soviet Union extended its authority over the majority of partisan units in Eastern Europe and young Jewish fighters who escaped the ghettos joined the Russian partisans. Jewish partisan units were established in 1943, and the Yiddish language was now used for military communication, as well as for cultural and folkloric expression, such as poetry and song. This is a delightful album, full of energy and wit. The singing is magnificent and infectious. The CD booklet contains full texts of each song in English.

  • Catalog #: TROY0652

    Release Date: July 1, 2004
    Chamber

    Founded in 1989, the Nevelson Duo, named for the American artist Louise Nevelson, is committed to performing works by American composers, as well as both standard and less-familiar repertoire for violin and piano. Elizabeth Reed Smith is Professor of violin, viola, and chamber music at Marshall University. Since earning degrees in violin performance from Yale and Eastman, Dr. Smith has received numerous awards. She has studied violin with Charles Castleman, Szymon Goldberg and Burton Kaplan. She has spent five summers as concertmaster of the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. With degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Missouri at Kansas City, Leslie Petteys is Professor of piano and graduate studies at Marshall University. She has also taught at Stephens College and served as Assistant Director of the Institute for Studies in American Music at University of Kansas City - Missouri. She has studied piano with David Burge and performed in master classes for Gilbert Kalish, Byron Janis, and Elly Ameling. She has appeared as a solo recitalist and chamber musician throughout the eastern and Midwestern states. The Nevelson Duo has performed extensively in the Mid-Atlantic states and has been featured in recitals at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. and the Longy School of Music in Boston. Bidder to Better was commissioned by the Nevelson Duo as part of the national series of works sponsored by Meet The Composer/Arts Endowment Commissioning Music/USA.

  • Catalog #: TROY0653

    Release Date: July 1, 2004
    Choral

    Herbert Bielawa earned his degrees in piano and composition at the University of Illinois and the University of Southern California. He has been a member of the faculties of Bethany College and San Francisco State University where he founded the Pro Music Nova and created the electronic music studio and courses for the Computer Music Major. He has written music for instrumental ensembles, piano, harpsichord, pipe organ, choir, electronics, chamber opera, band and orchestra. His much-performed Spectrum for Band and Tape was composed during his Contemporary Music Project residency in Houston from 1964 to 1966. Other residencies were with the San Francisco Summer Music workshop in 1976 and with the San Francisco Choral Artists in 2000. Since 1991, he has been a member of the Ilona Clavier Duo and founding director of Sounds New, a Bay Area new music ensemble.

  • Catalog #: TROY0667

    Release Date: July 1, 2004
    Chamber

    Major critics have praised Erica Muhl's music, describing it as "strong and poetic," "ravishingly beautiful," "haunting," even "fearless". Paul Hertelendy, one of America's most esteemed writers on music, wrote, "Muhl has a fine ear and an iridescent palette...[Her work] is a contemporary foray into impressionism, mysticism, veiled allure and the shimmering colors of a concert orchestra". She was born and raised in Los Angeles, where her father, Edward, was head of production for Universal Pictures and her mother, Barbara, an author and opera singer. Her parents associated with such musical figures as Stravinsky, Schnabel, Stokowski, Andre Previn and Henry Mancini. As may have been expected in this musical milieu, Muhl was trained both as a composer and conductor, with much of that training completed in Europe. At age sixteen she was invited to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. After returning to California to earn her B.M., she traveled again to Europe for graduate studies at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, studying with the great Italian composer Franco Donatoni. In 1991, she completed her Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Southern California. She studied conducting with Walter Cataldi-Tassoni, a student of Mascagni and Fritz Zweig, a student of Humperdinck and a close colleague of Richard Strauss and Otto Klemperer. Muhl has served as Assistant Conductor for Los Angeles Opera Theater, Seattle Opera and the Pacific Northwest Wagner Festival's complete Ring. Erica Muhl is Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music and resides in Los Angeles.

  • Catalog #: TROY0669

    Release Date: July 1, 2004
    Instrumental

    From the little that is recorded about Zipoli's life, we may understand that he pursued two paths during his lifetime: music and religion. At first it seems it was the religious road that led him to South America, but in fact, as well as wanting to take his vows in the order of the Jesuits, he was summoned to the New World because he was a musician as well as a missionary. As a child, he sang in the choir and was granted the support necessary to allow him to study in Florence. In 1709, he moved to Naples to study with Alessandro Scarlatti. His study with Scarlatti was short-lived and then went to Bologna and then Rome to study. In 1715, he was appointed organist of the Jesuit church in Rome. The following year his celebrated keyboard collection, Sonate d'Intavolatura, on which his fame rests, was published. Zipoli joined the Society of Jesus on July 1, 1716, and soon after went to Seville to await passage to the Paraguay province. With 53 other prospective Jesuit missionaries he sailed from Cadiz in April, 1717, but due to a violent storm, it was not until July that he and the others disembarked at Buenos Aires. From there they set out for Cordoba. By 1724, Zipoli had completed his theological studies and by 1725 was ready to receive priest's orders. Sadly, he died of tuberculosis before receiving them for lack of a bishop in Cordoba to ordain him that year. Zipoli was one of many excellent musicians recruited by the Jesuits between 1650 and 1750 for work in the Paraguay reductions. There is evidence that his music was in demand in South America. Jesuit documents of 1728, 1732 and later note his continuing reputation up to at least 1774. In the 1970s some 23 works by Zipoli (including copies of known keyboard pieces) were discovered among a large collection of manuscripts at the San Rafael and Santa Ana missions in eastern Bolivia. Sonate d'Intavolatura, Zipoli's work of 1716, consists of two bands of compositions for keyboard. The first band is devoted solely to the Organ. The second band is entitled "Sonate d'Intavolatura per Organo e Cimbalo." It is graceful and elegant music; its charm attracting republication in London and Paris in 1741. Band II of the complete keyboard works contains a series of four dance suites and two partitas. It is played here on the Cristofori piano from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection of Keyboard instruments.

  • Catalog #: TROY0671

    Release Date: July 1, 2004
    Instrumental

    With Debussy's Jeux comes the notion of steps as a progression from one point to another in location, time and/or psychological state. As Debussy was a pianist-composer grappling with changing aesthetics in a time of turbulence, so Cuban-born American composer Jorge Martin is engaged in a similar pursuit today. His style is both accessible and provocative, equally using and breaking free of formal compositional technique, achieving its own unique voice. Martin and Jeanne Golan met as students at Yale University. Best known for his vocal works, Martin's first piano piece, Wand'ring Steps and Slow, was written for her. Its title comes from the last lines of Paradise Lost and suggests the loss of childlike innocence symbolized by the expulsion from Eden. Having written his first piano piece, Martin was inspired to delve into another. The Piano Fantasy on Sredni Vashtar also has a literary association. Saki wrote a tale of an orphan boy who defies a ferret he spies in his aunt's barn, to wonderfully horrific consequences. Martin turned this tale into an opera in 1992. He has reworked some of its music into the Piano Fantasy.

  • Catalog #: TROY0673

    Release Date: July 1, 2004
    Instrumental

    A regular on concert series throughout North America, Jonathan Keeble is quickly carving a niche as one of the leading performer/pedagogues of his generation. In addition to being a past winner of the Coleman Chamber Music Competition, and recipient of the Eastman School of Music Performer's Certificate, he is the recipient of numerous grants and awards. Mr. Keeble's passion for new music has led him to commission many new works for the flute from rising young composers. He is a popular performer at flute festivals around the world. He also routinely tours with Prairie Winds, a professional wind quintet. Mr. Keeble's teaching experience includes his present position as the flute professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with posts held at Oklahoma State University, and as visiting professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia.

  • Catalog #: TROY0679

    Release Date: July 1, 2004
    Choral

    Margaret Garwood, like many earlier composers, is essentially self-taught. She passed the requirements for a Bachelor's degree in music by examination, and now holds a graduate degree in composition. She is greatly indebted to composers Julia Smith, Louise Talma, and especially Miriam Gideon for their support. While she has written several instrumental chamber works, the majority of her output is for voices, and includes four operas, numerous song cycles, and works for combined chorus and orchestra. Her operas have received fully staged productions in New York, Philadelphia and on the West Coast. They include The Trojan Women, The Nightingale and the Rose, Rappaccini's Daughter, and an opera for children entitled Joringel and the Songflower. She has written the librettos to all her own operas, with the exception of the first one. She is presently working on an opera based on Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

  • Catalog #: TROY0678

    Release Date: August 1, 2004
    Vocal

    Howard Stokar writes: "Religion, specifically the Judeo-Christian continuum, is integral to Charles Wuorinen's view of the world and his own work as a composer. The Latin Mass for the Restoration of St. Luke in the Fields was written to celebrate the rededication of a church in lower Manhattan which had burned to the ground on the night of March 6, 1981, and was subsequently rebuilt. The work is divided into seven sections: the first and last are purely instrumental, the central five compose the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus/Benedictus, Angus Dei and a Communion motet. The motet is a setting of words from St. John which are inscribed on the rood screen of the original church. The Mass is a central work in Wuorinen's catalog. It is actually a Missa Brevis as it does not include the Credo. The reason for this is practical: St. Luke's requires congregational singing of the Credo. The mass was performed for the first time on November 20, 1983 at St. Ignatius of Antioch, New York City. A Solis Ortu and the reworking of the Josquin motet Ave Christe for piano were composed for Stephen Fisher, then President of C.F. Peters Corporation. Fisher, a fine amateur photographer, had given Wuorinen a photo of the sun rising over Yosemite National Park. In response, Wuorinen wrote the lovely short a cappella antiphon, A Solis Ortu, which is based on a related chant in the Liber usualis "From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, the name of the Lord is to be praised". The first performance took place as part of the Solemn Mass at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church conducted by Harold Chaney on December 30, 1990. Ave Christie is a re-casting of a portion of a motet by Renaissance master Josquin des Prez. Unlike Busoni, whose transformations of Bach chorales into late 19th century virtuoso showpieces are designed to display the talents of the performer, Wuorinen presents the Josquin simply, with elegant octave doubling, and registeral changes. He transforms the motet into a choral-like work for piano". About the main work on this disc, Genesis, Michael Steinberg writes: "Herbert Blomstedt, Music Director (1985-1995) of the San Francisco Symphony, was not just the first conductor of Genesis; he was in an important sense, the inspiration and godfather of this powerful work. In one of his conversations with Charles Wuorinen during the four years, 1985 to 1989, that he, Wuorinen, was the San Francisco Symphony's composer-in-residence, Blomstedt said 'Wouldn't it be nice if someone wrote a new Genesis' or words to that effect. Moreover, having conducted several of Wuorinen's instrumental works - Movers and Shakers, The Golden Dance, Another Happy Birthday, the Piano Concerto No. 3, and Machault Mon Chou - Blomstedt was curious to see what effect the challenge of writing a new work for chorus might have on the composer's musical language. From these exchanges came the impetus for Wuorinen to add his Genesis to the list - not large, but distinguished - of compositions on that subject by Haydn, Schoenberg and Milhaud."

  • Catalog #: TROY0681

    Release Date: August 1, 2004
    Chamber

    David Rakowski grew up in St. Albans, Vermont playing trombone in community bands and keyboards in a rock band. His first composition was a band piece he wrote his junior year in high school, in order to win the Vermont All-State Composition Competition (he lost). The first music he heard that he really liked was Le Soleil des Eaux of Boulez and Ensembles for Synthesizer of Babbitt, on a Time-Life "Music of Today" compilation that his band director had lent him. He eventually studied composition at the New England Conservatory, at Princeton with among others, Milton Babbitt, and at Tanglewood with Luciano Berio. He has been composer-in-residence at the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival and Guest Composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference. He has taught at Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia Universities. Currently he is Professor of Composition at Brandeis, whose faculty he joined in 1995.

  • Catalog #: TROY0683

    Release Date: August 1, 2004
    Chamber

    Allen Shawn has composed a large catalog of chamber and piano music, 11 concertos and orchestral works, choral music, and several song cycles. He has composed incidental music for theater, two chamber operas to libretti by his brother, playwright Wallace Shawn, a one act children's chamber opera, music for ballet, and music for the film "My Dinner with Andre." He performs frequently as a pianist and has been a faculty member since 1985 at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. He is also the author of the book, Arnold Schoenberg's Journey, as well as many articles about contemporary music.

  • Catalog #: TROY0685

    Release Date: August 1, 2004
    Instrumental

    Pianist Sara Laimon is an active performer in both solo and chamber music. She has performed in Canada, the United States, England, France, Japan, Mexico and Poland, and she has represented the U.S. Information Agency as an Artistic Ambassador in India and Nepal. Laimon is a founding member and co-artistic director of the acclaimed New York-based group Sequitur and has been guest artist with numerous other ensembles. As a sought-after performer of new music, she has worked with composers such as Ligeti, Berio, Bresnick and Kirchner, as well as performing and recording music of many emerging American composers. The New York Times described her 2001 live performance of this disc's repertoire as "a sense of knowing exactly where she wanted to go: music-making as intelligent as it was technically proficient". Born in Vancouver, Laimon is a graduate of the Vancouver Academy of Music, the University of British Columbia, Yale School of Music and SUNY Stony Brook, where she received a DMA under Gilbert Kalish. She was a member of the piano faculty at the Yale School of Music and the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg before joining the McGill Faculty of Music in 2001, where she is currently chair of the Piano Area.

  • Catalog #: TROY0692

    Release Date: August 1, 2004
    Chamber

    Henry Holden Huss was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in New York City, where his family moved when he was two. His father had emigrated from Germany and became a successful organist and piano teacher in this country. Young Huss began to study music with his father, then others in this country, finally traveling to Munich to study at the Royal Conservatory. He studied piano, organ and composition with two other American students who began the same time he did: Horatio Parker and Arthur Whiting. All three excelled. Upon his return to the United States, Huss received some recognition with his Piano Concerto (his graduation piece from Munich). He performed it both with the Boston Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. Daniel Gregory Mason related to Huss in 1892, that John Knowles Paine, the dean of American composers with whom Mason was studying at the time, considered Huss "the best of the young generation of American composers". Many shared this opinion. But like many other American composers of the time, Huss found it very difficult to get his music performed and published. His Trio in d minor, Op. 23, was composed in 1886 and dedicated to his teacher Joseph Rheinberger. Mortimer Wilson was born in Charlton, Iowa. He studied organ, violin and composition with Frederick Grant Gleason at the Chicago Musical College. He then studied in Leipzig with Max Reger. John Tasker Howard (the great observer of early American composers) wrote of his rigorously trained former teacher that he "...could toss complicated counterpoint from his pen as easily as he could talk to his friends". Upon his return to this country in 1911, he taught at the Atlanta Conservatory and conducted the Atlanta Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1916, he moved to Brenau College in Gainesville, Georgia. By 1918, he had taken a job as consulting editor for the National Academy of Music in New York City, where he remained until his death. Today, his works are mostly in manuscript and includes five symphonies and a great deal of chamber music. The suite, From My Youth, Op. 5 was published in 1911 and premiered by the Sitting Trio. Adolf Martin Foerster was born in Pittsburgh. He began with piano lessons from his mother and then pursued music in the public schools which had just incorporated Lowell Mason's ideas about music education into its public schools. He also then went to Leipzig to complete his education. Upon his return to America he spent one year teaching in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, before he returned to Pittsburgh, where he soon became one of the musical leaders of the community. Though mainly known as a songwriter, Foerster's many compositions include numerous suites, overtures, and festival marches for orchestra; a violin concerto, two other piano trios; a piano quartet and pieces for violin and piano. His Trio Serenade was composed in 1907 and is a lush romantic work.

  • Catalog #: TROY0693

    Release Date: August 1, 2004
    Chamber

    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.

  • Catalog #: TROY0677

    Release Date: September 1, 2004
    Instrumental

    On this CD are gathered shorter and occasional pieces and one extended work by California-born composer David Macbride. The pieces were written in a period spanning a little over a decade, and are played by him here with a nuanced artistry and great authority. It is a delightful and ultimately very moving recording, as it reveals a composer in mid-career who is able to do that very hardest of things, which is to allow the listener into his world without posing or imposing. In a period when "new music" often seems to need some kind of verbal explanation, Macbride's work, even at its most complex, holds true to music's purpose, which is to communicate directly to the listener with sounds. So natural and sure is his composer's art that any accompanying notes seem almost unnecessary. Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to recommend music that is at once so touching and so beautifully made. Macbride's roots in California and in Beijing, China, the birthplace of his mother, influence the tone of his music, which, even at its most dense, generates an extraordinary attentiveness and calmness in the hearer. His language seems an effortless coalescence of Eastern and Western elements, remnants of neo-classicism, figurations and harmonies from mid-century jazz, and, at times, echoes of Satie, Messiaen and of an attractive early work of fellow Californian John Cage. Different degree of influence from these sides emerge in different works, but one is struck in the end by the music's remarkably unified voice and sense of purpose. Transparent, lucid, firmly in the present, yet also deeply meditative, the overriding impulse behind Macbride's expression feels quietly, unpretentiously religious.

  • Catalog #: TROY0680

    Release Date: September 1, 2004
    Chamber

    Wolfgang David (b.1971) has become ensconced on the international stage, both as a recitalist, and as a guest soloist with many of the world's leading orchestras. His teachers included Rainer Kuelchl, the concert master of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Igor Ozim at the Berne Conservatory and Yfrah Neaman at London's Guildhall School of Music. David Gompper (b.1954) has lived and worked professionally as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer in New York, San Diego, London, Nigeria, Michigan and Texas. He is currently Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa. In 2002-2003, he was in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching, performing and conducting at the Moscow Conservatory. He has performed with Wolfgang David in Moscow, the United States and Vienna.

  • Catalog #: TROY0682

    Release Date: September 1, 2004
    Choral

    John Schlenck was born in Indianapolis. At age 21, he graduated from the Eastman School of Music with a major in composition and moved to New York City. There, he soon discovered his affinity with Indian thought and joined the Vedanta Society of New York. Serving as its music director since 1961, Schlenck has composed many songs and a number of larger works with Vedantic and other spiritual texts. His instrumental works include three symphonies, a piano concerto, and numerous chamber and solo compositions. After traveling the length and breadth of India for three years as a mendicant friar, Swami Vivekananda arrived at Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of the country, in late December, 1892. This place of pilgrimage contains a temple to Goddess Kanyakumari, an aspect of the Universal Mother. About a quarter mile from shore, twin rocks jut out from the sea. After worshipping at Mother's temple, Vivekananda swam through the turbulent, shark-infested waters to the farther of the two rocks. He remained there for three days and nights on the solitary rock, meditating intensely on the condition of India - her present degradation, the misery of her people, her past glory and future potentialities. The composer writes: "in the winter of 1981-82, I spent three months in India, visiting many of the places where Vivekananda had stayed, meditated and taught. A high point was my visit to Kanyakumari. I was profoundly moved by the drama and pathos of Vivekananda's tour through India, by his compassion for the suffering people and by the nobility of his vision." It was from the recollections of this trip that the music on this CD was composed.

  • Catalog #: TROY0684

    Release Date: September 1, 2004
    Chamber

    Peter G. Davis writes: "Spanning the years 1978 to 2001, the music on this disc gives a useful overview of the musical aims and stylistic development of a prominent, productive, and often provocative American composer between the ages of 17 and 40. It is a useful mini-survey and a revealing one as well. All five works are written for small instrumental combinations, an exposed medium in which no composer has ever found an easy place to hide. In chamber music every note counts, and the composer must make the performer as well as the listener feel actively engaged with the music's substance and forward progress at all times, if the piece is to emerge as a fully satisfying listening experience. Anyone who listens closely to Lowell Liebermann's scores has to be impressed by their ability to do precisely this in music notable for its clarity and textural lucidity. Some will be tempted to call these works neo-romantic, neo-classical, post-modern, or any number of other fashionable terms, most of them not very helpful. Labels are often misleading, but one thing is certain; Liebermann is not concerned with startling his audiences by experimenting with radical new structures, never-before-heard musical sounds, or extended instrumental techniques. Indeed, he adopts a more conservative stance that apparently stings certain critics for whom novelty is absolutely essential if a new work is to be considered artistically valid. So much the worse for them. Liebermann is too busy composing to enter into such aesthetic arguments. The title of each piece on this disc honestly describes what it is, and in terms that composers as far back as Haydn and Mozart would recognize. Liebermann's music falls gratefully upon the ear, but it is filtered through the sensibility of a composer who clearly lives in our time and is fully aware of the tumultuous musical upheavals of the past century, even as he consciously makes the choice to offer us something that rises above the fray. Liebermann writes music that above all strives for balance and beauty - and braininess as well, for all those who care to dig beneath the surface. It is a healthy sign of the times that a composer can once again choose to be accessible in this way and not be automatically squashed and discouraged by the mandarins of contemporary music. Such was the fate of many American composers active in the generation that preceded Liebermann, and the new music scene is still in recovery from those bad old days."

  • Catalog #: TROY0687

    Release Date: September 1, 2004
    Orchestral

    Andrew List composes music in many different genres including orchestral works, string quartet, vocal, choral music and opera, music for children, solo works and a variety of chamber ensembles. A resident of Boston, Massachusetts, Mr. List is a Professor of Composition and Theory at the Berklee College of Music. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, List is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. He received his doctorate in music composition from Boston University where he studied with Bernard Rands and Nicholas Maw. Lee. T. McQuillan, a resident of Middletown, Connecticut, studied Music Education at Barrington College in Rhode Island and later received his Bachelor of Music in composition from the Hartt School of Music. Arthur Welwood is a Professor of Composition at the Berklee College of Music. Wind Sky Clouds, commissioned by jazz trumpeter Greg Hopkins, was completed in the summer of 2003. The premiere performance took place in Hartford, Connecticut on November 16, 2003, with Hopkins playing the solo trumpet and flugelhorn and Tibor Puszati conducting the Connecticut Valley Chamber Orchestra. The piece is an example of "Third Stream," a phrase first coined by composer Gunther Schuller to describe the fusion of jazz and classical styles and where the crossover from one to another in the course of the piece is blurred and often imperceptible.

  • Catalog #: TROY0472

    Release Date: November 1, 2001
    Chamber

    David Macbride has written numerous works, ranging from solo, chamber and orchestral music; to music for film, TV, dance and theater. Tim Page of Newsday writes: “In David Macbride’s music, one finds technical skills of a high order, a direct lyricism that informs the most complex passages, and a personal aesthetic that combines Western chromaticism with a fascination for the music of China.” Macbride is also an active pianist and co-founder, with Benjamin Toth, of Conundrum, a non-profit arts organization that presents concerts and recordings of musically diverse styles. He is on the faculty of the Hartt School, University of Hartford. About his selection of the poetry of Lorca to set to music, Macbride writes: “A composer, much like a poet, spends a lifetime trying to refine his or her voice into its essence. My music has always tried to find the silence, “a rolling silence.” In Lorca, many composers including myself have found the means to speak with their own voices. I am confident that Lorca himself, as musician, visual artist, and writer, would have been pleased to know that he created this safe haven.”

  • Catalog #: TROY0690

    Release Date: September 1, 2004
    Orchestral

    David Gillingham earned degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and Michigan State University. He has an international reputation for the works he has written for band and percussion. Many of his works are now considered standards in the repertoire. He is currently a Professor of Music at Central Michigan University. Double Star for Solo Clarinet, Solo Piano and Wind Ensemble was commissioned by Gary Green and the University of Miami Wind Ensemble to celebrate the friendship between the composer and the two soloists. The work, therefore, celebrates humanity, especially the goodness and friendship one achieves through music. David Maslanka’s Song Book is a set of pieces that are songlike – that is, intimate and expressive, though not necessarily quiet. “The solo flute feels like a voice to me,” writes the composer. “One which has a complex story to tell, in the form of musical dreams. I have used three chorale melodies in Song Book.” David Maslanka was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He attended the Oberlin College Conservatory where he studied composition with Joseph Wood. He spent a year at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and did graduate work in composition at Michigan State University with H. Owen Reed. He has served on the faculties of the State University of New York at Geneseo, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University and Kingsborough College of the City University of New York. He now lives in Missoula, Montana.

  • Catalog #: TROY0705

    Release Date: September 1, 2004
    Opera

    Antonio Caldera composed during the most flourishing period of the Baroque. While his contemporaries - Handel, Bach, Scarlatti and Vivaldi - are today held in higher esteem, in his own day, Caldera's vocal output was much celebrated. 18th century music critic Charles Burney called him "one of the greatest professors both for the Church and the stage that Italy can boast," and rated Caldera second only to Handel for his vocal writing. He was born in Venice to musical parents. He was a working musician from an early age as both contralto chorister and cellist at St. Mark's in Venice, at the same time composing vocal music. He continued to draw a salary (with pay raises) until nearly the age of 30 as a contralto at the basilica. It was the custom of the 18th century for wealthy patrons to subsidize composers. The pragmatic Caldera always played his cards wisely and always had work. For the final twenty years of his life, Caldera maintained a comfortable position at the Viennese court where he produced an immense operatic and oratorio output. The court feats included operatic productions commemorating the birthdays and name days of the royal family. The Emperor himself studied keyboard and conducting with Caldera, and his two daughters sang on these occasions as well. In the summer of 1734, Caldera celebrated the Empress' birthday with a charming operatic gem Il giuoco del Quadriglio (The Card Game), for which the composer provided roles for the young archduchess and for his own wife Caterina. This work offers each of the four female vocalists her own da capo solo turn. It is scored for strings and continuo with the delightful and unexpected appearance of flute and lute and then a final happy ending quartet for everyone.

  • Catalog #: TROY0674

    Release Date: October 1, 2004
    Instrumental

    Martin Amlin studied with Nadia Boulanger at the Ecoles d'Art Americaines in Fontainebleau and the Ecole Normale de Muisique in Paris. He received masters and doctoral degrees as well as the Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied piano with Frank Glazer and composition with Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler and Warren Benson. Formerly an instructor at the Phillips Exeter Academy and an Affiliate Artist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Martin Amlin is currently Associate Professor of Theory and Composition in the College of Fine Arts at Boston University. He has been rehearsal pianist for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Boston Pops Orchestra on many occasions. This recording premieres Amlin's two most recent sonatas, a variation set, and five preludes, linking them with works of two composers, Aaron Copland and Irving Fine, with whom he shares formative influences. Though of different generations, all three came under the distinguished tutelage of Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, and all three frequently drew inspiration from the creative atmosphere of Tanglewood, the legendary summer music center in the Berkshires. Thus, Amlin's voice, while uniquely personal, speaks within a tradition which demands uncompromising compositional integrity and stylistic conviction. A comparison of his music with that of his eminent forebears amply justifies the association.

  • Catalog #: TROY0686

    Release Date: October 1, 2004
    Orchestral

    Christopher Gunning was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, but spent his childhood in London. He studied composition, piano and percussion at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where his teachers included Edmund Rubbra and Richard Rodney Bennett. For most of his professional life he has composed film and television scores. He currently divides his time between composing for films and television, conducting engagements, and composing his own concert works, the most recent of which was a Saxophone Concerto for John Harle. The composer writes: "I had wanted to write a piano concerto for several years before finally getting to grips with it in 2001. So much contemporary piano music seems to ignore that which I like best - the instrument's ability to sing - and I was interested in doing something which explores the lyrical as well as the percussive qualities of the piano. Storm composed early in 2003 has slow outer sections; apart from those it is pretty noisy and dramatic. It is scored for a large symphony orchestra, and I wrote it shortly after spending some time at the seaside and feeling totally exhilarated by the wind and waves of a violent storm. Symphony No. 1, composed in 2002, continues a process begun a few years previously with my Saxophone Concerto, which was my first concert piece following many years of working in films and TV. It was then that I discovered a penchant for single movement forms which move through many changing emotional moods; I think of them as novels or journeys."

  • Catalog #: TROY0691

    Release Date: October 1, 2004
    Vocal

    Arthur Honegger, of Swiss parentage, was born in Le Havre, France. At a young age his father sent him to study at the Zurich Conservatory, and at age 21, he moved to Paris where he was accepted into the Paris Conservatory. After the war, he gained wider notoriety for a period of time by his association with Les Six. Honegger was the only one of Les Six who did not wholly support Satie and all of the ideals the group adopted. While he also rejected the over-exaggerated expressions and the absence of form in the compositions of the late Romanticists, Honegger had little sympathy for the rather whimsical and trivial simplicity of the music of some of the members of Les Six. He wrote more than 40 melodies for voice and piano, which appear as 21 groups of songs, containing a total of 56 individual songs that reflect various levels of sophistication. As a body of work, the songs by Honegger demonstrate a broad range of imagination and expression. Jacques Leguerney, born 18 years later than Honegger, also in LeHarve, France, became fascinated with music and its composition after beginning piano lessons and attending concerts while yet a child. However, as the son of a prominent lawyer raised in a typical upper middle class setting, he was expected to undergo the usual classical education and prepare for a profession such as law even though he continued with formal piano lessons. However, the young Leguerney's interest in music composition was not to be denied. In 1925, after he had begun law studies, he dropped out to take private harmony and counterpoint. At the age of 20, he began study with Nadia Boulanger. This lasted only a year because he resisted her teaching methods as unsuited to his personal goals for composition. He was encouraged by Albert Roussel to continue to compose in his own style. Leguerney's love of French Renaissance poets inspired him to set their poems to music. He was neither a trained singer, nor an accomplished pianist and, despite a minimum of formal musical training, his native talent enabled him to work out the melodies and the precise pianistic sounds that would express the nuances of the poem. The three groups of songs that are included in this album are from Leguerney's collection of his settings of French Renaissance poems that he named Vingt Poemes de la Pleiade. The title was chosen in accordance with the name Pleidade (the seven stars in the Taurus constellation) used by literary historians for the group of seven poets of the 17th century who called for the purification of the French language. Graham Johnson, a noted British pianist/accompanist, writing in a French Song Companion made this observation: "There is so much character and vitality in this music that its neglect is difficult to explain...This music is too good to remain a rarity. It would certainly repay the championing of a new generation of interpreters, and Leguerney's name deserves to be seen on concert programs as a matter of course."

  • Catalog #: TROY0695-96

    Release Date: October 1, 2004
    Instrumental

    Bennett Lerner was born in Boston in 1944 and currently lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He is a well-known performer of contemporary music and has premiered many pieces by major composers. In 1985, he performed the Copland Piano Concerto with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic in honor of the composer's 85th birthday. The program was broadcast nationally on Live From Lincoln Center. Lerner was Copland's chosen soloist. His primary teachers were Claudio Arrau and Robert Helps, among others. Lerner received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from City University of New York in October, 2001, in piano performance and music history. Mr. Lerner writes: "Throughout my career I have had many close friends who were composers. Many of them wrote pieces for me, some of which I played in their world premiere performances, some of which I played many times, some of which I played only once, and some of which I played for the first time during the world tour of MUSIC BY MY FRIENDS in September-November, 2003. This recording is made up in large part of those pieces. In addition, it includes other works by my composer-friends." Comments from composers include Roger Zahab: "Your recordings are truly wonderful! I feel that you have done a magnificent thing for all of us. I wouldn't change a thing."; Tison Street: "The performances are absolutely stellar...Your performance of my Poem is just the best!..."; Donald Richie: "Your recording of your friends' music is your finest yet, and the relaxed beauty you bring to my little pieces is wonderful...."

  • Catalog #: TROY0699

    Release Date: October 1, 2004
    Chamber

    Alice Shields writes: "I received a doctor of Musical Arts in composition from Columbia University, studying with Vladimir Ussachevsky and Jack Beeson. I have gratefully absorbed grants from, among others the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Opera Institute and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and have done my time as Associate Director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and Associate Director for Development of the Columbia University Computer Music Center. I've performed South Indian rhythmic recitation in Bharata, Natyam dance-dramas with Indian dancer Swati Bhise and her troupe of dancers and Indian musicians, at venues including Wesleyan University, Juilliard School and the Asia Society. In a former life I also sang operatic roles with the New York City Opera, the Opera Society of Washington, D.C. and the Clarion Opera Society in Italy, among others. I composed Vegetable Karma in Fall, 1999, while artist in residence at the Computer Music Center of the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College. Veggie Karma, as I tend to call it, was the piece I created using ProTools. In creating the piece I used sound sources from hip-hop sample albums, and molded them into pitches of Todi raga, which is from North Indian classical tradition. The work was premiered at the International Electroacoustic Music Festival at Brooklyn College, November 7, 1999. Dust was commissioned by choreographer Mark Taylor of Dance Alloy of Pittsburgh, in collaboration with choreographer Anita Ratnam of the Arangham Dance Theater of Madras, India. Shenandoah is the second of three computer pieces I wrote for choreographer Mark Taylor. It was commissioned by the School of Theater and Dance of James Madison University. I created Shenandoah in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Within days of 9/11, I had to take an eerily empty train from New York City to Washington, D.C. and then a bus to Virginia in order to participate in the first artist residency of this project. It seems almost inevitable then, that Shenandoah came to be about non-violence and peacefulness. The premiere performances took place March 21-23, 2002, at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia."

  • Catalog #: TROY0700

    Release Date: October 1, 2004
    Chamber

    Eric Ewazen has written: "Richard Stoelzel is one of the great trumpet players of our time. His majestic tone, beautiful lyricism and heartfelt musicality is a joy to hear." Richard is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral musician. He began his career as solo cornet with the United States Coast Guard Band. As a soloist, he has toured China extensively. He has been principal trumpet of the New Orleans Symphony and is currently principal trumpet of the Palm Beach Opera Orchestra as well as a member of the Des Moines Metro Opera Association. He is professor of trumpet and head of the brass program at Grand Valley State University.

  • Catalog #: TROY0701-02

    Release Date: October 1, 2004
    Chamber

    Dan Locklair, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, holds a Master of Sacred Music degree from the School of Sacred Music of Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Presently, Dr. Locklair is Composer-in-Residence and Professor of Music at Wake Forest University. His prolific output includes symphonic works, a ballet, an opera and numerous solo, chamber, vocal and choral compositions. A professional organist at the age of 14. From 1973 to 1982, he was Church Musician of First Presbyterian Church in Binghamton, New York, and an instructor of music at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. His teachers have included Ezra Laderman, Samuel Adler and Joseph Schwantner.

  • Catalog #: TROY0707

    Release Date: October 1, 2004
    Choral

    One of nine choral ensembles in the University of Miami Phillip and Patricia Frost School of Music, the University Chorale was founded in 1993, by the current Director of Choral studies, Dr. Jo-Michael Scheibe. The Chorale has quickly established itself as one of Florida's leading collegiate choral ensembles. The voices are chosen from across campus, drawing both music majors and students from outside of the Frost School of Music. Jo-Michael Scheibe has degrees from California State University at Long Beach, and from the University of Southern California. He held positions in California and Arizona prior to his arrival at the University of Miami. He has served as artistic and music director of the Florida Philharmonic Chorus and is currently the artistic and musical director of the Master Chorale of South Florida. He also serves as Director of Music Ministries at the historic Coral Gables Congregational Church.