American composer Haskell Small 'has a rich imagination as a composer and an assured mastery of forms. Highly original without being self-consciously modernistic, this music has a sense of traditional structures and values without losing sight of it's own.

Two CDs. Lori Laitman is one of America's leading vocal composers. These 49 songs were composed between 1997 and 2017 to texts by Elizabeth Bishop, Paul Celan, Dana Gioia, David Mason, Sylvia Plath, and Joyce Sutphen, on topics that range from the profound emotional impact of the Holocaust, to humorous truths of everyday life, and the comedy and tenderness of childhood. The recording also includes two instrumental pieces for saxophone and piano. This stunning program of world premiere recordings is performed by an all-star cast that includes the composer herself.

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, risqu� 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-Werkst�tte (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.

Andy Teirstein' background in movement theater has given him a unique perspective on the dramatic possibilities of composition. The works heard here translate theatrical physicality into a variety of musical impulses, drawing inspiration from.

Puerto Rico-born composer Roberto Sierra is internationally renowned for his integration of Caribbean music with the Western idioms he acquired during studies in Europe. The character of Kandinsky ranges from the intimate to the bold and virtuosic, responding with fresh and surprising impressions to a selection of Wassily Kandinsky's unique paintings. The 'Clarinet Sonata' explores the intricate swing of Caribbean mixed meters and instrumental colors in a work of stunning expressiveness and virtuosity. Sierra's longest chamber work to date, 'Treinta y tres formas de mirar un mismo objeto,' was composed for Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs, and is also one of the most substantial works in the repertoire for two performers at a single piano. This recording was made possible in part by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and Cornell University.

Chiayu's evocative music reflects her origins in Taiwan and responses to life in the West. Zhi explores counterpoint and Taiwanese rhythmic patterns, while Huan conjures up sounds from nature. Employing virtuoso non-traditional techniques, Twelve Signs portrays a complete cycle of character traits, while Journey to the West depicts an allegorical adventure towards enlightenment. Sparkle was inspired by fireworks and includes special brass-instrument effects, while Urban Sketches takes us on a walk through NYC, with electronic sounds interwoven seamlessly with those of the musicians.

Over four decades the American composer Louis Karchin has produced a much-admired portfolio of compositions. His one-act opera Romulus won numerous accolades. Jane Eyre is his largest project to date, in which he and librettist Diane Osen fashion Charlotte Bronte's beloved novel into a vivid and moving opera cast as a fluid and continuous entity. Karchin's wide-ranging harmonic language and his flair for contrast ensure that the novel's drama, it's pastoral elements, and most importantly it's characterization are fully developed via arias, monologues, ariosi and a quartet, to create a boldly engaging new work.

In one way or another all of the works on this disc-spanning thirty-three years from 1972 through 2005-reveal an ongoing aspect of my creative process that looks back in order to move forward. It' about being in the present by unraveling memories.

Stephen Albert is counted as one of the most accomplished pioneers of 'The New Romanticism': A generation of composers seeking to reclaim some of the emotional expression lost through the rigors of intellectual Modernism in music.

'Fresh', 'creative', 'optimistic', 'accessible' are some of the adjectives used to describe the compositions of contemporary composer James Hartway. This CD features some of Hartway's best-known chamber works, such.

Dan Welcher, a professor at the University of Texas, composed Haleakala: How Maui Snared the Sun in 1991, when he was composer-in-residence at the Honolulu Symphony. The text, by Ann McCutchan, is drawn on a Polynesian folktale that sketches an origin for the seasons (yes, they do have them in Hawaii). Welcher's music, beginning with a Copland-esque vocabulary, follows the text closely but has convincing arcs of it's own; it is not a film soundtrack. Hawaiian percussion and bits of melody are employed. The story centers on a youthful trickster god named Maui, whose namesake is presumably one of the present Hawaiian islands. The narrator is none other than actor Richard Chamberlain.

William Bolcom, named '2007 Composer of the Year' by Musical America, has written in many genres. His Gospel Preludes, based on hymns, are amongst his most fascinating and compulsive works. Bold, brilliant, sometimes bizarre, but always hugely enjoyable, the Preludes vary widely, sometimes adorned by jazzy chords and rich swing, sometimes exuding tour-de-force brilliance or - when the music is quiet and reflective - possessed of a mesmeric reassurance. The GRAMMY Award winning Naxos recording of Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and Experience is available on 8.559216-18.

This program of musical portraits by Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Moravec encompasses a song cycle, a cantata and a solo piano work. Vita Brevis is a beautiful cycle of five songs that chart a birth-to-death journey.

MOROSS: Frankie and Johnny / Those Everlasting Blues

Based on the true story of two teenage lovers the Holocaust tore apart forever, the dramatic song cycle for a Look or a Touch casts long-awaited light on the fate of gay Germans in the Holocaust. By noted young American opera composer Jake Heggie.