Catalog

Born in New York City, Jay Reise's choreographic tone-poem The Selfish Giant, based on a fairy tale by Oscar Wilde, was commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Djong Yu in London in 1997. His opera Rasputin, described in The Washington Times as "a spellbinding, challenging and profoundly beautiful creation," was commissioned and premiered by the New York City Opera in 1988. Memory Refrains (a string quartet in one movement) was premiered by the Cassatt Quartet in 2002. Open Night was the first work commissioned by the Kimmel Center Fresh Ink Contemporary Music Series in Philadelphia in 2003. Reise studied with George Crumb, jazzman Jimmy Giuffre, Hugh Hartwell, Carnatic rhythm with Adrian L'Armand, harmony with George Rochberg, and Richard Wernick. Deeply influenced by Carnatic (South Indian) music and jazz, Reise has developed his own rhythmic method which is a signature element of his music after 1990. Jay Reise is the Robert Weiss Professor of Music Composition at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and president of contemporary music ensemble Orchestra 2001. Marc-Andre Hamelin is universally regarded as one of today's masters of the keyboard. Critics and audiences alike have enthusiastically responded to his seemingly boundless technique, which embraces both stunning virtuosity and profound sensitivity. The New York Times dubbed him a "supervirtuoso," and the London Financial Times said, "Hamelin's wizardry defies the laws of nature." Mr. Hamelin's work in the recital hall and on the orchestral stage has taken him throughout the world. His prolific recording career has resulted in nearly 45 recordings and numerous industry awards and nominations.

"I composed The Dancing Bird in response to a need expressed by Francesca Vanasco for a number of original works for the unusual combination of flute, cello, bass and vibraphone that make up Alborada Latina, the chamber ensemble for Latin American Music," says Thad Wheeler. "The Dancing Bird was begun after I received a diagram of a Spanish Sevillanas from Basilio Georges. I used the 47 bar form as a framework for "Sevillanas Magicas," a Spanish sevillanas with an American accent. I hen went on to write "Bulerias," "Purple Night," and "Scherzo Merenque," integrating structural and developmental devices used by Beethoven with flamenco and Venezuelan rhythms and my own melodic and harmonic materials. The last piece composed for The Dancing Bird was "Glimmerglass." I wrote this piece while spending a great deal of time house-hunting in Cooperstown, New York in the late winter-early spring."

The opera, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based entirely on the very ironic, humorous short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The libretto was written by Estela Eaton, the composer's daughter. Composer John Eaton was called " the most interesting opera composer writing in America today" by Andrew Porter. He has also received international recognition as a composer of electronic and microtonal music. Of his more than 20 operas, perhaps the best known is The Cry of Clytaemnestra. A recipient of the "genius" award from the MacArthur Foundation, he has also received an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. This DVD was filmed at live performances sponsored by the Center for Contemporary Opera and presented as the opening event of the ACA's Festival of American Music in 2010.

Robert Ward's The Crucible was commissioned by the New York City Opera in 1961 and is based directly on the Arthur Miller play, with the libretto by Bernard Stambler. The play, written in 1953, was inspired by the McCarthy witch-hunt of the 50s. The opera won the Pulitzer Prize and a New York Music Critics Circle Citation. A recording of the opera was released in 1961 and this has been the only existing recording of the work until now. Ward himself expressed his desire to have a modern recording of the work to producer John Ostendorf. Purchase Opera, with its deep roster of fine young professional singers and its collaboration with the Purchase Symphony and conductor Hugh Murphy, proved the right fit for this new recording. Ward systematically employs idiosyncratic harmonic language and melodic motifs to create distinct musical landscapes for each of the opera's characters. These landscapes reveal much about each character, sometimes even more than their words do.

When the final curtain fell and the last notes of the orchestra died away on the opening night of The Crucible, an excited audience thundered its approval. The opera had been commissioned by the New York City Opera. The libretto and score were written in less than a year, the last page of the full score having been completed just 11 days before the first performance on October 26, 1961. In the days that followed, the press was almost unanimous in their high praise of the work and at the close of the 1961-62 season, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. The Crucible, play and opera, draws upon the frenzy and anguish of the witch-hunt that took place in Salem, Massachusetts, in the 1690s. Eminent divines, such as Cotton Mather and the Reverend Hale, supplied ample theological proof for the existence of witches. However, in the actual conduct of the witch-hunts the real motives were as likely to be greed, local animosities, and sexual repression as obedience to the Biblical admonition, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Though the composer and librettist have not utilized any texts or musical material from the period, they have, through the use of rugged hymn-like melodies and tunes almost like folk song in character, managed to convey the feelings and atmosphere of the time.

Mark Kroll writes: "Composers began writing new music for the harpsichord almost as soon as the instrument was rescued from extinction at the end of the 19th century. In fact, their contributions have played an important role in returning the harpsichord to its rightful place in the musical mainstream. The number of compositions has grown dramatically since those early days - and so has the quality. Each new work seems to exploit the unique sonorities of the instrument with ever increasing skill and sensitivity, and the contemporary repertoire now features excellent harpsichord music by almost every great composer of our time. American composers have been particularly enthusiastic advocates for the instrument. Six of them are represented on my first CD of contemporary American harpsichord music for Albany Records (TROY 457). This recording continues my exploration and support of this repertoire, and features some of the most exciting new contributions to the genre. All except the Hovhaness have been written in the last 25 years, and three belong to the first harpsichord pieces of the 21st century.

The Scottish-born Judith Weir began her career as an oboist and took composition lessons with John Tavener and Robin Holloway. Her music is performed in Europe and the United States. Her works reflect her diverse interests in narrative, folklore and theatre, with British folk music a strong influence. This release is an excellent sampling for those unfamiliar with her work: The Consolations of Scholarship is a highly-compressed opera, based on 14th century Chinese Yuan plays, where all the characters are played by one multi-voiced singer. The Piano Concerto, where the soloist is partnered by nine solo string players, emulates the scale of the early Mozart concerti; King Harald's Saga, is a "Grand Opera in Three Acts" for solo soprano voice, depicting the attempted invasion of England by Norway in 1066. Inspired by Emily Dickinson, Musicians Wrestle Everywhere is a one-movement concerto for ten instruments, reflecting the "street environment" of Weir's own urban neighborhood. You'll find Weir to be a highly original compositional voice.

Here is an interesting package of contemporary music, highlighted by a performance of the Symphony No. 2 by Karel Husa in its world premiere recording. The Bowling Green Philharmonia was founded in 1918 by decree of the university president. It is a combined student-faculty ensemble. In the last several years the orchestra, with conductor Emily Freeman Brown, has established a wider reputation through its performances at the Bowling Green New Music and Art Festival. Don Freund was born in Pittsburgh and studied at Duquesne University and the Eastman School of Music. His teachers included Darius Milhaud, Charles Jones, Wayne Barlow, Warren Benson and Samuel Adler. Chris Theofanidis was born in Dallas, Texas and holds degrees from Yale, Eastman and the University of Houston. His piece On the Edge of the Infinite was composed to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the Grimaldi Empire in Monaco. Sam Adler's Requiescat in Pace is dedicated to the memory of John. F. Kennedy and was written in Dallas during November, 1963, immediately after the assassination. The Canadian composer, Jeffrey Ryan, studied both in his native Canada and at the Cleveland Institute with Donald Erb. Writes Mr. Husa: "Although not written in a classical or romantic style, my symphony nevertheless reflects symphonic form.'' Marilyn Shrude is professor of music composition and director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at Bowling Green. Into Light was written at the request of Henry Charles Smith for the World Youth Symphony Orchestra and the opening concert of the 67th season of the Interlochen Arts Camp in 1994.

The Right Honourable Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners in the peerage of England, and a baronet, was born on September 18, 1883 at Apley Park, near Bridgnorth, Shropshire. Educated at Eton, and later in Dresden, Vienna, France and Italy, mainly in pursuit of knowledge of languages to equip him for the diplomatic service, he succeeded his uncle in 1918, assuming the additional name of Wilson by Royal Charter a year later. He served as honorary attaché in Constantinople and later in Rome, but on his elevation relinquished theses posts, returning to England and his inheritance, several country estates, and lived the rest of his life, ostensibly, as a country gentleman. This, however, was only on the surface. He was a man whose music drew the highest praise from Stravinsky, and whose no inconsiderable literary and painting skills were to make him "the versatile peer" in the national press, but it was as a composer that he wished to be remembered. Berners' musical output was small by most standards and the case if often made that if he had had to earn a living from the arts he would have produced more. This is debatable. Less in doubt is that his art was well appreciated among his fellow artists - and aristocrats. Osbert Sitwell summed it up by writing that "...in the years between the wars he did more to civilize the wealthy than anyone in England. Through London's darkest drawing-rooms, as well as lightest, he moved ... a sort of missionary of arts."

Acclaimed saxophonist Christopher Creviston offers arrangements, piano reductions and a world premiere recording for his second recording on Albany Records. The arranger of the popular Poulenc Sonata for flute, Creviston has done a magnificent job of adapting this work for the saxophone. Composer Dorothy Chang wrote Two Preludes for Christopher Creviston in 1993 and they are receiving their world premiere recordings on this disc. As a soloist and with the Capitol Quartet, Christopher Creviston has been featured with bands and orchestras across the U.S., including the Baltimore, Indianapolis and National Symphony Orchestras and is in demand as a recitalist and clinician. Now on the faculty at the Crane School of Music, Dr. Creviston has held positions at the Greenwich House of Arts, the University of Windsor and the University of Michigan.

Karel Husa's String Quartet No. 4 (Poems) was commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts for the consortium of the Colorado, Blair and Alard Quartets. The works was completed in the spring of 1990 in Ithaca, New York. A collection of six poems, the String Quartet No. 4 explores possibilities of unusual sonorities in a virtuosic writing. When Lucy Mann of the Naumburg Foundation requested a new work for the Colorado Quartet in 1983, Ezra Laderman thought the proposal over for about a week, and it was during this time that he realized that his Quartet No. 6 could be the first work in a triptych. He felt ready now to take the same material he had used in No. 6, music inspired by four youthful personalities, and place it "in the midst of life" as Laderman says. The four-note-motive of NO. 6 strides out again at the beginning of No. 7 - only now it is inverted, so that it reaches muscularly upward. The String Quartet 1982 by Mel Powell was composed for the Composers String Quartet, the Sequoia String Quartet and the Thouvenel String Quartet under a consortium commission from the National Endowment for the Arts, which, at the same time, commissioned this quartet and quartets from Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter. Powell's Quartet is played through as a single movement with clearly differentiated subdivisions.

Horn soloist Eric Ruske has established himself as an artist of international acclaim. Named Associate Principal horn of the Cleveland Orchestra at the age of 20, his impressive solo career began when he won the 1986 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, First Prize in the 1987 American Horn Competition, and in 1988, the highest prize in the Concours International d'Interpretation Musicale in Reims, France. Of his recording of the complete Mozart Concerti with Sir Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, The New York Times stated, "Mr. Ruske's approach, firmly positioned with the boundaries of balance, coherence and good taste that govern the Classical Style, enchants by virtue of its confidence, imagination and ebullient virtuosity." A member of the faculty of Boston University since 1990, Mr. Ruske also directs the Horn Seminar at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.

Richard Wilson, like Robert Ward, was born in Cleveland, where he studied piano and cello. After graduation from Harvard, he received a grant which allowed him to study in Munich. Back in the United States he studied composition with Robert Moevs at Rutgers and then joined the music faculty of Vassar College where he holds the Mary Conover Mellon Chair in Music. He is also Composer-in-Residence with the American Symphony Orchestra. About this disc the composer writes: "This recording encompasses all of my choral music: from In Schrafft's, begun in 1966, to Poor Warren, composed in 1995. Ten works, spanning thirty years. Four poets are involved: W.H. Auden, Stephen Sandy, John Unterecker and John Ashbery. With each of them I have had some degree of personal association. W.H. Auden was friendly with individuals in Harvard's Quincy House, where I lived half my undergraduate years, and could often be seen in bedroom slippers, taking meals in our dining hall. I never summoned the nerve to meet him. Stephen Sandy was my English teacher in 1959 and was, in fact, the first college teacher I encountered as a fearful, insecure, unconfident freshman. Only later did I discover his poetry. John Unterecker worked on his Hart Crane biography at the artists' colony Yaddo when I was also a guest. We became friendly and enjoyed long talks together. Finally, John Ashbery teaches at Bard College just up the Hudson River from Vassar. We share an appreciation of Jack Benny's radio programs from the 1940's."

The Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum has reached the venerable age of 60, and it is very appropriate indeed that the Conference celebrates, at least in part, with a new recording of music played by members of its outstanding and musically vibrant faculty. Every summer for these past six decades, the Conference itself has been a celebration of the love of music making, involving Conference faculty and participants from around the world in a heady fusion of musical activities: public concerts, including frequent world premieres, professionally-coached rehearsals and intensive study sessions, lectures and seminars addressing a wide range of topics. From the beginning in 1945, participation by composers has been an integral feature of the Conference. Among the founders were composers Otto Luening and Richard Donovan. Among the many distinguished composers who have been in residence over the years are Henry Brant, Elliott Carter, Stephen Hartke, Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larsen and Steven Stucky. The recording presents a small but highly representative sample of what the Conference is all about. Vermont composer and Bennington College faculty member Allen Shawn (brother, incidentally, of playwright/actor Wallace Shawn) has been a Resident Composer and frequent guest at the Conference. His string quartet Sleepless Night and the Wind Quintet (a commission by long-time participants) are fine examples of his lyrical style. Donald Crockett, from Los Angeles, was in residence at the Conference in 1999, and since 2002 has been the Conference's Senior Composer-in-Residence. The Ceiling of Heaven was commissioned by the Conference. Fans of contemporary American chamber music will recognize many of the performers from their recordings (cellist Maxine Neuman, a member of the Conference faculty, is a specialist in this material) and will greatly enjoy this significant release.

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.

Jerome Kern wrote The Cabaret Girl at the suggestion of London producer George Grossmith who, teaming with famed literary figure P.G. Wodehouse, provided the book and lyrics. The show opened at London's Winter Garden theater on September 18, 1922. The show ran for 361 performances and showcases both the unparalleled wit and sentimentality of Wodehouse and the inexhaustible melodic genius of Jerome Kern.

The Buckley Chamber Players, named in honor of its home venue, Amherst College's Buckley Recital Hall, was founded in 2008. Its members are on the faculty at Amherst and Smith College and the University of Massachusetts. Playing a varied repertoire, it is dedicated to a close collaboration with composers who write works for the ensemble. This recording is representative of their concerts, and includes three works written for them, two of them by composers on the faculty at Amherst (Eric Sawyer and Lewis Spratlan).

Here we present the first complete CD recording with William S. Gilbert's English translation of Jacques Offenbach's 1869 comic masterpiece. Les Brigands achieved resounding success just as the Second Empire came to an end. Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy supplied Offenbach with a cheerfully amoral libretto that presents theft as a basic principle of society, not an aberration. The forces of law and order are represented by the bumbling carabinieri, who always arrive too late to capture the thieves. The carabinieri's exaggerated attire delighted the Parisian audience during the premiere at the Varietes on December 10, 1869. Only the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in the following months dampened the festivities. W.S. Gilbert's 1871 English adaptation for Les Brigands premiered on the London stage in 1889, starring Lillian Russell in the role of Fiorella. In his typical curmudgeonly fashion, Gilbert disparaged his own work and attempted to prevent use in London of his English version Ð happily to no avail. His arch lyrics give the Offenbach work a uniquely hilarious quality, delightful to an operetta audience happy to accept a rough-and-tumble pirate band speaking impeccable, drawing room English while describing dastardly deeds to gavottes and musical romps in three-quarter time.

This recording of songs by Asian and Asian-American composers who include Ke-Chia Chen, who is on the faculty at the Curtis Institute; Taiwanese-American Chihchun Chi-sun Lee, the receipient of numerous honors and awards; Asako Hirabayashi, winner of the Alienor International Harpischord Composition Contest; Yangzhi Ma, faculty member at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing; and Chen Yi, Distinguished Professor at the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance. Tenor Brian Arreola is on the faculty at UNC Charlotte and has been a featured performer with opera companies around the United States. Baritone Kelvin Chan divides his time between the U.S. and the Netherlands, where he has an active career as a performer, director, theatre-maker, and singer-actor. Pianist Wei-En Hsu, a graduate of Juilliard, is now on the faculty of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

Carl Zeller, after service in the Vienna Court Chapel Choir, studied both composition and law and earned his doctorate in law from Graz University in 1869. He spent most of life in government service, writing music in his spare time. Although Zeller composed several works for the musical theatre, his reputation rests mainly on The Birdseller, which had its premiere in 1891. It has a familiar boy-meets-girl plot, set in that never-never land of operetta where mistaken identities are as common as pine trees and nightingales sing on cue. The Birdseller has one of the most captivating scores ever written. Its best-known melody is "Roses in Tyrol," the magnificent song and ensemble that climaxes Act I. One of the most popular productions of the Ohio Light Opera in the 1990s, this 2007 revival will certainly delight listeners long familiar with the score as well as those who are discovering it for the first time!

Composer Charles Fussell was Artistic Director of New Music Harvest, Boston's first city-wide festival of contemporary music and Co-Founder and Director of the New England Composer's Orchestra. He is currently a member of the Composition faculty at Boston University. The composer writes: "The Astronaut's Tale was mostly written during a generous two month fellowship at Yadoo in Saratoga Springs in June and July of 1996, and was completed the following winter. It is conceived as a numbers-opera; arias, duets, trios, with preludes and interludes, all connected by a narrator. The story traces a young man's life from his first experience of loss, his dog killed by a car, the appearance of a mysterious Einstein-like guide, his youthful desire to become an astronaut, marriage, and the fulfillment of his ambition. The setting is our own time with its confrontation of science and religion. The opera concludes with a meditation on the nature of the cosmos and our experience of life and death within."

The real draw for this disc is the presence of the great trumpet player, Adolf Herseth from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For indeed, he is one of a kind, a true master recognized for his brilliant musicianship by his colleagues and audiences the world over. "Quite possibly the most dazzling player on his instrument in the world today," says Donal Henahan in The New York Times. Mr. Herseth was appointed Principal Trumpet of the Chicago Symphony in 1948 immediately after graduating from the New England Conservatory. A native of Minnesota, he also holds a degree from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. During World War II he served as a bandsman at Iowa prefight school and ended his military service with the Commander of the Philippine Sea Frontier in the South Pacific. His years with the CSO have included numerous solo appearances and concerts with many of the world's finest conductors, not to mention work on some of the finest recorded performances in the repertoire. The Asbury Brass Quintet is based in Chicago. Mr. Herseth, who joins them in the performance of the Bohme Sextet, has touched the lives of each one of the members of the Quintet's players, either as a teacher, colleague or mentor.

The Arditti Quartet is a phenomenal string quartet. They play new music as if it were Haydn. You will be awed by the performances they bring to this group of young composers from California. This disc is for you if you really enjoy contemporary music, contemporary chamber music, or contemporary American chamber music.

The spirit of exploring new, and newly rediscovered, music is fully captured in this recording of American music for viola. The music ranges from the late 19th Century to today, yet it shares a common theme: a flowing lyricism that expresses the viola's rich vocal character. Of special interest is the first known American composition for viola (Benjamin Cutter); and the first composition for viola by an American woman (Blanche Blood). Violist Andrea Houde has performed as soloist, chamber musician, and in orchestras in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. A graduate of the University of Memphis and the Peabody Conservatory, Ms. Houde is on the faculty at West Virginia University and the artist faculty of the Interlochen Arts Camp. Her colleague, pianist Sun Jung Lee is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston, and West Virginia University. In addition to her performing career, she serves as staff accompanist at West Virginia University.

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.

Two of the three concertos on this recording were composed on commission from New Heritage Music, a publicly supported non-profit organization which promotes the creation of works inspired by persons, events and ideas central to history. Chen Yi and Behzad Ranjbaran feel a particular connection to individuals striving for self-realization, as they were each born in countries where they suffered the lack of the freedoms that Americans hold dear. Both on this basis and artistically, they proved to be ideal choices to create musical works celebrating the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations (Chen) and the life and thought of Thomas Jefferson (Ranjbaran). According to New Heritage criteria, neither work is intended to be narrative or programmatic; rather, they reflect the artists' creative responses to an event or idea that has personal significance. By contrast, Barber's Cello Concerto was not commissioned with any patriotic or historical intention; yet it can hardly fail to have reflected the intensity and angst of the world situation - the last months of World War II and the first few months of the peace - amidst which it was written, the more so because the composer was wearing the uniform of an American soldier at the time. The three works on this program are thus linked by the struggle for human rights and freedom, experienced through singular, individual life experience of the loss of those rights or through participation, in uniform, in worldwide armed conflict on behalf of those rights. Chen Yi, born in China, experienced first hand the lack of those rights. She is one of several talented Chinese composers to have moved to the United States after having been caught up in the terrors of the Cultural Revolution, with its express intent of suppressing China's intellectual life. She came to the United States in 1986, and studied with Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky and earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Columbia University in 1993. In 1998, she became Lorena Searcey Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor in Composition at the Conservatory of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Behzad Ranjbaran began his musical studies early when he entered the Tehran Music Conservatory at the age of nine. Following his graduation, he came to the United States as a young violinist to continue his studies at Indiana University, with composition as a secondary major. He went to Juilliard for a doctorate in composition. His teachers were David Diamond, Vincent Persichetti and Joseph Schwantner. He has remained on the Juilliard faculty ever since.

Born in Barcelona, Spain, Leonardo Balada graduated from the "Conservatorio del Liceu" of that city and the Juilliard School in 1960. He studied with Vincent Persichetti, Aaron Copland and Igor Markevitch. Since 1970 he has been teaching at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he is University Professor of Composition. Another volume of his music appears on Albany TROY343.

The 99 Beautiful Names of God are the names by which Muslims regard God. Composer J. Mark Scearce was inspired to interpret these names into music from a desire to heal. He created 99 Beautiful Names in order to help a pianist friend, ill from cancer, by giving her a set of small pieces that she could play to bring her back to her instrument and through it, back to health. Pianist John Cheek comments that "Mark's nobilissima visione for solo piano aims to heal and give the listener some soul time: Intimate, respectful ruminations on the Godhead or visions of Almighty Power."

Composer James Adler calls this recording a celebration — a celebration of his love for composing musical theater and art songs. Performed by a stellar group of singers from both the musical theater and classical art song world, the songs underscore Adler's affinity for putting the spoken word to music. Known as a renowned pianist as well as a composer, Adler has performed across the U.S. as well as internationally. Sung by cabaret singer Shana Farr, Broadway stars Michael Buchanan, Kennedy Kanagawa, and Perry Sook, Metropolitan Opera star Victoria Livengood, and classically trained Elizaveta Ulakhovich, this stellar group brings these songs to life.

Rimsky-Korsakov's three works for solo instruments and military band, the Concerto for Trombone (1877), the Variations for Oboe (1878) and the Concertstuck for Clarinet (1878), date from his years as Inspector of the Imperial Russian Naval Bands (1873-1884). Not only do these works testify to the growing expertise in Imperial Russian military music performance (doubtless as a result of the newly established St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories), but they also give us some insight into Rimsky's ever-evolving compositional thinking. The composer acknowledged as much, writing in his memoirs that they were "written primarily to provide the military band concerts with solo pieces of a less hackneyed natures than the usual: secondly that I myself might master the virtuoso style so unfamiliar to me, with its solo and tutti, its cadences, etc." And in many ways these three pieces constitute "experiments" in that combination of ensemble sonority and solo virtuosity that earmark Scheherazade (188) as a masterpiece of Orchestral wizardry. The first performance of Karel Husa's Music for Prague 1968 was given at the Music Educators National Conference in Washington, DC in 1969. The work was commissioned and premiered by the Ithaca College Concert Band with Kenneth Snapp, conductor. Since that time, it has received over 7,000 performances in both its original version for concert band, and the composer's adaptation for symphony Orchestra. Prokofiev began composing marches for wind band in the mid 1930s, during the period when he returned to the Soviet Union. His first was the Athletic Festival March from 1935, in which he imagined a festival march for millions of young Soviet athletic. As well, the three soloists on this disc are all or have been members of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Let's take a look at the unfamiliar music contained on this disc. About Tears David Maslanka writes: "Tears is about inner transformation, and about groping towards the voice of praise. As St. Francis and St. Ignatius have it, the proper function of the human race is to sing praise. Tears is about inner breaking, and coming to terms with the pain that hinders the voice of praise; Tears is about the movement toward the heart of love." This is a recent piece from Mr. Maslanka's pen. Dana Wilson completed his Dance of the New World the same month - 500 years later - than Columbus first landed in the New World. He wanted in this piece to pay tribute to the blending of styles and attitudes that has taken place in the Latin American region of this hemisphere where Columbus first landed. Frank Ticheli's Postcard was first performed by the University of Michigan Symphony Band on April 17, 1992. Mr. Ticheli is a graduate of the University of Michigan and now teaches at the University of Southern California where he is Assistant Professor of Music. He is also composer-in-residence with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra.

This recording of music by Peter Boyer centers around a commission by conductor Lawrence Golan to write a work to be performed in concert immediately following Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony. The idea was that the new work, while not intended to be in the style of Tchaikovsky, would share some musical material so as to be intrinsically connected to it and find a natural place in concert programming. Peter Boyer, born in 1970, received his D.M.A. from the Hartt School. He studied with John Corigliano, then relocated to Los Angeles where he studied film music with Elmer Bernstein. His music has received more than 200 performances by 70 orchestras. His major work Ellis Island: The Dream of America received a Grammy Award nomination.