Sono Luminus has come together again with the amazing talent of the Ying Quartet and is excited to release American Anthem: The Music of Samuel Barber & Howard Hanson. Bringing together musical selections that are truly expressive of the American spirit, this album also includes a selection from American composer Randall Thompson, and features pianist Adam Neiman and baritone Randall Scarlata.

Crossing Over features the music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, John Tavener, William Schuman, Daniel Elder, and more. This release contains world premiere recordings, as well as rarely recorded pieces. Skylark is a chamber choir consisting of professional musicians from across the United States. The group also performs educational programs for students across the nation.

REVIEW:

All the music is concise, in the manner of utterances made or heard on a deathbed; the longest work clocking in at just over nine minutes. This is new music, put together in a new way, beautifully sung and recorded. In short, it's fabulous for listeners looking for a place to start with contemporary choral music, downbeat subject matter or not.

-- All Music Guide

The final album in Bruce Levingston’s three-part series, Still Sound contains intimate works featuring world premiere recordings of Pulitzer Prize-winner William Bolcom’s “New York Lights” written for Bruce Levingston, and Augusta Gross’ new works inspired by Satie and Pärt. Bruce Levingston is one of the leading figures on the contemporary music scene. The New York Times calls him “[one] of “today’s most adventurous musicians” and describes his performances as “graceful,” “dreamy” and “hauntingly serene”; The New Yorker describes him as “a poetic pianist who has a gift for inventive—and glamorous— programming.”

REVIEW:

Baroque chamber performers face the challenge of picking a program that makes sense from among the enormous body of small-ensemble music by Georg Philipp Telemann, and the multinational historical-instrument ensemble Rebel (pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable) surmounts this challenge. Telemann, like other composers of the first half of the 18th century, wrote lots of trio sonatas, but he also pursued the richer sonata à quattro and sonata à cinque. These are, in the main, flashier and more experimental pieces than the trio sonatas, and Rebel captures their daring qualities. Most of the movements are Italianate, but annotator John Moran (his notes are in English only) rightly points to the influence of Polish folk fiddling on Telemann's music here. Consider the Sonata Discortato à 4 in A major, TWV 43:A7 (tracks 5-8). "Discortato" means "untuned," and Telemann is thought to have derived the scordatura tuning here from Polish music he heard. The final movement is not a Polish dance but a French one, a bourrée, and it is miles away from Bach's treatments of this form; with its drones and plain melodic figures it sounds almost like a reproduction of an actual folk dance. This rustic style (explored in more detail on another Rebel disc devoted specifically to Telemann's Polish side) is balanced by flamboyant Italian sonata movements with pairs of violins and violas sounding off against each other in many combinations. It's a great deal of fun. Rebel here records in the U.S., in a church in Stamford, CT, that brings disagreeably live results, but this remains a colorful program that the Telemann aficionado will enjoy.

-- James Manheim, All Music Guide

There are more languages spoken in Los Angeles than in any other city in the world. It’s a transitive city. Most residents have come here to contribute to its cultural identity and have ended up calling it “home”. Los Angeles is a city where every industry, creative or otherwise, is fueled by the pursuit of personal creative dreaming. It’s clear then how the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet (LAPQ) created a community of composers and made them all local to the group’s music making and to Los Angeles itself, regardless of each composer’s city of origin.

Is it language that makes someone at home in a given place? If so, the compositional languages of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Christopher Cerrone, Ellen Reid, Daníel Bjarnasson, and Andrew McIntosh appear as interwoven and complex as Los Angeles itself. Their music similarly courses with chiming repetition, spectral near-silence, and the wearing away of time on objects so barely touched that they appear, in moments, as fragile as paper. These composers from two drastically different continents are brought together by LAPQ, despite their differences in origin, under one banner: friendship. For years LAPQ has been known for its skill in both championing and cataloging works by West Coast composers, with a specific focus on Los Angeles. With Beyond they explore the deep knowing that comes from making work with old friends. And broadly, the project signals a move for the Los Angeles contemporary music scene, a scene burgeoning out with global significance, and overflowing with artists actively seeking to create community. Beyond is a remarkable epic in which space and time are stretched on and on, over and past the horizon.

Bjarnasson’s “Qui Tollis" spans an incredible arc, emerging from the contemplative space of the works around it, brimming with the bashes and tumbles of bass drums, and then seemingly too early, vanishes again into a lull and rhythmic groan. With “Fear-Release,” Reid takes us into a world of metallic voices, as if we’re listening to a rubbed piece of crystal from inside the gem itself. It’s rare that a piece of music seems to truly sonically shine, and Reid’s piece accomplishes this brilliance early and often. Thorvaldsdottir’s “Aura” is the wind, the sand in the wind, and the wind chime hanging from the wood on the old falling-apart porch all at once. It speaks multitudes, and miraculously all upon the quiet edge of audibility.

The expanse of McIntosh’s “I Hold the Lion’s Paw” is that of a twelve-hundred page novel, in which each page has less than a half dozen words. Its sprawl is scrolled out like a web in air, as the quartet communicates effortlessly with one another across a cavern of distance. In one moment they sit still in space, another they rattle endlessly like the earth; they arrive where we are, simply putting musical puzzle pieces together. With “Memory Palace,” Cerrone creates rooms of sound, each drenched in a subtle hue. In the rooms of this ever-expanding house we find ourselves drinking different air, buzzing with pop, hiss, and click, and lingering with a guitarist who could be inside the guitar itself.

REVIEW:

Beyond excels in every sphere: this well-chosen programme brims with fine music and impassioned musicianship, all presented in sound that will delight audiophiles, percussionistas and music lovers everywhere.

-- MusicWeb International

The title “Heavy Sleep” is meant to reference not only this album’s eponymous opening work but also to note the phrase’s allusion to death and eternal sleep. + Voices of other composers or allusions to their own or others’ works are found throughout, often appearing as subtle homage to past composers. + Pianist Bruce Levingston is one of today’s leading contemporary music figures. + Many of the world’s most important composers having written works for him, his NYC world premiere performances of their works having won notable critical acclaim. + “One of today’s most adventurous musicians.” (NYTimes)

Two classical masterworks arranged for Cello Quintet. The Ying Quartet and Zuill Bailey have been collaborating for years to bring listeners the popular standards. With this release, they hope to explore repertoire beyond the common and reimagine works as their own. This release includes a world-premiere recording of the Schumann arrangement, Cello Concerto in A Minor.

"26 centers around the concept of violists performing and sharing their own compositions. As a violist/composer, I am inspired by the legacy of others who have picked up both bow and pen to create music. 26 was my way of gathering some of my favorite musicians who share a love of the viola, and a love for the new. This album features performances and works by violists Atar Arad, Garth Knox, and myself. Our trio of violists/composers is joined by composer Richard Karpen and violinist Michael Jinsoo Lim. The title of the recording comes from the number of strings on the instruments used: four strings each for the violas of Arad and myself and Lim’s violin; and 14 strings (seven playing and seven sympathetic) for Knox’s viola d’amore. As a student of Atar Arad’s, I had the opportunity to experience his artistry through his teaching, viola playing and his compositions. It was, indeed, Atar’s example that helped lead me to composing myself, along with the experiences culled from my performing career filled with new music and improvisation. I first got to know Garth Knox as an admirer of his work as violist of the Arditti Quartet. I have since had the good fortune to perform with him on a number of occasions, and to get to know him as a composer. Richard Karpen’s sense of experimentation was one of the initial draws for me to join the faculty at the University of Washington, where I am very happy to be his colleague. Michael Jinsoo Lim has been my partner in crime since we met in college. As co-founders of the Corigliano Quartet and members of Frequency, Mike is the musician I most often perform with." - Melia Watras

Parthenia, or the Maydenhead of the first musicke that was ever printed for the Virginalls, is perhaps the most important early publication of English keyboard music. It was first published either late 1612 or early 1613 and, as its title indicates, was the first printed collection of keyboard music to appear in England. The “mastermind” behind Parthenia was the engraver William Hole, who conceived it as a wedding gift to Princess Elizabeth Stuart (the second child and eldest daughter of James VI and I) and Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine. Stage plays, musical performances, mock battles on the Thames, and fireworks were featured in the festivities which accompanied the ceremony. The original dedication to Parthenia contains a somewhat cryptic passage that singles out the “neighbor letters E and F, the vowel that makes so sweet a Consonat, Her notes so linkt and wedded together seeme liuely Hierogliphicks of the harmony of marriage…” The author has linked these two together because they represent the royal couple, E referring to Elizabeth and F to Frederick. These two pitches play a central role in the piece, being the two opening notes and each section following begins alternately on E or F.