Catalog

Finally! This is undoubtedly the first commercial recording of the Virgil Thomson Cello Concerto (whose first movement provides the title for this disc) since the classic old Columbia recording with Luigi Silva from the early 1950s, and it's in SACD sound! This delightful work, wearing its Americana on its sleeve but couched in the framework of a classic work such as the Haydn, is full of the kind of joyful, melancholy and eccentric moods and hymn-tunes one hears in the classic Thomson film scores and orchestral works. The Four Portraits, adapted from the more than 140 piano pieces he wrote of friends, artists and acquaintances, were adapted by Silva; the Frederic James Portrait is an original by Thomson in this form. Charles Fussell has a link to the great American past as he studied with Bernard Rogers at the Eastman School, and his music maintains a traditional sound with somewhat more advanced touches. Hailed by John Williams and others as "an outstanding cellist and truly dedicated artist," Emmanuel Feldman has emerged as one of the most innovative cellists of his generation. Known for his intense, soulful playing and a broad range of repertoire, he enjoys an active career as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist and champion of new music, having given premieres of works by Aaron Kernis, Gunther Schuller, David Diamond and himself.

Anyone who is familiar with the earlier Albany releases of Wilson's chamber music (TROY074, TROY389) or his Piano Concerto and Symphony No.1 recorded elsewhere, recognize him for his refreshingly unusual style, often reminiscent of Berg or Schoenberg. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, Mr. Wilson studied composition there, in Rome and at Rutgers University with Robert Moevs. He is also an accomplished pianist (having studied with Leonard Shure and Friedrich Wuhrer) and has performed Mozart concertos with the Hudson Valley Chamber Orchestra and the American Symphony under Leon Botstein. He currently holds the Mary Conover Mellon Chair in Music at Vassar and is Composer-In-Residence with the American Symphony Orchestra. His orchestral works have been performed by the San Francisco Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the Pro-Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, and the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. Here is an assortment of chamber works composed over the past twenty years, exhibiting his bracing, expressionistic style, featuring many of the performers he has associated with for years, including Rolf Schulte, one of the major performers of contemporary violin music in this country. Listeners who appreciate modern music that is accessible yet has plenty of personality will greatly enjoy this new release.

American composer Richard Aldag is also known as an educator and arts administrator. He holds a Ph.D. in Music from the City University of New York Graduate Center. He has received numerous commissions and served as composer-in-residence for the Sitka Summer Music Festival and the El Paso Pro Music Chamber Music Festival. Aldag has served on the faculties of San Francisco State University, San José State University, Pacific Union College, the Aaron Copland School of Music, Fordham University, and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. He was a special lecturer at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1991 and 1992. His arts administration career includes executive director positions with the Napa Valley Symphony, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and the Los Lupeños de San José, among others. With this first recording of his music, Aldag shares some of his most recent chamber music, offering a range of ensemble and instrumentation. The inspirations and expressive intentions are similarly diverse. This recording offers a rich and finely curated showcase for Aldag's latest music with a chance to get to know this original and compelling composer through the intimate expression and vivid textures that are the distinguishing hallmarks of chamber music.

Born in Iran, composer Reza Vali studied at the Conservatory of Music in Tehran, the Academy of Music in Vienna and the University of Pittsburgh, where he received his Ph.D. He has been a faculty member of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University since 1988. The recipient of numerous honors and commissions, including the honor prize of the Austrian Ministry of Arts and Sciences, his music has been performed by orchestras and ensembles around the U.S., including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Kronos Quartet, and Da Capo Chamber Players, among many others. His music appears on the Naxos, New Albion, MMC, Ambassador, ABC Classics, and Albany Records labels. In 2001, Vali broke away from the European music system and started composing music based on the Iranian Dastgâh/Maghâm system. To explore his goals of replacing the European equal temperament tuning system; European polyphony; European musical form; and utilizing rhythmic cycles of the Dastgâh/Maghâm system, Vali started composing a series of chamber work using the title Calligraphy. This recording contains all twelve of his Calligraphies, composed between 2000 and 2011.

Iranian-American composer Reza Vali has a unique and very personal ethos in that his artistic output attempts to understand the dialogue between the ancients and the moderns. It addresses his conviction that what has been historically and artistically camouflaged can be revealed. Since 2000, Vali has been composing exclusively within the demanding palette of Persian polyphony. The works on this recording include a works for microtonal trumpet and orchestra; songs using Persian folksongs as their inspiration; a work originally written for Persian wind instruments and ensemble, scored for clarinet and ensemble here; and a work for Persian Ney, Kamanche, and orchestra. A member of the faculty at Carnegie Mellon, Vali studied in Iran, at the Academy of Music in Vienna, and the University of Pittsburgh. The recipient of numerous awards and commissions, his music has been performed by some of the most notable orchestras and ensembles in the United States, including the Seattle Symphony, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and the Kronos Quartet, among many others. This is his fourth recording for Albany Records.

Here is a welcome companion to the acclaimed release of Reza Vali's music for string quartet on TROY790. This time music for larger chamber ensembles is featured, with an emphasis on the Persian folk music Vali grew up with. Since 1988 he has been on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University, and has received numerous awards and commissions from the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Kronos Quartet and many other ensembles. His early works indicated his interest in the avant-garde but in recent years he has composed works featuring strong influences from the music of his native Persia. The sets of Folk Songs and particularly the Calligraphy No. 4, with its use of the santoor (a Persian hammered dulcimer), derive almost entirely from Persian folk song. This is truly unique and highly original music.

This recording features treasured musical collaborators of composer Ingrid Arauco performing works from the past decade. While varied in inspiration, the works are connected, as they stem from purely musical impulses and investigations. Arauco's music is rich in the resonances of both the past and the present. Arauco's music has been performed by noted new music ensembles and featured at various music festivals, including the Havana Contemporary Music Festival. She is the recipient of numerous commissions, honors and fellowships, including residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Ms. Arauco is on the faculty at Haverford College. This is her third recording for Albany Records.

"Requiem Songs was begun about two years after I returned from a four month stay in the former Yugoslavia. It was originally planned to be an upbeat piece, using some of the musical ideas I had collected during my time in the Balkans, but the advent of the war in Croatia and Bosnia left me unable to complete the commission as I had originally planned it. It seemed like the culture I had known briefly was dying, and the appropriate musical response was to write a requiem for it. I briefly toyed with the idea of combining parts of the various liturgies used in the Balkans as source material for the work. However, as I focused more on the nationalistic conflicts which seemed to be springing up throughout eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the wake of the collapse of communism, I found myself thinking more and more that this was not about Bosnians and Serbs, but really about all people who see their own national identity as requiring the annihilation of people with another national or ethnic identity. The problem is not limited to victims of Serb or Croat aggression, but rather to the victims of nationalism throughout the world. Screen Scenes is not about anything political, but simply about how we perform music. One of my continuing musical interests over the years has been to find new ways to work with improvisation. I love the kinds of spontaneity and imagination that seem to appear when good improvisers play, and the depth with which ensembles must listen to each other in improvisational situations. On the other hand, as a composer, I also tend to have very specific ideas about how I want a piece of music to sound, how it should develop, how it should be structured, etc. So the problem is: how do I create a work in which I keep the kind of control which is important to me, while giving the musicians the kind of freedom they require for improvisational interaction. Screen Scenes is one answer." Neil Rolnick has been active internationally as a composer and performer of computer music since the late 1970s. He has appeared in concerts throughout North America, Europe and Japan. Currently he is Chair of the Arts Department and Director of iEAR Studios at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. This is a disc of appealing, profound and topical music.

Members of the Divan Consort, a Los Angeles based ensemble present a program of music by composers from Turkey, China, Armenia, South America and the United States. Reflecting the ethnic and national backgrounds of the performers in the ensemble, the Divan Consort is committed to enhancing diversity in music, exposing music by composers from underdeveloped countries to audiences in the U.S. and Europe, as well as performing landmark compositions of the 20th and 21st centuries. Pianist and founder of the Divan Consort, Füreya Ünal, hails from Turkey, while clarinetist Virginia Figueiredo is Portuguese; violinist Mira Khomik from the Ukraine; cellist Maksim Velichkin from Uzbekistan; percussionist Yuri Inoo from Japan; and flutist Pamela Martchev from the United States.

Reflections On The Firebird contains four commissioned works that celebrate the fifth anniversary of The Firebird sculpture, a 17 foot sculpture by Niki De Saint Phalle that is in front of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in Charlotte, North Carolina. The world premiere of these works took place at a concert at the Bechtler Museum in 2015, performed by the Bechtler Ensemble, a group of musicians who present multi-disciplinary programs to concert halls, museums and educational institutions. The ensemble's focus is the connection between the visual arts and music and typically they pair music and art from the same period. The contrasting styles of each of the four works emphasize each composer's reaction to The Firebird sculpture.

Albany Records in cooperation with the Center for Black Music Research is initiating a series undertaking to document the musics of the African diaspora. This first volume features two orchestral works Ñ one by Mary Watkins, who is an eclectic composer and pianist of the classical and jazz traditions and the other by Olly Wilson, one of the most distinguished composers of his generation. Watkins' work swings, grooves, and hearkens to the roots of African-American musical expression. Elements of jazz, traditional African music and popular forms are merged with contemporary techniques and colorful orchestrations. A veritable tour de force, Wilson's multimovement song cycle features three vocal soloists and a chamber ensemble that highlights extensive percussion. Drawing from sources such as spirituals and African-American poets, Wilson uses musical and textual emblems from African-American poetry in inventive ways that both surprise and entice.

The five works on the first disc are by two of the sons of J.S. Bach, and all are examples of what were known at the time as trios. Yet they are a diverse group, reflecting not only the distinct styles of their two composers by also the various types of sonatas written by them. The works on the second disc illuminate the crucial role played by C.P.E. Bach in the shift from the Baroque to the Rococo style and the tremendous artistic value of his work. On the faculty at Duke University, flutist Rebecca Troxler specializes in the music of J.S. Bach's sons and other Rococo composers and this repertoire shows off her warm tone, stylish phrasing and brilliant technique. A graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts and Juilliard, she was a founding member of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra. Her colleagues are all noted specialists in Baroque music.

Peter Ré studied at Juilliard and the Yale University School of Music, where he studied with Paul Hindemith, and received a Bachelor of Music degree in 1948 and at Columbia University for a Master of Arts Degree in 1950. In his 33 year career at Colby College, Professor Emeritus Ré taught courses in music theory and composition, music history and conducting. Ré has received commissions for works from the Portland and Bangor Symphony Orchestras and the Portland String Quartet (the String Quartet No. 3). He has received awards from the Maine State Commission on the Arts and Humanities for his work as Conductor and Music Director of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. His twelve-year tenure in that position brought about major changes in the constituency, size and performing ability of the orchestra, which transformed it into a major cultural resource for Maine and which attracted guest artists of international reputation. The works on this recording have been performed by, among others, the Juilliard, Hungarian, Bay Chamber, Vaghy and Portland Quartets. The founding members of the Portland String Quartet have been together since 1969 and have performed in all the major venues of the world. They have received particular attention for their complete cycles of the chamber music of Bloch, Chadwick and Piston.

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.

Randy Bauer (b. 1975) is a composer and jazz musician based in Minneapolis. His music has been performed across a range of cities and venues from Austin to Zagreb by the Brentano String Quartet, eighth blackbird, Nash Ensemble of London and many other distinguished new music ensembles. He was named a 2013-14 McKnight Foundation Fellow by the McKnight Foundation of Minnesota. He has also received recognition from DownBeat, and the Jazz Composers Alliance. Bauer has won the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer's Award as well as three ASCAP/Morton Gould Awards. On the faculty at Macalester College, he studied at Peabody, and Princeton. This disc contains three of his recent works (the oldest written in 2010). One can hear a range of influences and a sort of hybridity between the genres of jazz and classical music. His compositions are imbued with considerable lyricism, while also experimenting with hybrid forms and complex narratives.

David Owens, pianist and composer, has long experience as an organist, conductor and accompanist as well. He has appeared as soloist, in addition to working as a collaborative artist with hundreds of singers and instrumentalists. A graduate of Eastman, where he studied composition, his compositions have been played and sung by chamber ensembles, orchestras, choruses, and soloists throughout the United States. Owens is also a widely read music journalist, having received the Deems Taylor Award for Distinguished Music Criticism. This recording, devoted to his chamber music, includes an older work written in 1985 (Fantasy on a Celtic Carol), as well as two recent works (Sonata for Two Pianos, written in 2010 and Raking the Snow, written in 2008).

A native of Hong Kong, composer Stephen Yip now lives in the U.S. He studied at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and received his D.M.A. from Rice University. His music has been performed by noted new music ensembles in the U.S. and abroad including the New York New Music Ensemble, Little Giant Chinese Orchestra, Singapore Chinese Orchestra, and the Moscow New Music Ensemble. His discography includes recordings on the Albany, ERM-Media, Parma, Capstone, ATMA, and Beauport labels. He is on the faculty at Houston Community College. This recording of his chamber music includes performances by the [Switch~ Ensemble], the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, pianist Shelley Ng, and flutists Pei-San Chiu and Chen-Yu Wu.

Armand Qualliotine was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of seven he started his instructions in Jazz Guitar and Electric Bass as well as Music Theory. In 1967 he began his studies of Classical Guitar and Music Theory at Hofstra University. After earning degrees in composition and theory from the Hartt College of Music, SUNY at Stony Brook and Brandeis University, his post-doctoral activities included studying with Pierre Boulez and Milton Babbitt. He has taught guitar, theory, history and composition at Stony Brook, Northeastern University, Brandeis and the Berklee College of Music where is now an Associate Professor of Composition. Awards in his field have included residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Composers Conference and the Tanglewood Music Center where he was the Leonard Bernstein fellow in composition. He also received the C.D. Jackson Award for outstanding achievement as a composer, First Prize in the Boston ISCM Composition Competition, commissions from Harvard's Fromm Music Foundation, the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players and a 1988 Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2004 he was nominated to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Saxophonist Adam Estes is on the faculty at the University of Mississippi, where he teaches saxophone and bassoon, coaches woodwind chamber ensembles, and teaches woodwinds methods courses. He is a founding member of the Assembly Quartet and maintains an active performance schedule as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician. His performing career has taken him to venues in Scotland, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, France, and Belgium. His colleague, Stacy Rodgers is professor of music at the University of Mississippi where he is head of keyboard studies. Estes and Rodgers perform a program of contemporary works for saxophone and piano. The oldest work on the recording is Paul Creston's Sonata, written in 1939. Baljinder Sekhon's Sonata of Puzzles was commissioned by more than 50 saxophonists from 16 countries as part of the inaugural Global Premiere Consortium Commissioning Project and written in 2015. John Leszczynski's Almost Out of the Sky is also a commissioned work, which was written in 2011 at the behest of a consortium of 30 saxophonists. John Anthony Lennon's Distances Within Me was composed in 1979, while Lawson Lunde's Sonata, Op. 12 was written in 1959.

Here's some music that proves that it's okay to write in a recognizably American style that's reminiscent of the recent past and fresh at the same time. Many of Zaimont's works have won prizes; she composes in all media; and is one of the most recognizable among today's composers. Her chamber and symphonic works have been widely recorded, and her orchestral works have been performed by the orchestras of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Jacksonville, Mississippi and groups in Europe. As she writes about this collection, "...I've been fortunate throughout my teaching career to have experienced performance collaborations with a good number of top-rate faculty colleagues-including the past fourteen years at the University of Minnesota...This disc celebrates several mostly "Minnesota" collaborations, centering on more recent solo works. Several of these pieces received their premieres in vital interpretations by the same artists heard here."

Brian Hulse says in his notes on the music: "If the music on this recording is "for" anything, besides simply being for itself, it is for remembering the quirky, the impure, the rogue, and the ambulant of music. It is for a vision of music as a theater of sound-sensation in which what happens is not determined in advance and not bound by neat categories." Hulse, a PhD in composition from Harvard is currently assistant professor of music at the College of William & Mary. Among his compositions are numerous chamber and choral works, film scores and several chamber operas.

Tyrone Greive writes in his extensive notes for this disc: "Like much other Polish classical music, the music on this recording reflects the basically western orientation of Polish culture in how it frequently sounds similar to one of the more familiar musical styles from Western Europe. Yet, there are moments when the melody, harmony or other musical elements take unexpected and unfamiliar-sounding turns, thus reflecting that Poland is a country where Eastern and Western cultures have traditionally intermingled. Often, works of individual Polish composers reflect the influences of other specific countries, schools and individuals, thus in some way mirroring Poland's cultural exchanges with the rest of Europe at a particular time." Much of this material appears on disc for the first time.

Violinist Mark Rush offers a contemporary program of music for violin and percussion assisted by the Arizona Percussion Ensemble and percussionist Norman Weinberg. With Michael Daugherty's Lex, based on Superman's most vexing foe, Lou Harrison's innovative concerto mixing "junk" percussion instruments with traditional European one, Craig Walsh's work for violin and percussion based on ecobiological ideas expressed in purely abstract musical ways, and Kevin Puts' work for violin, clarinet and marimba, we have exciting music for a non-traditional combination.

One of the most telling indications of a composer's worth in our glutted musical marketplace is the response of one's fellow music-makers: those who create it as well as those who perform it. And in this regard, Alla Borzova, a Russian-trained composer-pianist from Belarus, is fortunate to claim the global microcosm of New York as her adopted backyard. When a composer of exalted stature praises one's music, the informed public tends to take notice. And well they should, when a modern master like John Corigliano speaks of Borzova's "extraordinary voice" and her "arresting and dynamic" music. David del Tredici finds "genius" (it takes one to know one) and "huge emotional impact" in her work. This engaging CD, preserving some of Alla's finest smaller-scale creations, reveals her sponge-like knack for soaking up far-flung musical influences wherever she goes. Arabic flavors - complete with third-tones, vocal quavers and other idiomatic touches - help to bring out the stark tragedy and outright insanity of her lovelorn Majnun Songs. Her American exposure has left her with a new-found taste for American jazz, as heard in her Pinsk and Blue - an amazing piece for accordion and piano. It is not easy to pin Borzova down stylistically - you'll hear everything from unaffected folk-tunes to cunning and sophisticated tone-rows from her.

Volkmar Zimmermann and Kristian Gantriis are both members of the internationally acclaimed Corona Guitar Kvartet and now they have joined forces as an independent ensemble, the Gantriis-Zimmermann Guitar Duo and this recording is the result of their collaboration. The Duo has assembled an enticingly eclectic collection of brief pieces from around the world — Argentine tangos; Danish songs; Spanish dances; and two works of new music. The recording is packed with infectious new sounds from an ageless and age-old instrumental ensemble, and the results are contagious listening experiences that make us as ask for more.

For its first commercial recording, the Almeda Trio takes the traditional classical music ensemble of piano, violin and cello on a journey through various styles of more modern inspiration — from Argentinian tango to American jazz -- and even country fiddling. Stops along the way include two works by American composers Paul Schoenfield and Paul Ferguson and a composition by the 20th-Century beloved Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla. Since its debut in 2008, the Almeda Trio (Robert Cassidy, piano, Cara Tweed, violin, Ida Mercer, cello) has performed to enthusiastic audiences throughout the greater Cleveland area and beyond. They serve as the ensemble-in-residence at The Music Settlement in Cleveland and their mission is three-fold -- performance, education and outreach. The ensemble takes its name from the early 20th-century social activist and founder of The Music Settlement, Almeda Adams.

The Phoenix Ensemble is a New York City based, mixed-instrument chamber music group, consisting of a full complement of winds, brass, strings, and percussion. The ensemble is dedicated to the performance and recording of classical music, and to the mission of making the musical arts a more essential and valuable experience in the lives of the general public. Since 1992, through performances, recordings, and residencies in schools and communities, the Phoenix Ensemble has presented hundreds of events designed to inspire a new and diverse audience for classical music. The group has a special interest in encouraging and giving a voice to composers of contemporary music, and creating events where these compos¬ers can present their music to a new audience. The group's 2009 recording of the clarinet quintets of Morton Feldman and Milton Babbitt has won wide critical acclaim. For this recording, the ensemble has selected two works for wind quintet. Arnold Schoenberg's wind quintet, his first strict 12-tone ensemble work, was composed in 1924 and Stockhausen's Zeitmasze was written early in his composing career (1957).

Born in New York, Peter Ivan Edwards studied at Northwestern University and at the University of California, San Diego. His work has been performed throughout the world by numerous ensembles and at major international festivals. He is assistant professor at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore where he teaches composition and theory. His music is influenced by two strands of music thinking -- the American experimentalists and the European avant-garde. Edwards takes many different things from these traditions and creates an original music that builds off their discoveries.

Korean-American composer/pianist/educator Beata Moon embarked on her musical career at the age of eight performing with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Her flight into composing began after she graduated from Juilliard in 1990, where she studied piano under Adele Marcus. Subsequently, the role of the composer as performer and educator became an important one in Moon's life. She performs her own works, in addition to those of both traditional and contemporary composers, and is actively involved in aesthetic education as a teaching artist at Lincoln Center Institute. Curiously, like her name, Beata Moon's music does not betray its origins. The music sounds American, at least no other country's music would contain her mixture of elements. She is self-taught as a composer. Her music is an irrepressible outpouring and sounds like it.

Wayne Peterson was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota and has lived in San Francisco since 1960. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music in 1992, crowning a distinguished career which began in 1958, with the Free Variations premiered and recorded by the Minnesota Orchestra under Antal Dorati. His catalog of more than 60 works included works for orchestra, chorus and chamber ensembles. Peterson has been professor of music at San Francisco State University for more than three decades and from 1992-94 was a guest professor of composition at Stanford University. He studied at the University of Minnesota and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Eric Moe writes: "Listening to Wayne Peterson's music is awfully rewarding. Luscious on the surface, it amply repays the most intensive listening. It's a little like taking a journey through a gorgeous Alpine landscape - you soon lose passivity and are drawn into expectation, anticipating the view of the waterfall around the bend in the road, the unfolding of the mountain's shape as it is gradually revealed, the surprise of the robin's egg blue color in the pool of melt water at the bottom of the snowfield. As with all great music, you become less of a somnolent passenger and more of a backseat driver as the music unfolds. And with repeated listenings, you can privately partake of the delight small children have in telegraphing details of the narrative to those around them."

This second recording on Albany Records of the music of the distinguished American-born Canadian composer Michael Horwood features his music for percussion. The inspiration for the series of Piece Percussioniques, as well as the impetus for composing for percussion ensemble, came from two influential sources for the teen-aged Horwood: the innovative programming of Lukas Foss during his tenure with the Buffalo Philharmonic and from Horwood's exposure to the music of Edgard Varèse. These works for percussion ensemble span Horwood's compositional career: Piece No. 1 was written when he was 17 and Piece No. 6 is his most recent and final composition.

This disc of the percussion music of David Maslanka is appealing on two counts; first it has great sound with good playing, and second, the music itself is terrific. About Montana Music the composer writes: "The work is in three slow movements. They are nocturnal, lunar, inward pieces, dedicated to the spirit of the Earth, which speaks with a particular power in the mountains of my adopted western Montana. The vibraphone is often the center of attention in this music. Its evocative bell-like character may be thought of as a motif for the whole work. Arcadia means a pastoral district of ancient Greece, or any place of rural peace and simplicity. It refers as well, to the mythic land of human origin. The title Arcadia II has a double intent: it is the second piece of mine with the title Arcadia, and it is a musical prayer for the well-being of the Earth. The Concerto uses a traditional concerto form: faster outer movements surrounding a slower middle movement. The first movement arises from the darkness. I remember standing in a New Hampshire meadow on a summer evening. One by one the fireflies lit up until the darkening field was alive with their activity. The tiny opening bell sounds of this movement represent the fireflies. The second movement is a nature meditation. IT comes directly from my walks in Inwood Hill Park in upper Manhattan. The last movement is infused with a spirit of playfulness, light, and simple joy in the glories of nature. The title Crown of Thorns is an obvious reference to Christ's crown of thorns, but the name first came to me as a possible title for a piece from seeing a plant called the "Crown of Thorns" at the New York Botanical Gardens. It is a rambling, thorny desert plant from the Middle East, with small green leaves, and small, very simple and pretty red flowers. The rambling, interweaving, vine-like stems suggested music to me."