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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PUBLISHERS Recorded by Paul Hennerich on John Adams’ American Berserk and 16-19 May and 26-27 July, 2009, Chen Yi’s Ba Ban are published by Opperman Music Hall, Hendon Music, Inc.; Joan Tower’s No Drive American The Florida State University, Longer Very Clear is published by New York Steinway Model D Associated Music Publishers, Inc.; Augusta Read Thomas’ Traces is Heidi Louise Williams, piano Edited and Mastered at the published by G. Schirmer, Inc.; William Pan Galactic Company by Paul Bolcom’s 12 New Etudes is published Hennerich and Boris Golynskiy by E.B. Marks Music Co.; and Daniel Piano Technician: Anne Garee Crozier’s Winter Aubade is available direct from the composer. Hall Manager: Nicholas Smith Producers: Heidi Louise Williams, This recording is made possible in part Karyl Louwenaar, Daniel Crozier by a generous 2009 Planning Grant Artwork: Paul Buxman from The Florida State University. Photographers: Steve Buhman SINCERE THANKS TO: (Heidi Louise Williams), Dean Don Gibson, Dean Leo Welch, Andrew Shinn Christopher Williams, Ann Schein, Denise Von Glahn, E. T. Kawaguchi, Paul Buxman, Jerram & Vicki Barrs, Niki Mousikos, Edward Rothmel, Roberto Sinha, Wendy Smith, Kathleen Ginther, Kudzai Musumhi WORKS BY DEDICATION John Adams This recording is dedicated, with Joan Tower gratitude and admiration, to each WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM Daniel Crozier TROY1298 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. of the composers whose works I am 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 Chen Yi TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 honored to present on this disc, and ALBANY RECORDS U.K. BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD to the memory of my mother, Melodie Augusta Read Thomas TEL: 01539 824008 © 2011 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA MacLeod Buxman (1944-2003). DDD William Bolcom WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. The Artist Notes on the Music the National Endowment for the Arts, Governor Composer, conductor, and creative thinker — Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, the French Praised by New York critic Harris Goldsmith for her ‘dazzling performances’ and John Adams occupies a unique position in the Legion of Honor, and Northwestern University, ‘impeccable solistic authority’, American pianist Heidi Louise Williams has world of American music. His works, both operatic where he was awarded an honorary doctorate and appeared in performances across the United States and internationally, winning and symphonic, stand out among contemporary the first Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music numerous prizes. Her 2004 New York debut in Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center classical compositions for their depth of expres- Composition. For more information, visit John under the auspices of Artists International received highest critical acclaim, sion, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly Adams’ official website at www.earbox.com. leading to a return engagement at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2006. Her humanist nature of their themes. Over the past 25 American Berserk was composed in 2001 for concert schedule has included solo and chamber music recitals at the Kennedy years, Adams’s music has played a decisive role in pianist Garrick Ohlsson. It is a fast, fractured study Center, the Chicago Cultural Center, Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Brevard turning the tide of contemporary musical aesthet- of what could be called “indigenous” rhythms. Summer Music Festival, the Peabody Conservatory of Music, the Society for ics away from academic modernism and toward a The surface is studded with sudden twists and American Music and the College Music Society National Conferences, the French more expansive, expressive language, entirely curves and punctuated with unexpected stabs of Embassy in Washington D.C., and a debut recital in St. Louis as winner of its 2000 Artist Presentation characteristic of his New World surroundings. Born syncopation and unpredictable, bipolar shifts of Society Auditions, as well as concerto appearances with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the Oregon and raised in New England and educated at mood and tempo. At times the musical material Symphony, and others. An avid chamber musician, Williams has collaborated with many outstanding Harvard, Adams moved in 1971 to California, threatens to come apart at the seams, only to pick American and international artists. She is also actively involved in the promotion of new music and has where he taught for ten years at the San Francisco itself up again and continue charging forth. I owe worked with many distinguished composers including Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Chen Yi, Augusta Read Conservatory and was composer-in-residence at the title to a phrase from novelist Philip Roth. Thomas, Daniel Crozier, Robert Sirota, and Frank Stemper. In 2007 she recorded chamber music of New the San Francisco Symphony. Adams’s operatic —John Adams, Road Movies York composer Bernard Hoffer in collaboration with the innovative trio Neoteric on the Albany Label, and works are among the most successful of our time, Nonesuch Records Inc, she was featured in a recording of piano concertos of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich on the Naxos Label in 2010. drawing many of their subjects from archetypical Berkeley, California, 2004 Williams joined the piano faculty at the Florida State University College of Music in 2007, after having themes in contemporary history. On the taught at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale School of Music since 1999. She completed her BM, Transmigration of Souls, written for the New York MM, and DMA degrees at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Maryland, where she studied Philharmonic to mark the first anniversary of the Widely regarded as one of the most important with renowned pianist Ann Schein and coached chamber music with Earl Carlyss, Samuel Sanders, World Trade Center attacks, received the 2003 American composers living today, Joan Tower Stephen Kates, and Robert McDonald. Prior to her studies at Peabody, she studied under William Pulitzer Prize for Music, and won a rare “triple has made lasting contributions to musical life in Phemister at the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music, where she later taught as visiting professor in crown” of GRAMMY® awards: “Best Classical the U.S. as composer, performer, conductor, and 1999. She is an Artist-Faculty for the MasterWorks Summer Music Festival in Lake Winona, Indiana. She Recording,” “Best Orchestral Performance,” and educator during a career spanning more than is the niece of the Californian plein-air painter, Paul Buxman. “Best Classical Contemporary Composition.” fifty years. Commissioned by major ensembles, Adams has been awarded honorary degrees and soloists, and orchestras, including the Emerson, proclamations by Cambridge University, Harvard Tokyo and Muir quartets, Evelyn Glennie, Carol University, Yale School of Music, Phi Beta Kappa, Wincenc, David Shifrin, John Browning, and orchestras of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Franklin and Marshall College for John Browning, competition for his second, With Blood, With Ink. In appropriately, “dawn music.” Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C., She was the who premiered both works at The Ann and Richard May, 2010 New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini —Daniel Crozier, 2009 first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America Barshinger Center for Musical Arts in Hensel Hall praised the opera as “Driven by Mr. Crozier’s har- consortium commission, Made in America. Its at Franklin & Marshall College in September 2000. monically lush and lyrically soaring score…” Born in Guangzhou, China, Dr. Chen Yi is the top-selling recording won three 2008 GRAMMY® In Vast Antique Cubes, I wanted to create a sense Daniel Crozier is currently Associate Professor of Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of awards, including “Best Classical Contemporary of a very large space that moved quite slowly from Theory and Composition at Rollins College. the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and the Composition.” She was Composer in Residence low to high and higher still. Within this reaching Winter Aubade was conceived with the special recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living with the St Louis Symphony (1985–88), Orchestra upwards, are suggestions of Debussy and Chopin gifts of the pianist Heidi Louise Williams in mind. Award from the American Academy of Arts and of St Lukes (1997–2007), and Season Composer — two composers whom I played frequently as a It was absolute joy to return to writing music for Letters. Her music is published by Theodore with the Pittsburgh Symphony (2010–11). Tower pianist. By contrast, in the much more energetic my most favorite instrument with the confidence Presser Company, commissioned and performed studied piano and composition at Bennington and faster Throbbing Still, the music of Stravinsky that virtually anything that the music demanded worldwide by such ensembles as the Cleveland College and Columbia University. Her earliest and the Latin Inca rhythms that I grew up with in would be possible. Winter Aubade continues to Orchestra, the Sachsische Staatskapelle Dresden, works were serial in concept, but her music soon South America, continue to play a powerful role — explore some of the principal concerns expressed and the Singapore Symphony, and recorded on developed the lyricism, rhythmic drive, and colorful to “throb still” in my music. in the orchestral works that immediately preceded Bis, New Albion, Teldec, New World, Albany, Koch orchestration that characterize her subsequent —Joan Tower, www.schirmer.com it, namely the narrative power