In my long orchestral career, the times that I find myself playing chamber music with string instruments, especially by living composers, are the times that I feel most like myself. The works gathered here quite literally span my entire career. I have worked closely, over many years, with each composer involved in this project and I am grateful to them all. I am grateful as well to my instrumental colleagues. The process of performing and recording these works with such truly distinguished string players has been a sustaining privilege. Many different compositional styles are at play here, yet the works all have an important unifying element to me, that of feeling entirely native to the instrument. I am honored to have helped bring these chamber pieces for English horn and strings into the world, to have been a part of each composers’ gravitational pull.
- Robert Walters
Valerie Coleman is regarded by many as an iconic artist who continues to pave her own unique path as a composer, GRAMMY®-nominated flutist, and entrepreneur. Highlighted as one of the “Top 35 Women Composers” by The Washington Post, she was named Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Woman of the Year, an honor bestowed to an individual who has made a significant contribution to classical music as a performer, composer, or educator.
Coleman’s work as a performer is just as impressive with an extensive discography and appearances throughout North America and Europe, in settings ranging from chamber to orchestral, as well as small group jazz.
Coleman is a founder and former flutist of Imani Winds. The acclaimed ensemble is featured in a dedicated exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Along with composer-harpist Hannah Lash, and composer-violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama, she co-founded and currently performs as flutist of the performer-composer trio Umama Womama.
Bernard Rands boasts a catalog of more than 100 published compositions, among them his vocal and instrumental work Canti del Sole, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1984. The centerpiece of Rands at Oberlin, a new recording on the Oberlin Music label, is a work commissioned by Oberlin Conservatory in honor of its 150th anniversary and intended for English horn player Robert Walters, a professor at Oberlin and longtime member of The Cleveland Orchestra. Rands’ Concerto for English Horn received its world-premiere performance by Walters and The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall in November 2015. It makes its recorded premiere on this release, which features Walters performing alongside the Oberlin Orchestra, under the direction of Raphael Jiménez. Rands at Oberlin also features Canti del Sole, which describes a day’s progression from dawn to dusk. It is performed here by Norwegian tenor Magnus Staveland with Oberlin’s Contemporary Music Ensemble, under the direction of Timothy Weiss.
Literature is a frequent source of inspiration for Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, whose extended song cycle Songtree is based on poetry by William Shakespeare and Mexican author Raúl Aceves. Zohn-Muldoon's compositional voice is also shaped by a steady collaboration with the particular group of musicians for whom he writes, including soprano Tony Arnold, flutist Molly Barth, percussionists Stuart Gerber and Paul Vaillancourt, guitarist Dieter Hennings, violinist Hanna Hurwitz, pianist and composer Daniel Pesca, and conductor Timothy Weiss, among others. This artistic affinity brought many of these musicians together to co- found the Zohn Collective in 2017. On Songtree: Music of Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, members and friends of that collective join forces with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble (CME), under the direction of Weiss.
Jamey Haddad met saxophone player Billy Drewes when both were music students in Boston. Nearly 45 years later, the longtime friends have made their first recording together: a collection of nine tunes written by Drewes and performed by Under One Sun, eight musicians who represent five countries and whose ages span five decades. “As my musical journey led me from one continent to another, and as I experienced a planet crying out for understanding, this team of players cosmically came forward,” says Haddad, a longtime professor of advanced improvisation and percussion at Oberlin Conservatory. “The sheer joy of every member experiencing their bandmates’ artistry truly exemplifies the human capacity to celebrate what makes us unique.” Joining Haddad and Drewes are Michael Ward-Bergeman, Luisito Quintero, Roberto Occhipinti, Leo Blanco, Ali Paris, and Salar Nader. Also included are performances by fellow Oberlin faculty trombonists Jay Ashby and Lee Allen, Oberlin Conservatory brass students, and Hadra des Femmes de Taroudant, an all-female vocal ensemble from Morocco.
Late bassist Milt Hinton is celebrated for a stage and studio career that intersected with countless legendary musicians - from Dizzy Gillespie and Cab Calloway to Barbra Streisand and Willie Nelson - for an incredible seven decades. Groove Dreams, a new recording by versatile bassist Peter Dominguez, honors Hinton's legacy with solo bass tunes from artists as varied as Duke Ellington, Stevi Wonder, Bill Evans, and Chick Corea. Performed on the 18th-century Italian bass Hinton played throughout his career, each song explores the nuances and deep colors of the instrument - qualities not always discernible in ensemble playing. A renowned bassist and educator in his own right, Dominguez met Hinton in 1981 and won the inaugural Milton J. Hinton Scholarship Competition that same year. More than three decades later, Dominguez was instrumental in forging a relationship between the Hinton estate and Oberlin Conservatory, where he is a professor of jazz studies and double bass. Oberlin's relationship with the Hinton estate has grown to include a scholarship fund; an extensive collection of papers, films, and personal artifacts amassed by the Hintons; a biennial summer Institute for Studio Bass; photographs taken by Hinton throughout his career; and four basses formerly owned by Hinton that continue to be played by Oberlin facutly, students and visiting artists. ''Words are not adequate to express the experience of playing Milt Hinton's bass,'' says Dominguez. ''We are ever mindful of its provenance and Milt's enduring spirit that thrives within it.''
Ginastera: One Hundred / Jimenez, Shaham, Kondonassis, Vieaux, Oberlin Orchestra
Oberlin Music
CD · 1 disc
$16.99Oct 14, 2016
Throughout his musical career, Argentinean composer Alberto Ginastera artfully incorporated the folk music and dance forms of his native land into increasingly modernist creations. From the populist to the avant-garde, his work was created using an architectural approach that effectively set his music apart. Ginastera: One Hundred is released in celebration of the centennial anniversary of Ginastera’s birth. The work serves as a musical ‘thank you’ from world-renowned harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, whose career has been heavily influenced by Ginastera. She has performed his Harp Concerto nearly 200 times. Alongside the Harp Concerto is Danzas Argentinas, with its themes that evoke Argentinean history and culture juxtaposed with modernist structures. This is the work which catapulted Ginastera into fame in his home country. Finally, Pampeana No. 1 shows influences from Aaron Copland, with whom Ginastera studied, and Sonata for Guitar, which is the composer’s only work for Argentina’s national instrument.
The National Brass Ensemble with James Sommerville and Gail Williams, French Horn.
The National Brass Ensemble is comprised of twenty-six of the finest brass players in major orchestras across the US. “Gabrieli”, featuring the NBE, includes 15 pieces from the Italian composer’s highly influential Sacrae Symphoniae (1597), arranged for this ensemble by San Francisco Symphony trombonist Tim Higgins, and the debut of Music for Brass, a new work by celebrated film composer John Williams. The inspiration for this recording comes from a historic, Grammy Award-winning recording, The Antiphonal Music of Gabrieli, featuring the legendary brass ensembles of the Chicago Symphony and the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras. It has been long admired as the definitive modern performance of Giovanni Gabrieli’s works.
Allusions to Seasons and Weather is a suite of four works based on experiences of time and place in the woods, water, mountains and magical far north of Norway, where Composer Peter V. Swendsen lived for a year as a Fulbright Fellow. + The suite itself, as well as the three additional pieces that accompany it on this CD, combine field recordings and electronics with the invention and artistry of exceptionally imaginative performers.
"• Though hailing from different eras, postwar Italian experimentalist Luciano Berio and contemporary composer Huang Ruo are united here in their exploration of identical
• pieces of violin music played solo and with ensemble accompaniment. Acclaimed violinist David Bowlin reveals how two seemingly identical paths can be marked by endless contrasts.
• Features the Oberlin Conservatory's award-winning Contemporary Music Ensemble under the direction of Timothy Weiss."
Throughout her career, internationally heralded harpist Yolanda Kondonassis has found herself fascinated by the luscious creations of French composer Maurice Ravel. Ravel: Intimate Masterpieces is a celebration of Kondonassis' longtime love of Ravel's music, and a celebration of the great roster of Oberlin Conservatory of Music talent that came together with her to record the album on campus in January 2013. 'This disc is especially meaningful because I was able to make it with such wonderful players and to celebrate the wealth of artistry and musical opportunity that lives at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music,' says Kondonassis.
Lorenzo Palomo: Dr. Seuss' The Sneetches / De Lancie, Jimenez, Oberlin Orchestra
Oberlin Music
CD · 1 disc
$16.99Oct 29, 2013
Oberlin Music is proud to announce the release of Dr. Seuss' the Sneetches, a symphonic poem for narrator and symphony orchestra. Theodor Geisel's timeless children's tale about the perils of bigotry comes to vivid life through an inspired performance of Lorenzo Palomo's original score by the Oberlin Orchestra and spirited narration from actor John de Lancie (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Breaking Bad). Through the generosity of Dr. Seuss Enterprises and Lorenzo Palomo, all proceeds from the sale of this recording will support scholarships at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
