Classical Music

Moran was commissioned by Trinity Wall Street (the 'Ground Zero' church) to write a Requiem for their youth chorus to commemorate the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001. The result is a heartfelt and heavenly work for angelic voices with organ, harps and cellos. It's simplicity and direct appeal rival that of Faure himself and it is sure to become a standard repertory work. While many of the singers were barely born at the time of the attacks in New York, the composer found inspiration in the all-too common grief found in war zones around the world (such as Kosovo and London) when children suddenly lose their families to violence. Listeners will note the synchronicity recorded on tape during the Offertory; a siren passed by during the best vocal take and could not be edited out. It becomes a touching reminder of the context of this work and the personal authenticity of these fine musicians.

Classical Music

Paula Matthusen is a composer of both acoustic and electro acoustic music for a variety of ensembles and diverse and unusual instrumentations. Her music has been hailed as entrancing by the New Yorker and has been performed by such ensembles as the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the International Contemporary Ensemble. This release explores musical relationships and sonic connections and employs a highly varied set of tone colors from track to track, such as recorder, organ, and banjo.

The title of composer/pianist Juri Seo's first portrait album and debut for Innova Recordings is no canard: the record is, indeed, Mostly Piano. But through that most traditional of musical filters, Seo pours her eclectic influences and the results are coherent, but refracted and many-hued: Beethoven meets 20th-century avant-garde meets modern jazz. She scales the heights and plumbs the depths of the instrument, attempting to engage with the widest scope of pianistic possibilities. Album opener "#three" is a Bad Plus-inspired piano trio that merges jazz and Late Romantic idioms, while "Three Mini Etudes in C" takes simple musical ideas in unexpected - and often cute or violent - directions in the hands of pianist Thomas Tosenkranz. "Piano Sonata No. 1 - 'La Hammerklavier'" takes its cue from Beethoven's Op. 106 and pianist Steven Beck navigates the piece's extreme registers of expression deftly. It's only with "Etudes for cimbalom" that we find out what is not entirely piano on this release. Evocative and gesture-driven, the piece is performed by Nicholas Tolle, one of the most adventurous players of the Eastern European hammered dulcimer in contemporary music. The final track, "vi," bring together Rosenkranz and percussionist Mark Eichenberger to conjure strangely consonant music flecked with chromatic twists and turns. Born and raised in Korea, Juri Seo came to the United States in 2005 for graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Music at Princeton University.

REVIEWS:
The Wire (p.63) - "Robert Moran writes beautiful, consonant, melodic music that takes considerable risks with prettiness but at its best combines graceful surfaces with intimations of emotional depth."

Completed in 2008, Michael Hersch's 2-hour work for horn and cello, Last Autumn, has been described by the Philadelphia Inquirer as a "portrait of something too huge and undefinable, glorious and terrible, to be seen in anything more than glimpses." A work "whose riches defy the harmonic limitations of the instruments. ... Together, they created wild portraits of alienated togetherness."

Performed here by hornist Jamie Hersch and cellist Daniel Gaisford, for whom the piece was written, Last Autumn is the second in a series of evening-length works written by the composer over the past decade.

Three original works by contemporary American composers, Andrea Clearfield, Jennifer Higdon and James Primosch, all based in Philadelphia, are featured on the new CD recording of performances by Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia. All three works were commissioned by Mendelssohn Club and premiered in concert with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia over the past five years.

Under the dynamic leadership of artistic director Alan Harler, Mendelssohn Club has demonstrated a major commitment to new music, commissioning nearly fifty choral works over the past two decades. METAMORPHOSIS is the first recording of all original commissions in the 138-year history of the chorus.

• DJ (under the name Masonic)/composer Mason Bates has garnered acclaim for works commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony (where he serves as composer-in-residence) and others. Here on Stereo Is King -- his first release since his 2009 debut, Digital Loom -- he takes his listeners on a wild ride through chamber music, choral music, and electronica.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Based on interviews with veterans of five wars conducted by the composer, Soldier Songs traces the path of the soldier through three phases of life-Youth (playing war games) Warrior (time served in the military) and Elder (aged, wise, reflective).

Classical Music

Award-winning composer Jane Antonia Cornish, having already made her award-winning mark in film scoring, is shown in her concert mood, still lush and atmospheric, on her new innova album, Continuum. • Performed by Decoda – the first ever Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall – these four world premiere recordings of chamber works explore terrain as disparate as the cyclic nature of the ocean’s tides, our relationship to space and memory, and deep connections to place. • This release follows Cornish’s Duende, “a program of bold, thoughtful, mesmerizing chamber music.” (American Record Guide)

Classical Music