GIANTS is jazz guitarist Barry Greene's most fully realized recording to date-a powerful tribute to the players who shaped his musical voice, including Pat Martino, Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, and Russell Malone. Spanning organ trio, modern ensemble, and solo guitar settings, the album reflects a lifetime of deep immersion in the jazz tradition, delivered with authority, swing, and an unmistakable personal voice. With Pat Bianchi on B3 organ and drummer Ulysses Owens Jr., Greene captures the raw energy and soulful drive of the classic organ trio. The broader sound palette of his quintet setting with David Kikoski on piano, Steve Nelson on vibraphone, bassist Marco Panascia, and Owens, yields richly textured performances that balance fire, lyricism, and harmonic depth. More than a tribute, Giants is a statement-an artist at the peak of his powers honoring the lineage while speaking unmistakably in his own voice. "Monster chops, soulful feel, full/rich classic jazz tone, and virtuosic harmonic techniques establish him as a top-tier guitarist." - Benedetto Guitars. Barry Greene is just about one of the best; not only as a player, but also as a writer and a teacher & a world-class musician. Pat Martino

Naxos celebrates the immigrant experience with the release of Peter Boyer’s Ellis Island: The Dream of America, an ambitious work combining spoken word performances of actual Ellis Island immigrant stories with powerful orchestral music. Performed by London’s renowned Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Boyer, this recording features a cast of Oscar-, Emmy-, and Tony-winning actors: Barry Bostwick, Blair Brown, Olympia Dukakis, Anne Jackson, Bebe Neuwirth, Eli Wallach, and Louis Zorich, directed by Tony- and Grammy-winning Martin Charnin.

Boyer fashioned the seven monologues of Ellis Island: Dream of America from interviews in the Ellis Island Oral History Project with actual immigrants who came to the United States between 1910-1940, weaving a dramatic orchestral tapestry around their true stories. The work concludes with a reading of the Emma Lazarus poem The New Colossus (“Give me your tired, your poor…”), an emotionally powerful ending to this celebration of our nation of immigrants.

Ellis Island: The Dream of America was premiered by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra in April 2002 to great acclaim, and its many subsequent performances have also received enthusiastic responses. Gerald Moshell of the Hartford Courant described the first performance as “a searing emotional experience” while Harold McNeil of the Buffalo News described the piece as “at turns, horrifying, whimsical and heart-rending. But it’s always palpably engaging ...”

Peter Boyer is emerging as one of the most successful young American orchestral composers, with nearly 100 orchestral performances of his work to date. In addition to his work for the concert hall, Boyer is active in the film and television industry and is on the faculty of Claremont Graduate University.

The suite is made up of the following sections:

1. Prologue 06:09
2. Words of Helen Cohen, emigrated from Poland in 1920, read by Blair Brown 02:37
3. Interlude 1 01:24
4. Words of James Apanomith, emigrated from Greece in 1911, read by Louis Zorich 02:43
5. Interlude 2 02:07
6. Words of Lillian Galleta, emigrated from Italy in 1928, read by Olympia Dukakis 03:32
7. Interlude 3 01:33
8. Words of Lazarus Salamon, emigrated from Hungary in 1920, read by Eli Wallach 04:16
9. Interlude 4 01:56
10. Words of Helen Rosenthal, emigrated from Belgium in 1940, read by Bebe Neuwirth 04:27
11. Interlude 5 01:01
12. Words of Manny Steen, emigrated from Ireland in 1925, read by Barry Bostwick 04:42
13. Interlude 6 02:24
14. Words of Katherine Beychook, emigrated from Russia in 1910, read by Anne Jackson 02:53
15. Epilogue: "The New Colossus" (Emma Lazarus, 1883), read by all actors 01:50

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REVIEW:

Peter Boyer's Ellis Island: The Dream of America will not surprise or disappoint anyone looking for a straightforward presentation piece in the American populist vein, à la Copland's A Lincoln Portrait. Indeed, the music is so openly tonal, melodic, and richly orchestrated; the attitude so noble and patriotic; and the subject matter so emotionally compelling, it would be surprising and disappointing if Boyer had not followed Copland's example, and had set these authentic immigrant narratives from the Ellis Island Oral History Project in anything less than an accessible, American vernacular style. Yet it is the texts, not the music, which matter most in this work, and listeners will find the effective but expectedly epic score less absorbing than the absorbing performances by actors Blair Brown, Louis Zorich, Olympia Dukakis, Eli Wallach, Bebe Neuwirth, Barry Bostwick, and Anne Jackson, who deliver the historic accounts with believable characterizations and genuine emotions. Of course, any invocation of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty must include a recitation of Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus," which is passionately read at the work's conclusion by the cast against the stirring, anthemic accompaniment of the Philharmonia Orchestra. Naxos provides excellent sound, though it is fairly loud in places.

– All Music Guide

An impressive performance, spacious, full-bodied, and last but not least, never forgetful of the warm human feeling prompting Mussorgsky's tribute to a recently and prematurely deceased friend.

After Barry Douglas's recent RCA concerto debut in the Tchaikovsky, now a solo recital—with Pictures at an Exhibition, long a cornerstone of his repertory, the principal work. It's an impressive performance, spacious, full-bodied, and last but not least, never forgetful of the warm human feeling prompting Mussorgsky's tribute to a recently and prematurely deceased friend. In view of Ashkenazy's own orchestration of the work, it is perhaps not surprising that he himself draws a wider range of colour from the keyboard, particularly its upper register glints; his characterization is just a shade more vivid, underpinned by a stronger sense of direction (Decca). But Douglas's tone is warmer—and full marks to the RCA engineers for reproduction so faithful.

Both artists use the Urtext edition, notably giving us an ff start to ''Bydlo''. Here I think douglas's slower tempo is a distinct advantage in evoking the ox-wagon's lumbering motion, just as his marginally brisker tempo for the finale is truer to the composer's allegro alla breve marking. But neither his quarrelling children in the Tuileries garden nor his gossiping market-women at Limoges have as much temperament as Ashkenazy's, nor is his witch as ferocious—or sinister in flight. Both players, in their different ways, rightly make the recurrent promenade episode very personal. But on its first reflective return I questioned Douglas's subdivision of each phrase into two, just as I wondered if the ensuing sad song of the troubador (here very much an unrequited lover at the castle gate) really needs his occasional yieldings of pulse. His exceptionally full, rich fortissimo, free of all edginess or clang, is of course a tremendous asset in the majestic finale—as it also is in the big climaxes of the Dante Sonata. Comparison with Brendel (Philips) in this work revealed Douglas less dramatically menacing, less intense. But in its less urgent way (and, incidentally, he allows himself all the time in the world for the middle section's bittersweet reflection), the reading is warmly romantic and expansive—with some ravishing softer sonority en route. You're certainly left in no doubt as to why Liszt included the word 'fantasia' in the title. If yielding phrasing in the Liebestod sometimes relaxes tension in pianissimo, textural strands are clearly defined and the climax itself is sumptuous.

-- Joan Chissell, Gramophone [5/1987]

This coupling offers two youthful concerto works and a solo interlude. The most substantial work is the Britten Piano Concerto (placed last on the disc), written in 1938 when the composer was 25. It is a boisterous piece, unstintingly virtuosic and with clear overtones of Prokofiev. It suits Douglas well, and he tackles the relentless passagework with spirited enthusiasm. His tone is rather hard, particularly in the fortes, but this is not entirely unsuitable given the steely, driven quality of the music. The first-movement cadenza is genuinely exciting, and the point when the orchestra re-enters in a moment of calm retreat (track 7 at 9'21''), with Douglas providing a rare beauty of tone and colour in the following lyrical passage, is beguiling... The Debussy Fantaisie (1890), which despite the composer’s efforts remained unperformed during his lifetime, receives a strong performance with crystalline clarity in the passagework... His playing breathes with natural phrasing and articulation, and has a sure-footed integrity...

-- Tim Parry, Gramophone [10/1997]

Personnel includes: Jerry Hadley (vocals); Jay Berliner (guitar, mandolin); John Moses (clarinet); Dominic Cortese (accordion); John Beal (bass); Barry Mitterhoff (mandolin).

Recording information: Clinton Recording Studios, Studio A, New York, NY (05/24/1995-09/27/1995); Soundtrack Recording Studios, Studio A, New York, NY (05/24/1995-09/27/1995).

The one-act opera Djamileh by Georges Bizet set to the libretto by Louis Gallet tells an oriental love story between the slave named Djamileh and Cairo sultan Haroun. The plot, bringing to mind the atmosphere of One Thousand and One Nights, is a quite typical example of Romantic fascinations with the Far East. Bizet's had his doubts about the work- many considered it to be too difficult for a stage adaptation. However, the artistic craft of the creator of the balanced libretto surrounding the story of oriental lovers with a suggestive sound, and the craftsmanship of Jennifer Feinstein, performing the title, allows the listener to enjoy all the values ​​of this little known opera. Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Feinstein has been likened by the Los Angeles Times to "a young Horne, so rich is her mezzo and so full of spark was she on stage." She is becoming increasingly coveted for her portrayals of the dramatic mezzo repertoire.

Performers include: Gil Evans, George Russell, Johnny Carisi and Rod Levitt.

A lot of unusual music appears on this Bluebird CD. Altoist Hal McKusick (with arrangmeents contributed by George Russell and Gil Evans) performs five numbers (including a version of "Blues for Pablo" that was cut a year before Miles Davis's recording) with a variety of musicians including trumpeter Art Farmer and trombonist Jimmy Cleveland. Arranger John Carisi (heard here on trumpet) interprets seven previously unreleased numbers with an octet and trombonist Rod Levitt performs five of his arrangements with his own advanced octet. Although these performances would have little influence on future developments in jazz (the free jazz movement of the 1960s overshadowed the trend toward using elements of modern classical music in charts), the music still sound quite fresh and unpredictable today.

The Sinfonietta is entitled 'Symphonic Phantasy' on the unpublished manuscript (echoes of the original title of Sibelius's Seventh Symphony) and it remained unperformed during the composer's lifetime. He was unsure of it and told the conductor Christopher Whelen, to whom he gave the manuscript in 1950, that he didn't want it played. Whelen faithfully obeyed this injunction until 1983, when he was very reluctantly persuaded to let it be performed during Bax's centenary year. (He had previously refused a request from Robert Ponsonby to allow it to be premièred at a Prom in 1980, where it would have shared the program with the first performance of Rubbra's Eleventh Symphony under Nicholas Cleobury.) Vernon Handley and the BBC Welsh Orchestra eventually gave the first performance at a recording session in Llandaff on 25 June 1983 for broadcasting later that year. (Odd to think that it has only ever been played in Wales and Czechoslovakia.)

The opera- or rather and properly the musical interlude- At the Boar’s Head was written in 1924. Gustav Holst composed it at his home in Thaxted, where he was resting after collapsing, probably due to being overladen with work. By the time his health deteriorated, the composer had taught in a number of schools and played as an orchestra trombonist, devoting all his free time to composing. The libretto, which Holst also composed, is based on Shakespeare’s Henry IV parts 1 and 2. Also included in this release is Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Riders to the Sea, a short one-act opera based on the play of the same name by John Millington Synge. The opera has remained largely in the realm of students and amateurs until Sadler Wells added it to their repertoire in 1953.

This limited edition reissue features the brilliant trombone work of Ray Anderson, the bass of Mark Helias & the percussion skills of Barry Altschul. The trio had worked together extensively by the time they recorded this album. The cohesion between the instruments & the fluid interaction with which they develop & expand their ideas is remarkable. This recording captures the high level of creativity flowing from the music. It was recorded more than 20 years ago, but it has retained it's freshness, vigour & wit.

Recorded in London in 1965 with a line-up featuring George "Kid Sheik" Cola (trumpet & vocal), John Handy (alto & vocal), Cuff Billett (trumpet & vocal), Pete Dyer (trombone), Richard Simmons (piano), Brian Turnock (string bass) and Barry Martyn. Track listing: Rebecca, Last Night on the Back Porch, Ice Cream, Black and Blue, Eh La Bas, in the Groove, Little Richard's Blues, Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet, Panama, in the Gutter, Bye Bye Blackbird.

The first half of this album features Barry's late 60s band, with Teddy Fullick (trumpet), Sammy Rimington (clarinet/alto/tenor), Pete Dyer (trombone), Graham Paterson (piano), Brian Turnock (string bass) and Martyn (drums) recorded in London 1967. The second half features the classic Martyn band, with Cuff Billett (trumpet), Bill Greenow (clarinet), Pete Dyer (trombone), Graham Paterson (piano), John Coles (banjo), Terry Knight (string bass) and Martyn (drums) recorded in London 1962. Track listing: All I Do Is Dream of You, I'm Glad for Your Sake, Object of My Affection, Love Is Made for You & Me, Shine on Harvest Moon, June Night, Honky Tonk Town, Saturday Night Function, Swingy Little Thingy, Last Mile of the Way and more.