After Life, Tom Cipullo’s modern opera, investigates the role of art in a distressed world, and asks heavy questions about an artist’s obligation in confronting humanity in all of its good and bad parts. David Mason wrote the libretto for the work, which imagines a meeting between Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein as ghosts, who show their brilliance and flaws. In Sleep the World Is Yours, a song cycle by Lori Laitman, sets three lovely poems by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, who sadly would perish in a Nazi camp at the young age of 18.

Reviews:

Cipullo weaves David Mason’s ingenious, rhapsodic libretto into an absorbing, often lively, occasionally desultory narrative told in words and music that is translucently scored and makes full use of the five-member ensemble’s colours, astonishingly vocal at times in their effect.

– Gramophone

The coupling of the two works makes perfect sense thematically and stylistically. Both are well worth hearing and well performed, very good examples of some of the significant tonal modern work being made right now in the US.

_Gapplegate Classical/Modern Music Review

Daily performances at Sztuka were organized by a group of writers from the Living Journal, a satiric daily chronicle of the ghetto, written by a group of authors under the direction of Szlengel. Szpilman described these programmes as "a witty chronicle of ghetto life, full of sharp, risqué allusions to the Germans". The Sztuka was considered an elite club for the ghetto's few people of any means. First-person accounts of an evening at the Sztuka note the high quality of it's black-market coffee and caviar, and of the musical, humorous and satirical offerings. Those who could gathered for brief escape from the surrounding atmosphere of death and disease. Stepping outside meant a return to the ghetto's grim realities - the starving, diseased, and lice-infested ghetto population whose despairing cries for "Bread, Mercy, Death" quickly extinguished the Sztuka's fleeting moments of pleasure. In 1942, during the mass deportation of 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka, Pola Braun was assigned to the Ostdeutsche Bautischlerei-Werkstätte (OBW), an industrial plant, where her work helped postpone her own deportation for a period. It has not been established exactly when she was transported to Majdanek. At Majdanek she was active in the women's camp, along with other Polish political prisoners involved in the cultural life. Most of the women were from Warsaw, and many probably knew Pola Braun from before the war. Braun participated in the concerts organized by Polish prisoners from Pawiak, to whom we owe thanks for remembering and collecting some of Braun's poems. Braun was murdered on 3 November 1943, in the mass executions code-named Aktion Erntefest (Operation Harvest Festival) by the Nazis - the liquidation of approximately 42,000 Jewish prisoners from Majdanek and other concentration and labour camps in the Lublin district. Two of the six poems in this song cycle, "Jew" and "Tsurik a heym", were written during Braun's period in the Warsaw ghetto. The remaining four - "Mother", "Letter to Warsaw ", "Ordinary Day" and "Moving Day" - date from her incarceration in Majdanek. Braun sang her own songs, accompanying herself on the piano. These heartfelt songs stirred the emotions, particularly of Polish women from places other than Warsaw who identified with her message. Braun gave concerts at Majdanek in a barrack that contained furniture from the ghetto, including a piano. Several secret concerts were held there for the Jewish and Polish women prisoners. Braun's extant poetry was assembled after the war by historians. These include the Polish political dissident Aleksander Kulisiewicz, himself a prisoner in Sachsenhausen, who copied out variants of some of Braun's Majdanek pieces. Pola Braun's poems in Kleinkunst style are revealing in their observations about her surroundings, her deportation, and her Jewish identity. They open a window, especially, to the emotional life of all women caught inextricably in the web of Holocaust tragedy. Braun's voice of musical witness ensures that she will not be swallowed up by the anonymity of history. Through Thomas Pasatieri's music, her words will tell a story, and remind us that each of the victims of the Holocaust was an individual. Each had a life, a story, and aspirations beyond survival. Through this extraordinary music, we offer a tribute to the human spirit, and do our small part to honor the Holocaust's legacy.

As part of Sting's band, guitarist Dominic Miller sometimes gets overlooked. Even though the 40-year-old has the looks of a lean, shaggy-haired, Strat-toting youngster, he seems to get a little taken for granted in his role as guitar factotum. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the recent string of Sting gigs at the Albert Hall in which he was also accompanied by such jazz luminaries as keyboardist Jason Rebello and trumpeter Chris Botti. Now Miller's second solo album has arrived and it's time for him to take the spotlight. 'Second Nature' shows a very different side of this versatile Buenos Aires-born musician. Although Miller may have spent years playing rock'n'roll as a session player, his own music owes a huge debt to his Brazilian heroes Antonio Carlos Jobim and Baden Powell, and as a result the 12 songs here sing of South America - ringing, lyrical numbers plucked and strummed by a guitarist who remains true to his roots. The Time

Having played with some of the greatest names in jazz including, the Ellinton Orchestra, David Sanborn, Freddie Hubbard, Cassandra Wilson and others, Mulgrew Miller has made a name for himself. His greatest accomplishment though was forming Wingspan 15 years, a collective group of stunning musicians!! the Sequel is comprised primarily of original Melgrew Miller compositions and is a must for fans of piano jazz!

Miller takes it to the next level now by recording his first live album. Recorded July 22-23, 2003, at Yoshi's at Jack London Square - one of the world's premiere jazz clubs - Live At Yoshi's (Volume One) is Miller's second release on MAXJAZZ. Unlike The Sequel, where he presented eight original tunes, on Live At Yoshi's, Miller puts his stamp on ageless standards in an intimate trio format. Miller's trio is comprised of Derrick Hodge on bass and Karriem Riggins, who played on The Sequel, on drums.

LIVE AT THE KENNEDY CENTER (Volume 2) features a sumptuous selection of songs from a trio that shifts seamlessly from hard-driving grooves to soft ballads, all with a distinct sound that has made Mulgrew Miller one of the most in-demand pianists in jazz. Similar to his critically acclaimed Maxjazz releases, Live At Yoshi's, LIVE AT THE KENNEDY CENTER Volume Two offers exciting jazz in a live setting.

In the fall of 2002, the prestigious John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts opened an intimate venue, the KC Jazz Club, on the roof level of it's facility. The Club celelbrated it's two weekend of selected MaxJazz artists. The hihgly acclaimed pianist, Mulgrew Miller, and his trio featuring Derrick Hodge (bass), and Rodney Green (drums)were the featured performers on the Club's opening night in 2002. LIVE AT THE KENNEDY CENTER VOL 1 features a sumptuous selection of songs from a trio that shifts seamlessly from hard-dirving grooves to soft ballads, all with a distinct sound that has made Mulgrew Miller one of the most in-demand pianist in jazz.

'November' offers plenty of space for the electric guitar. Some of the tracks show the more rock-oriented side of Miller, with an at times astonishingly powerful sound. Living proof are tracks like the literal slammer 'Rippled Nylon' or 'W3', steeped in fuzz.

The active support for "ad hoc "he has gathered around himself by using outstanding masters of their craft whilst trying to crack this latest musical puzzle has paid off for Miller. With them at his side he has created an open-minded new work, which should delight fans of rich and diverse sounds everywhere. Those working at the frontiers of their art don't care about traditional genre barriers and in titles like " Exiting Purgatory", written in an intricate 7/8, the tender and melodic "Eva", the meditative " Shavasana " and " Moroccan roll " reminiscent of Weather Report's World Jazz, he has transcended all style barriers. What is special with this album is that he doesn't just stop at the mere crossover of time signatures, close together, sometimes wide apart, it's the combination of modern jazz, electronica, acoustic folk, contemporary classical and world music combined " ad hoc" style that leads to something entirely new. There isn't yet an appropriate genre term for such a symbiosis, it's yet to be coined, any suggestions anyone'

Hecho en Cuba is Dominic Miller's and Manolito Simonet's innovative new album featuring Dominic's compositions, arranged in a brand new crossover salsa/ Latin American style. The nine tracks were recorded in Manolito's studio in Havana, Cuba back in 2012 (Manolito is founder of the legendary salsa band "Manolito y su Trabuco") and mixed in Tenerife, Spain in 2013. "Hecho en Cuba" includes re-arranged classics like "Shape Of My Heart", "La belle dame sans regrets", "Lullaby to an anxious child", "Tokyo", "Embrace", "Chanson I", "La Boca" and a new composition by Manolito he calls "D'Pronto". Here to tease you and please you is a pre-release version of "Lullaby To An Anxious Child". Enjoy!

Silver Rain, released in 2005, was named after a poem by Langston Hughes. The album features contributions from Eric Clapton, Macy Gray, Lalah Hathaway, Gerald Albright, Kirk Whalum, and others. Renowned bassist, producer and songwriter, Marcus was also a frequent collaborator with Luther Vandross; he and Luther met while working as backing musicians for Roberta Flack. TRACK LISTING: INTRODUCTION / BRUCE LEE / LA VILLETTE / BEHIND THE SMILE / FRANKENSTEIN / MOONLIGHT SONATA / BOOGIE ON REGGAE WOMAN / PARIS (INTERLUDE) / SILVER RAIN / MAKE UP YOUR MIND / GIRLS AND BOYS / SOPHISTICATED LADY / POWER OF SOUL /AFTERWORD (OUTRO) / IF ONLY FOR ONE NIGHT.

Francesco Cavalli
ERCOLE AMANTE

Ercole – Luca Pisaroni
Iole – Veronica Cangemi
Giunone – Anna Bonitatibus
Illo – Jeremy Ovenden
Deianira – Anna Maria Panzarella
Licco – Marlin Miller
Nettuno / Tevere / Spirit of Eutyro – Umberto Chiummo
Bellezza / Venere – Wilke te Brummelstroete
Cinzia / Pasitea / Spirit of Clerica – Johannette Zomer
Mercurio / Spirit of Laomedonte – Mark Tucker
A Page / Spirit of Bussiride – Tim Mead

Netherlands Opera Chorus
Concerto Köln
Ivor Bolton, conductor

David Alden, stage director

Recorded live from the Het Muziektheater, 2009.

Bonus:
- Illustrated synopsis.
- Cast gallery.
- Behind the scenes with Johanette Zomer.
- Behind the scenes with Luca Pisaroni.
- The making of Ercole Amante.

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo and 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch
No. of DVDs: 2

Like Volumes 1 and 2, Volume 3 of Charles Wuorinen: Music of Two Decades consists in large part of recordings that appeared first as LPs. One doesn't drape terms like invaluable as bunting. For exotic example, the Concerto for Amplified Violin and Orchestra (Volume 2) appeared first on University of Iowa Press vinyl. Not exactly your household name. (I refer to the label. Were Wuorinen's to become such, I'm sure he'd begin wondering where he went wrong. Another performance by violinist Paul Zukovsky, Inbal conducting the Orchestra of the Hessian Radio, may some day be released.) As an instance of nlh degree rarity, Easley Blackwood's own recording of his live performance of Wuorinen's Piano Variations dwelt prior to Volume l's appearance as a 7'/2-i.p.s. tape on Charles Wuorinen's library shelves. Volume 2's Grand Bamboula, Chamber Concerto, and Ringing Changes got good distribution as Nonesuch LPs which, as a format the label has long since abandoned, have been long out of print. As further reason to applaud these Music & Arts Wuorinen discs, a succession of solid performances rates soundwise from adequate to excellent. In other words, the bad news simply isn't. So, to put conclusions first, as gratifyingly large as a “difficult“ living composer's CDiscography already is, the collector with an interest in the music of his time and place cannot afford to ignore these good resurrections. (Of all the one-man operations I admire—I offer the term as an alternative to “little“ label, which in terms of long catalogs many are not—Fred Maroth's Music & Arts Programs of America, Inc., remains among the more endearingly hydra-headed.)

It's a lot easier to tell you what the electronic piece, Time's Encomium, isn't: it isn't imitative of nature or acoustic musical instruments. If the point seems inappropriate or trivial, I remind the reader that a great deal of synthesized sound appears to exist for these kitsch aspirations. So then, while Times's Encomium in this narrow regard falls on the ear as abstraction pure but far from simple, I urge the reader not to conflate abstract with offputting. The piece abounds with playful energies. When disparate sounds interact as friskily as they do here, play of one kind or another, whether or not one knows the game's name, is obviously the thing, Wuorinen is the kind of cerebral practitioner who requires one's attention in a state of openness. We do not hear Time's Encomium transpiring toward a direction. The logic is rather that of extraordinary fireflies of various heft, hue, and gravitas. As anyone who's spent a country night outdoors, a lightshow's enjoyment need not connect with those forces that stage it. The listener is content (if he's wise) to perceive the co.nposer as firefly or, better yet, the firefly's First Mover. Wuorinen composed the work between 1968-69 at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center In New York.“ . . . The RCA synthesizer . . . is prejudiced by design toward 12-tone equal temperament . . . [I]f one accepts the limitation as a boundary condition . . . it ceases to be a problem. . . . Afterwards, I made the large-scale structure by processing the synthesized materials in one of the [center's] analog studios. Thus the work consists of a core of synthesized music, most of which appears in Part I, surrounded and interlarded with analog-studio transformations of that music. The synthesized [can be] identified by its clarity of pitch. . . . The processed almost always contains reverberation. Thus metaphorically, the listener stands in the midst of the synthesized music, which presents itself . . . with maximal clarity; and stretching away from him, becoming more and more blurred in detail, the various transformations . . .“ I assume that Wuorinen speaks in “standing] in the midst“ of the four-channel original, which one hears to his regret as a two-channel mixdown. We are back on my Fanfare hobby horse.

In no way strange to say, Wuorinen's Piano Sonata (No. 1, 1969) appears on its surface to share in those compositional impulses and schemata that yielded Time's Encomium. This seems to me especially true of the music's fast-paced, angular energies. Of particular interest is the sonata's performer, the late Robert Black. As others have for David Tudor, Wuorinen composed an obviously difficult work in large measure as a tribute to Black's strengths and sympathies. (Because music absorbs its background, we tend to overlook an executant's sometime part in a work's conception, no less its successful performance—which Black's certainly sounds to be.)

Wuorinen's comments about his here handsomely performed First String Quartet have the ring of a manifesto. “The [quartet of 1971] reflects fundamental concerns . . . with questions of large-scale form, in particular the issue of an appropriate developmental—or 'directed'—structure suited to a non tonal environment. I had already become . . . impatient with [much of new music's directionlessness] and wanted to establish formal procedures that would allow local flexibility while solidly undergirding a musical progress analogous to the very powerfully directed structure of tonality [my italics].“ Wuorinen then gives a summary of his solution, which need not detain us here. Enough to know what was then on the mind that remains aloof from a world, in too large part, of half-baked juvenalia. The String Quartet (No. 1) plays vis-à-vis the electronic and solo-piano work a tad richer in lyrical interest, in acknowledgement perhaps of a four-string ensemble's native soulfulness. The insert mentions an earlier Music & Arts CD of this Wuorinen quartet, with one of Milton Babbitt's, as an inferior transfer. While I haven't that disc to compare, the present digitization of an analog master sounds very good indeed. Again, the three volumes of this Wuorinen edition—there are no immediate plans for a fourth—address a need. All three volumes heartily recommended.

-- Mike Silverton, FANFARE [3/1997]