A winner of both the Charles Ives Scholarship and Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Russell Platt is currently a Professor at Vanderbilt University. In earlier years, Platt was an editor at The New Yorker, where he won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Music Criticism in 2010. This recording presents premiere performances of Platt's music, including songs composed for Metropolitan Opera tenor, Paul Appleby.