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 inherent in music and Naxos labels. Chen Yi received BA and MA works. Currently Asher Edelman Professor of Music itself apart from any concrete literary references degrees in music composition (’83 and ’86) from at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972, Works by Daniel Crozier have been recorded or or explicit programmatic ideas. These orchestral the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and the DMA she is published by Associated Music Publishers. performed by the Seattle Symphony, the New York works might be described as “fairy-tale” music (’93) from Columbia University, City of New York. The titles for these pieces were taken from lines City Opera, the Jacksonville Symphony, the Bach in a general sense, and that designation suits She was elected to the American Academy of Arts of a poem by John Ashbery called “No Longer Very Festival Society of Winter Park, Songfest 2004, and Winter Aubade as well. Like those pieces this & Sciences in 2005, and appointed the prestigious Clear.” Holding a Daisy (1996) was commissioned saxophonist Branford Marsalis. They have been work tells a story, of a “fantastic” sort, in the Cheung Kong Scholar Visiting Professorate at the by the pianist Sarah Rothenberg for a New York recorded for release on the Albany, ACA Digital, context of a variety of widely contrasted emotional Beijing Central Conservatory of Music in 2006. For City recital. The image is of a Georgia O’Keefe PARMA, and MARK labels. His awards include a states; however, unlike them, which all rely on more information, visit www.presser.com. flower painting, not as innocent as it appears. Or fellowship from the State of Florida’s Division of several well-delineated themes that interact over Ba Ban is drawn from the popular Chinese Like a ... an Engine (1994) is dedicated to Ursula Cultural Affairs (2007), first prize in Fresh Ink the course of the pieces, this work achieves its traditional instrumental piece, “Ba Ban,” which Oppens who premiered it at Alice Tully Hall, New 2004, the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra’s com- dramatic arc through the musical examination is based on the form, rhythmic organization, York City, in celebration of the 50th anniversary missioning competition for Florida Composers, of a single complex of ideas stated in turn at the and pitch material of the original folk tune. of radio station WNYC-FM, which commissioned ASCAP Special Awards annually since 1996, an very outset. These appear in a wide variety of jux- Impressions of Chinese mountain song singing the work. It is a motoric piece, somewhat like ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers tapositions and transformations that fashion the and Chinese instrumental playing influence the a virtuosic Chopin etude. Vast Antique Cubes/ Grant for his first opera, The Reunion, and first prize drama, or “plot,” of the piece. “Aubade” means sounds that are heard in its textures. Most Chinese Throbbing Still (2000) was commissioned by in the National Opera Association Chamber Opera “morning music” or in this case, perhaps more folk solo pieces have a single theme set in section- al developments in different speeds and perform- music and new music needs old music.” For self-propelled, on the spot…as if we listen- 1988 Pulitzer Prize for his 12 New Etudes for Piano, ing techniques, adding decorations on important Thomas, this means cherishing her place within ers, the audience, are overhearing a CAPTURED and his setting of William Blake’s Songs of melodic notes. This inspired me to construct Ba the musical tradition and giving credit to those IMPROVISATION…so that the “inner-life” of the Innocence and Songs of Experience (Naxos) won Ban in four variation-like sections, opening with who have forged the musical paths she follows different rhythmic syntaxes is specific, with char- four GRAMMY® Awards in 2005. As pianist, Bolcom the initial theme and culminating in a dramatic and from which she innovates. Thomas was the acterized phrasing of the colors and harmonies, has performed and recorded his own work frequently cadenza-like texture leading to a strong octave Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago etc.- keeping it ultra alive -such that it always in collaboration with his wife and musical partner, passage, followed by the climax—a sonic burst in Symphony Orchestra from May 1997 through June sounds spontaneous. For their sublime precision mezzo-soprano Joan Morris. For more information, the extreme low register. Besides the pentatonic 2006, a residency that encompassed nine world and technical mastery, I deeply thank pianists visit http://wbolcom.accelhost.com. “Ba Ban” pitch material, I have also applied a premieres, culminating in the premiere of Astral who play my notations in this way. My works are Dedicated to the late Paul Jacobs, Bolcom’s 12-tone row and an ascending 5-note motive, Canticle — one of two finalists for the 2007 organic and, at every level, concerned with trans- 12 New Etudes for Piano have been described which are woven together horizontally and verti- Pulitzer Prize in Music. For more information, visit formations and connections. as ‘etudes in synthesis as well as pianism,’ cally in primary or transposed forms, sometimes www.augustareadthomas.com. —Augusta Read Thomas possessing ‘an extraordinary assortment of simultaneously. The original folk tune consists TRACES (2006) was commissioned by the imagery,’ in which his ‘delight in juxtaposing of eight phrases, each phrase containing eight Montalvo Festival for Lang Lang. Dedicated to National Medal of Arts, Pulitzer Prize, and Grammy stylistic opposites tempts him to tickle one idiom beats, except the fifth phrase has an additional pianist Amy Briggs, its World Premiere took place Award-winner William Bolcom (b. 1938) is an in the ribs with another’ (Austin Clarkson, notes to four beats, signifying the Golden Section. The coda on January 26, 2009, in Baltimore, on the Evolution American composer of chamber, operatic, vocal, Marc-André Hamelin’s 1987 premiere recording, carries all the motivic and rhythmic materials, Contemporary Music Series, Amy Briggs, pianist. choral, cabaret, ragtime, and symphonic music. New World Records). Vers le silence (Towards covering the whole keyboard and flying away into It is preferred but not required that a pianist Born in Seattle, Washington, he began composition silence) and Hymne à l’amour (Hymn of love) the distance. The “Ba Ban” rhythmic grouping, would play all five TRACES at once. The idea was studies at the age of 11 with George Frederick have French titles as do all of the even-numbered 3+2+3, 3+2+3, 4+4, 3+2+3, 3+2+3+2+2, 4+4, to take the distant perfumes of other musical McKay and John Verall at the University of etudes in this collection. Of the final 3, Bolcom 5+3, 4+4, is presented in its entirety in the coda, idioms (and it should be noted that there are no Washington while continuing piano lessons with recalls: ‘I wrote them consecutively, in a blur of at the highest end of the keyboard. quotes of music by other composers in TRACES) Madame Berthe Poncy Jacobson. He later studied a few days after hearing Hamelin do the first —Chen Yi, adapted from and to imagine what it would be like to cross- with Darius Milhaud at Mills College during his MA 9 that summer…I believe I related how Vers le The Carnegie Hall Millennium Piano Book, fertilize them. What would J.S. Bach crossed with degree, with Leland Smith at Stanford University silence traces the steps after death the soul takes Boosey & Hawkes, 1999 BeBop sound like? How would Scarlatti’s Baroque during his DMA, and with Olivier Messiaen and according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Ornamentation crossed with Art Tatum sound? Milhaud at the Paris Conservatoire, where he how Hymne à l’amour is really a funerary hymn Augusta Read Thomas’ deeply personal music is Although my music is highly notated, precise, received the 2éme Prix de Composition. He joined in memory of Paul Jacobs. This seems to be one guided by her particular sense of musical form, carefully structured, thoughtfully proportioned, the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1973, of my works that is “all on the page.”’ Bolcom’s rhythm, timbre, and harmony. But given this and so forth...and although the pianist is play- was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished original printing, published by Edward B. Marks individuality, her music is affected by history ing from the very specific text, I like my music University Professor of Composition in 1994, and Music Company, was used for this recording. — in Thomas’ words, “Old music deserves new to have the feeling that it is organically being retired in 2008 after 35 years. Bolcom won the