Catalog

Composer Tom Cipullo's works have been heard at major concert halls on four continents, from San Francisco to Tel Aviv, from Stockholm to La Paz. He has received numerous commissions and awards including fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony and the Copland House, among many others. He was honored for his contributions to the American art song repertoire with a retrospective concert given by Joy in Singing in 2000. The works on this disc span almost two decades with the first, The Land of Nod, being written in 1993.

Glory Denied, the new opera by Tom Cipullo, is the saga of Col. Jim Thompson, the longest-held American POW in U.S. history. Cipullo’s dramatic chamber opera based on the 2001 oral history by Tom Philpott, was recorded live with cast and ensemble of the 2013 Fort Worth Opera Festival. Glory Denied is a distinctly American story encapsulating something of the moral essence of the Vietnam War and the bitterness of the war’s legacy. Tom Cipullo’s score is beautiful and chilling and returns us to a transformative era in our nation’s history.

Here Albany Records is privileged to present the world premiere recording of this wonderful new opera by the American composer Tod Machover who was recently called brilliantly gifted by The New York Times and “America’s most wired composer” by the Los Angeles Times. He is highly regarded for music that boldly breaks traditional artistic and cultural boundaries, offering a unique and innovative synthesis of acoustic and electronic sound, of symphony orchestras and interactive computers, of operatic arias and rock songs, and that consistently delivers serious and powerful messages in an accessible and immediate way. As Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Lloyd Schwartz has written: “What’s most exciting about Machover’s pieces in general is how beautiful and moving they are, what lyrical and exotic melismas keep surfacing (and how scintillatingly they contrast with the shattering electronic textures), how dramatically they build, how they haven’t a dull moment, and what magnificent opportunities for performers they provide.” Machover has composed five operas in quite diverse forms, from the science fiction VALIS, commissioned for the tenth anniversary of Paris’ Centre Pompidou, to the walk-through Meteorite, permanently installed in Essen, Germany since 1998. His celebrated audience-interactive Brain Opera was the hit of the 1996 Lincoln Center Festival, and is now permanently installed at the House of Music in Vienna. Resurrection received a new production at Boston Lyric Opera in 2001/2002. Machover is also noted for inventing new technology for music, especially his Hyperinstruments that use smart computers to augment musical expression and creativity for virtuosi, amateurs and children. The latest application of Machover’s hyperinstruments is for the creation of Music Toys that will enable children to collaborate creatively with orchestras around the world in his Toy Symphony project, which premieres in Europe in Spring 2002 before traveling to the United States and Asia. Machover is currently working on new operas for the Opera of Monte-Carlo and New York City Opera. He was formerly Director of Musical Research at Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM Institute in Paris. He received his degrees in musical composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions. Currently, Machover is Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Laboratory, head of the Lab’s Opera of the Future group, and Director of its new Centre for Future Arts. He is also a Founding Member of MediaLabEurope in Dublin.

Libby Meyer is a composer whose work reflects the natural rhythms and patterns of the world around her. Her music has been commissioned and performed throughout the United States. She has served as composer-in-residence at the Islae Royale National Park and the Visby International Center for Composers. The recipient of numerous awards including the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Composers Forum, she is on the faculty at Michigan Technological University. This recording of her music includes works for vocal ensemble as well as chamber ensembles. Performers on this recording include the Capella Clausura conducted by Amelia LeClair and the Juventas New Music Ensemble.

In their program notes to this album Terry Rhodes and Ellen Williams write: "As a duo team, we have performed throughout the United States and Europe since 1988. In exploring the traditional duet literature, we came to realize the scarcity of twentieth century vocal duet music, and decided to do our own small part to rectify the situation. We commissioned two new works, one form Stephen Jaffe in 1990 for our Carnegie Recital Hall premiere, and one from Timothy Hoekman in 1994. Additionally we wanted to introduce our audiences to other new works by composers who also deserve to be heard. We consider it a vital part of our responsibility as performers to champion the works of living American composers and to create a venue for duet music, an art form that encourages a camaraderie of spirit and the sharing of musical ideas. This new Albany compact disc contains five pieces, none of which has been previously recorded. They range in accompaniment from piano to orchestra, with interesting combinations in-between. We hope that in this eclectic mix, there is something for each of our listeners." An especial highlight of this album are two duets from two different operas by the Pulitzer Prize winning composer Robert Ward. "Lady Kate" was composed in the years immediately following his winning the Pulitzer in 1962.

The fact that Timothy Polashek has lived with moderate hearing loss (and the need to wear hearing aids) has actually had an impact on his compositional aesthetic; prompting him to explore the world of nonsensical speech sounds as music, as well as pitch and timbre manipulations of other sounds in his electro-acoustical works. He wrote his first computer program in the 5th grade to generate time-based graphic animations and by the time he entered high school he had written a computer program in PASCAL that could synthesize musical tones, generate improvisations in blues style, and display them as musical notation in real-time during the computation and reading of the music. As he writes, "all of the compositions on this album were composed recently, with the oldest, Porcupine Quest, dating from 2002...when I was composing these works, I knew that Eric Huebner might perform them so I kept his incredible virtuosity and spirited piano technique in mind...also, I am appreciative of pianist Steven Beck's superb playing on the duets, both in concert and in the recording sessions...overall, aesthetically, I view these works as modern classical music, but spoken at times in the dialect and emotion of jazz."

This is such an unusual album, such an unusual concept filled with such imagination, I will quote the artist, Jeanne Golan, who currently teaches at Bard College to give you an idea of what this disc is about. "As a pianist who performs contemporary music and works directly with composers as colleagues and friends, I have become increasingly intrigued by the issues with which composers contend in the musical expression of their thoughts. In extending this approach to music of different generations, I have been inspired to discover the ways in which composers of traditional repertoire dealt with these same issues and ultimately employed compositional methods that also stretched the boundaries of what was considered possible to create a unique university in each piece. This approach has not only allowed me to view every piece as "contemporary," but has also affected my choices in programming. Searching for works that complement each other has repeatedly revealed kinships between composers and pieces that initially seemed unrelated. I have often found that composers, though from different eras and places, grapple with the same issues, often resolving them in similar ways. The primary issue behind the collection of piano works assembled on this disc is the structuring of time, hence the title Time Tracks. Its repertoire incorporates two extreme approaches to time: one the approach that transcends it, as seen in the works by Beethoven and Curran, the other that specifically defines it both rhythmically and historically, embodied by the works of Granados and Nancarrow. Both Beethoven and Curran are composers reckoning with mortality - Beethoven with his own, Curran with his recently deceased friend, Cornelius Cardew." Ms. Golan has rethought ways to program contemporary music and her ideas certainly work on this new recital disc.

Supremely lyrical, the vocal compositions of Michael Rickelton flow organically in careful counterpoint with the texts upon which they are based. The three cycles featured on this disc generate the emotion, tone, and discourse that make each work unique, calling to mind the tradition of Lieder and art song. An experienced composer of solo, chamber, and orchestral works, Michael Rickelton has a particularaly strong and critically acclaimed affinity for the voice as this recording so beautifully demonstrates. Rickelton studied at Lipscomb University, the École Normale de Musique, and Peabody Conservatory. He is on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory, the Johns Hopkins University, and Towson University.

It's been nearly a decade since the music of the Common Sense Composers' Collective first surfaced on CD. Their first disc challenged the rarified asceticism of the then still-reigning though waning contemporary music orthodoxy with joyous abandon. Even the disc's cover, featuring eight clearly fun-loving folks, already dented the wall of solemnity that is suggested by the ubiquitous dour tweed-suit mug shots on the covers of many contemporary music recordings. But, ultimately, it was the sheer persuasiveness of the music that crashed down those walls. This group is now entering its second decade and so far has commissioned 62 new works. The pieces contained on this new release were originally written in 1996 in collaboration with the members of the Alternate Currents Performance Ensemble. They are joined on this CD by the New Millennium Ensemble, a mixed sextet of winds, strings, piano and percussion founded in 1990. The mission of all the performers heard on this disc, remains one of collaboration and community. They workshop the compositions through a process one would find more in the dance world than in the classical music world. Many of these works, which began with Common Sense, have found a new home with The New Millennium Ensemble, underlining a new collaborative dynamic and sense of joy in music-making.

Crossing folk music and modern serious music has a long tradition. American musical scholar Ketty Nez ventures a fresh take on this concept: Inspired by her own family’s heritage, she artfully blends folk music of Central Europe and Turkey with her own modern compositional language. The result is THROUGH THE LIGHT.

The album’s titular work is a multi-faceted, emotionally fast-paced string quartet, drawing on fragments of folk music recorded by Béla Bartók in the early 20th century. The subsequent piece, 5 fragments in 3 is similarly inspired, but the setup changes to an unorthodox trio of soprano saxophone, viola and piano. THROUGH THE LIGHT is an impressive demonstration that a recentering into tradition can be rather daring.

Variations of Greek Themes was commissioned by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and received its first performance on November 20, 1977, with Maureen Forrester as soloist. "Variations of Greek Themes," Edward Arlington Robinson's collection of twelve poems based on texts by ancient authors, was published in 1915. Eight of the poems are set in this cycle. Innocence and Experience is a cycle of songs from the poems of William Blake. It was commissioned by the friends of Music at Yale (where Mr.Lewin taught music from 1971 to 1992) and received its first performance in 1961, with Helen Boatwright as soloist. Seven poems by Blake are arranged into a cycle of two contrasting days; they are set to music for soprano solo, and an ensemble of flute, oboe, horn, harp, two violins, viola, and two cellos. The text forms a cosmos of recurring images and ideas, several of which are reflected by corresponding musical devices. A Musical Nashery is a cycle of songs from the poems of Ogden Nash and was commissioned by Naomi Lewin, who gave its first performance on March 5, 1980, at the Yale School of Music, as part of her recital for a Master of Music degree. Complete texts are included in the program booklet for all the songs.

Roberto Sierra's Sinfonias burst with color and excitement, mixing popular and classical idioms, reflecting his Puerto-Rican heritage. As he writes, "That is how I hear music: in Technicolor, not black and white. It's not only timbre, it's harmony! I believe that different colors have different emotions." Currently serving as Old Dominion Professor of Composition at Cornell University, Sierra was composer-in-residence with the Milwaukee Symphony from 1989-1992 and with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2000-2001. His three symphonies constitute a revealing window into his evolution as an orchestral composer.

The Albany Symphony, conducted by David Alan Miller, gives world premiere performances of two commissioned works by the distinguished American composer Michael Torke. Torke's music has been called "some of the most optimistic, joyful and thoroughly uplifting music to appear in recent years." (Gramophone) Hailed as a "master orchestrator whose shimmering timbral palette makes him the Ravel of his generation" (New York Times), Michael Torke has created a substantial body of works in virtually every genre. Torke has served as Composer In Residence for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and has founded Ecstatic Records. The two works on this recording include a concerto for piano and orchestra titled Three Manhattan Bridges. Torke uses bridges as a metaphor for connecting to an earlier stance that music once had of a direct relationship with its audience. The second work, titled Winter's Tale is a concerto for cello and orchestra. Though not based on Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, it is inspired by lines from the play.

This disc is a most interesting family portrait. Aaron is the grandfather. He was born in Siberia, educated partly in Switzerland, and spent all of his creative life in China, where he was fascinated by the music and the culture. He was largely self-taught as a composer and his music represents largely a fusion of Chinese elements - scales, colors, legend - with western instruments and forms. While he lived in China, he supported himself as a bookman and for 15 years was the head of the Shanghai Municipal Library. In 1947, he came to the United States. Long associated with the Portland Youth Philharmonic, Jacob is Aaron's son. He studied with Ernst Toch, Bernard Rogers and Aaron Copland. Today he is a most respected man in the field of classical music, recognized across the nation for the work he had done with young people. Many of his Orchestral students play with the best Orchestras in the country and abroad. David, the son of Jacob, is a composer who was educated at Harvard. He was a timpani player who wanted to conduct. He studied with his father and then at Aspen with Morel and Blomstedt. He also studied at Tanglewood with Schuller, Bernstein and Ozawa. Today, he spends most of his time composing. Daniel is his brother and he is a violist who graduated from Juilliard. He has been principal violist for the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the American Composers Orchestra. Today he is the violist of the American String Quartet. All of the music on this disc has either been composed or arranged for him. So here we have a wonderful portrait of a very remarkable family in music.

Jake Heggie composed this musical play in three acts for Frederica von Stade, who has had a large influence on his composing career. Heggie was working in the press office of the San Francisco Opera when he first met von Stade. She listened to some of his songs and became so enthused that Heggie received a commission for his first opera. Three Decembers is taken from a play titled Some Christmas Letters and tells the story of the emotional lives of three people: mother, adult daughter and son through letters and phone calls during three Decembers in three different decades of their lives.

This disc contains three wonderful American works for piano, two of which, the Converse and the Oldberg, are receiving their world premiere performances here. The least known figure on the disc has to be Arne Oldberg. Who was he? He was the teacher of Howard Hanson for starters. He was born and lived in the Chicago area. His father, Oscar Oldberg, founded in 1886 and was the first Dean of the School of Pharmacy at Northwestern University. His son, Dr. Eric Oldberg, became President of both of the Chicago Board of Health and the Orchestral Association, the governing body of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Arne was appointed Professor of Music at Northwestern University in 1899, and later Dean of the graduate school, a position he held until he retired in 1941. Mary Louise Boehm writes: "I met Mr. Oldberg after he had retired. I premiered his Third Piano Concerto with the Chicago Civic Orchestra. Oldberg himself played for me his Piano Sonata which is recorded here. He also coached me, explaining his ideas about the piece to me." Frederick Shepherd Converse never had to worry about money as he was born into a prominent Boston family. He studied with John Knowles Paine at Harvard and also George Whitefield Chadwick. In 1896, he went to Munich where he studied with Joseph Rheinberger. For awhile, he taught at the New England Conservatory and Harvard, but he soon retired to his estate in Westwood, Massachusetts, near Boston, where he lived the rest of his life. Nothing much needs to be said as way of introduction for Amy Beach except to say that Mary Louise Boehm is an expert in the performance of her music. Her recording of the Beach Piano Concerto is still considered definitive.

It might be said that the composers on this recording represent three aspects of what Gilbert Chase called "Boston Classicism." Each composer had close ties to the musical life of Boston, and in his own way, each composer reflected European classical traditions. Typical of turn-of-the-century ideals, the two American-born composers, Parker and Heilman, studied in Germany, then brought back to New England the romantic European style that was then considered more acceptable than less cultured American styles. Paradoxically, Samuel Adler was born in Germany, but he studied in Boston. Even so, his style is solidly based on European classic techniques, especially on his love of Bach and Handel. The Rawlins Piano Trio was founded in the summer of 1987 at the University of South Dakota and named by the trio in honor of their principal benefactors. The trio has dedicated itself to performing works by American composers, as well as the more traditional piano trio literature. Performing throughout the United States, the Rawlins Piano Trio has been invited to perform for the International Sonneck Society for American Music and continues a very active concert schedule.

Molly Morkoski introduces her disc noting that "The selections on this disc encompass my musical journey as a college and graduate student through my time as a beginning professional in New York City. Three of the works represent my time in study with teaches whose musical input and genius still instructs my work today...There is the traditional repertoire of my youth and undergraduate studies, the period of discovery and love of new harmonic and rhythmic structures from my time as a master's student, and a final synthesis and balance of all styles from my time as both a doctoral student and professional musician in New York City." Morkoski has performed as a soloist and collaborative artist throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan, and has appeared at major concert halls and festivals around the world. She was a Fulbright scholar and the recipient of the Teresa Sterne Career Grant and the Thayer-Ross Awards. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Indiana University and SUNY-Stony Brook. Currently she is on the faculty at CUNY's Lehman College.

Looking back over the past 100 years, it would seem that the string quartet has been the most popular outlet for contemporary composers' most intimate thoughts. It may have taken longer for the unique blend of violin, piano and cello to catch up in terms of repertoire, but this remarkable disc displays the diverse voices that can be heard in this form. The Finn Segerstam has been best known as an orchestral conductor and a very prolific composer (as of January 2nd of this year, he had composed 173 symphonies). This Trio is a perfect example of the free-flowing, almost improvisational style he calls "free-pulsative." Needless to say, Hans Werner Henze has now achieved status as one of the world's most significant composers, and his early Kammersonate reflects the neo-classical influences of the post-War era. Both Sharafyan and Mansurian are Armenian. Sharafyan's music is rooted in ancient Armenian culture, while Mansurian's approach is in a more personalized, mystical vein. Finally, the Baird Trio's cellist, Jonathon Golove, has contributed a work using material from an opera based on Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest. The Baird Trio, in residence at the University of Buffalo, performs a wide range of repertoire, devoting particular attention to rarely heard and recent original works for their medium. The members believe the piano trio has a significant role to play in 21st century musical life.

Thoughts and Prayers is an album of tributes that draw upon composer Larry Bell's personal, social, national, and international awareness. The music is drawn from a solemn personal conviction and desire to preserve the lives of others in our memory. It is also a simple act of bearing witness to events that may be all too soon forgotten or too painful to contemplate. Bell offers four works for solo piano interspersed with two works for soprano, cello/viola, and piano. Award-winning composer Larry Bell's music has been commissioned and performed by a distinguished array of musicians, ensembles, and orchestras. He has taught at The Juilliard School, the Boston Conservatory, New England Conservatory, and the Berklee College of Music. He is joined on this recording by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Webb, cellist Sam Ou, pianist Deborah Nemko, and violist David Wallace.

Fueled by the brashness of a young nation, nineteenth century America produced a group of composers as diverse as the people who created the United States. They created a body of music that was distinctly American in sound and spirit. They were teachers, conductors, performers, publishers and administrators, but first and foremost, they were composers. Composers of music that moved the feet, sang the praises and expressed the hopes and desires of the American people. Who were they? Francis Johnson (1792-1844) was an American-American probably born in Philadelphia. Hailed during his lifetime as America's first native born master of music, he was a skilled performer on the keyed bugle, violin and piano. William Henry Humiston (1869-1923) was born in Marietta, Ohio. Easily the most enigmatic of the composer on this recording, Humiston was primarily an organist. He studied composition with Edward MacDowell from 1986-1899 and became assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1916. Harry Rowe Shelley (1858-1947) was one of the few American composers of his generation to study exclusively in the United States. Born in New Haven, Shelley studied at Yale University with Gustav Stoeckell and later with Dudley Buck and Antonin Dvorak in New York. Shelley was an organist at various churches in Manhattan and Brooklyn until his retirement in1936. George Whitefield Chadwick (1954-1931) was an American original, an independent Yankee who rose from humble origins to a position of prominence on his own merits. Founder of the Music Teachers National Association, Chadwick used his salary from his father's insurance firm to finance his musical education. Edgar Stillman Kelley (1857-1944) was a prolific composer of programmatic works noted for his innovative orchestration. Born in Sparta, Wisconsin, Kelley studied with Clarence Eddy in Chicago with further studies in Stuttgart. Kelley taught at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music for more than 20 years.

For many years, here at Albany Records, we have had the idea of doing a recording of American music that would tie in to horse racing - specifically the August season at Saratoga. Thoroughbred Thunder is the result and it has an appeal and charm well beyond its initial idea. Obviously, all of the selections have something to do with horses and racing, so any place that has a race track, or a racing audience will find this disc most entertaining. It should be a best seller, not only at Saratoga, but at Churchill Downs, Belmont and any other place there is a track. What about the music? It does sound like what you would hear at a circus. It has a jolly, albeit, repetitive nature to it, but this will only make the disc appeal to a wide variety of listeners: the listener for whom the composers on this disc they have only read about, never having heard a note of their music to the listener who is looking for something just as entertaining and charming as the title suggests.

Thomas Sleeper enjoys a highly prolific career as both composer and conductor. An active guest conductor in the U.S. and abroad, Sleeper has appeared with more than 30 orchestras on four continents. His compositional oeuvre to date includes two symphonies, two orchestral song cycles, eight concerti, six operas, numerous chamber and solo works and music for film. Sleeper is the Director of Orchestral Activities at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music.

Thomas Sleeper enjoys an active dual career as composer and conductor. His compositions include three symphonies, six operas, 14 concerti and numerous chamber works. His music is regularly performed through the U.S., in Europe, Asia and South America. He is director of orchestral activities at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music and music director of the Florida Youth Orchestra. With this world premiere recording of four of his concerti, we discover a composer in full control of his considerable faculties. His musical voice is oblique, as language in a dream, which tends to evaporate the more you attempt to sharpen your focus. These works display a composer with something interesting and important to say in a voice that is uniquely, authentically and unmistakably his.

Thomas Sleeper's Einstein's Inconsistency is a series of eight operas, the longest being about 20 minutes with the shortest just under a minute. On the surface, the operas seem unrelated, but each acts as a sort of mosaic tile to create a treatise on the very nature of existence. What all the characters have in common (a king, a bureaucrat, a critic, a grieving man, a heretic, a priest, a paranoid woman, and finally God) is that they are all at the brink of discovering what it means to exist. When taken as a whole, Einstein's Inconsistency takes the listener into a sort of sonic funhouse. One cannot experience this work and remain unaltered by it. It is clearly a deeply personal piece for the composer and contains some of his most inventive and powerful music to date.

The distinguished American composer Thomas Pasatieri is well known for his operas, having composed 22, as well as for his hundreds of songs and other vocal works. In fact, his first symphony, written at age 63 came about because of his association with the University of Kentucky and their production of his opera, The Hotel Casablanca. His Symphony No. 2 was written for conductor John Nardolillo and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra as well, while Symphony No. 3 was commissioned and premiered by the Northwest Sinfonietta. These are world premiere recordings of these works.

Bonhoeffer was conceived as a concert work in a theatrical context by composer Thomas Lloyd. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was one of the most influential Christian theologians of the 20th Century. He returned to Germany from the United States to become an active leader of the Confessing Church, which actively resisted the capitulation of the establishment Lutheran and Catholic churches to the fascist leadership of Adolf Hilter. He was involved in the unsuccessful plot to assassinate Hitler and suffered imprisonment and death, being hanged at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp a few weeks before Germany's surrender. He fell in love with Maria von Wedemeyer and was engaged to her shortly before his arrest. The text for Bonhoeffer is adapted from the writings of both Bonhoeffer and von Wedemeyer. Thomas Lloyd is on the faculty at Haverford College; the artistic director of the Bucks County Choral Society; and director of music at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral. His music has been performed by many choirs — professional, collegiate, community, and high school. The Crossing is a professional chamber choir based in Philadelphia conducted by Donald Nally and dedicated to the commissioning and performance of new music. They have collaborated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the International Contemporary Ensemble, Bang on a Can, and the American Composers Orchestra, among many others. They premiered John Luther Adams' Sila: the breath of the world in collaboration with the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2014. Their discography includes six recordings and they have been hailed in reviews as "superb" (New York Times) and "ardently angelic" (The Los Angeles Times). Under conductor Donald Nally's leadership, The Crossing has commissioned and premiered more than 50 works for chorus.

Karen Beres and Christopher Hahn, members of the CanAm Piano Duo, have been presenting innovative programs of duet and two-piano repertoire since 2002. They received the silver medal at the 2008 International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition in Boston and a distinguished ranking at the 2009 IBLA Grand Prize competition in Ragusa, Italy. As avid proponents of contemporary music, Beres and Hahn perform a varied repertoire of new works and masterpieces of the 20th century. Karen Beres is on the faculty at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Christopher Hahn serves on the faculty at the University of Montana. The program chosen for this recording includes a world premiere of David Maslanka's This Is The World; Libby Larsen's Gavel Patter based on American auctioneering patter and concludes with Lutoslawski's Paganini Variations in an arrangement for two pianos with added percussion parts.

Tanya Bannister's career began with her victories at the Concert Artists Guild International Competition and the New Orleans International Piano Competition, confirming her status among the leading pianists of her generation. Ms. Bannister has a special affinity for contemporary music. As she says, "I find the experience of working with composers to be an enlightening and energizing one..." Three works on this recording Del Tredici, Farrin, and Theofanidis were commissioned for her by Concert Artists Guild.

Things Fall Apart, a work for voice/narration and small ensemble, is based on the landmark novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It tells the story of Okonkwo, a village leader, who through a series of unfortunate events and the coming of Europeans, ultimately takes his own life. Things Fall Apart was written in 2011 and was commissioned by Odekhiren Amaize, who gave the world premiere performance with the musicians on this recording. Composer Roger Vogel has more than 140 compositions to his credit. He is on the faculty at the University of Georgia. He has received awards and prizes from the Roger Wagner Choral Composition Competition and the Delius Composition Competition, among others. Nigerian-American Odekhiren Amaize has studied voice at the University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University and the St. Petersburg State Conservatory. His other professional teaching and research interests include promotion and marketing of the arts, arts management and creative advertising through literature. He is currently on the faculty at the Canadian University in Dubai. His recordings appear on the Musicians Showcase and MSR Classics labels.

Christopher Theofanidis' music has been performed by many of the world's leading performing arts organizations, from the London Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic to the San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and the American Ballet Theatre. A two-time Grammy nominee, Theofanidis is currently on the faculties of Yale University and the Aspen Music Festival. This recording of two of his concertos is performed by the Albany Symphony conducted by David Alan Miller, which is known for its commissioning and performances of music by American composers. Chee-Yun, violin soloist is a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and has performed with many of the world's foremost orchestras. Viola soloist Richard O'Neill is the newly appointed violist of the Takács Quartet. An EMMY Award winner, two time Grammy nominee and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, he has appeared as soloist with the world's top orchestras.

Composer, concert presenter, educator and arts administrator, Theodore Wiprud has played many important roles in American musical life since the 1980s. His ongoing work with musicians, students, and communities -- currently as Director of Education at the New York Philharmonic and host of the Philharmonic's Young People's Concerts -- corresponds with music described as "rewarding to perform," "warmly received by audiences," and "destined to set a high standard." Theodore Wiprud came of age as a composer as the rigorous precepts of both serialism and classic minimalism yielded to a flowering of musical plurality. His works characteristically employ a freely tonal approach to harmony, convey specific emotional climates, and often reflect aspects of spiritual experience. This is the first commercial recording dedicated to his music.