Night Songs: The Music of Richard Toensing

The works on this recording by Richard Toensing are of the highest order for both the wind ensemble and the soloists. Toensing's muse is an ambitious and generous one, requiring extreme competence of musicianship, mastery of varieties of style and great sensitivity. He shows himself to be a master of all the sonic possibilities available to him. A graduate of St. Olaf College and the University of Michigan, Toensing is on the faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has won numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim and the Joseph H. Bearnes Prize from Columbia University. Mezzo-soprano Erica Washburn is director of choral activities at the New England Conservatory. Soprano Bethany Worrell is the soprano artist-in-residence with the Metropolitan Chorale of Brookline. William Drury is New England Conservatory's associate conductor of wind ensembles and the conductor of the Southern New Hampshire University Orchestra. As a conductor, he has commissioned and premiered works by numerous American composers, including Richard Toensing.