Bernstein, Dessner, Farias & Verdery: A Giant Beside You
ReEntrant
CD
$10.49$20.99Save 50%Jun 16, 2023
Guitarist Ben Verdery and the Ulysses Quartet release an album of music for guitar and string quartet that displays the versatility and accessibility of the combination. With music by Bryce Dessner, Javier Farías, Verdery's arrangement of Leonard Benstein's 1942 Clarinet Sonata, and two works by Verdery himself for electric guitar with quartet, A Giant Beside You presents persuasive and committed performances of several new works that provide new options for concert programming for this engaging and eminently viable instrumentation.
Across Time is an album of original compositions composed over several decades that draws it's inspiration from diverse traditions and musical languages. Renewal, Ballade for Astor Piazzolla and The Passionate Pilgrim were composed in 2021. Three songs: A Poet's Eye, I Am and There Is a Splendor, are settings of texts by William Shakespeare and the Italian philosopher Marsilio Ficino. The songs and Romantic Etude, Waltz for Maurice, Simple Gifts and Cooper Lake were composed in the 1990s but are only now being released. Trilogy and Late One Night are the earliest works (1977) and represent a significant development in Hand's compositional style, incorporating jazz rhythms and harmonies into classical forms. From the album titled Trilogy, these recordings have been digitally remastered and are happily reintroduced to new generations of listeners.
