BARN DANCES | The scoTT/GArrisoN Duo | shANNoN scoTT, cLAriNeT LeoNArD GArrisoN, fLuTe WORKS BY WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM TROY1234 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. LIBBY LARSEN | JEAN CARTAN | JOHN ADDISON | DAN WELCHER 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 ALBANY RECORDS U.K. ROGER NIXON | ROBERT WYKES | JÜRG WYTTENBACH BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD TEL: 01539 824008 ROBERT RUSSELL BENNETT | ROBERT DICKOW © 2010 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. The Music Dan Welcher (b.1948) holds the Lee Hage Jamail Regents Professorship in Composition at the School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, teaching composition and serving as Director of the New Music Ensemble. Regarding Reversible Jackets, Welcher writes, libby larsen (b. 1950) is one of America’s most performed living composers. Major artists, ensembles, and orchestras worldwide have commissioned her to write works that now have a Reversible Jackets was written in 1987 as a wedding present for flutist Leone Buyse and permanent place in the concert repertory. In 1973, she co-founded (with Stephen Paulus) the clarinetist Michael Webster, longtime friends from undergraduate days at Eastman. The Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers Forum, an invaluable advocate title (and the subtitle, “exercises in conjugal counterpoint”) refer to the fact that the musical for composers in a difficult, transitional time for the arts. Consistently sought-after as a leader lines are constantly being exchanged, inverted, expanded and contracted by both players. in the generation of millennial thinkers, Libby Larsen’s music and ideas have refreshed the Like a jacket that can be worn inside-out, this music is all about equality: marital and musical. concert music tradition and the composer’s role in it. About Barn Dances, she writes, There is a single melody, heard at the outset, which is employed throughout the three short Barn Dances is a set of four abstract pieces for flute, clarinet, and piano. Each piece draws movements. The middle movement is an extended duo-cadenza between the opening square- its title from the name of a particular dance step used in cowboy dances. Taking the name metered canonic movement and the finale, a romp in compound meter that uses virtually all of the step as a point of departure, my idea was to take a flight of fancy in each movement of J.S. Bach’s contrapuntal devices. The piece has two endings: the players choose which one and to create the musical equivalent of a character drawing. to play, either the “formal” ending, or the one originally written for the marriage celebration, which incorporates a tiny fragment of Wagner’s Wedding March from Lohengrin. Forward Six and Fall Back Eight uses fiddle fifths, of the tuning gesture of country fiddling, to propel the idea of six notes rising followed by eight notes descending. The movement (1921-2009) studied at the University of California at Berkeley, earning the has a hoe-down jig. The second movement, Divide the Ring, is an homage to Gene Autry, roger nixon Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and PhD degrees. His teachers included Roger Sessions, one of the great Cowboy singers, and one of my childhood heroes. In the movement, Arthur Bliss, Ernest Bloch, Charles Cushing, and Frederick Jacobi. He is primarily known I composed a phrase of cowboy swing, which is first heard as the introduction to the move- as a composer of wind band music. The Two Duos for Piccolo and E-flat Clarinet (1982) employs ment and returns throughout the piece. Varsouvianna is a slow, simple, and dreamlike waltz. the two highest wind instruments and reveal both their stentorian and playful capabilities. Percussive, unpredictable in its accents, and virtuosic in its ensemble, Rattlesnake Twist can be thought of as a Jazz-driven equivalent of a tarantella. robert Wykes (b. 1926) had a long association with Washington University in St. Louis, where he also performed as flutist with the St. Louis Symphony. Regarding Three Facets of Jean cartan (1906-1932) represents one of the lost opportunities of music history. He studied Wykes writes, at the Paris Conservatory under Widor and Dukas. During his six-year compositional career Friendship he produced works of extraordinary promise, but his life was cut short by illness. The Sonatine As a young flutist I had the good fortune of living nearby a clarinetist of my same age. In our displays his use of polymeter, modal harmonies, and bitonality. state of musical innocence we stumbled on our own into a set of arrangements of what was then called semi-popular music, such gems as Moonlight and Roses. We often performed on local John aDDison (1920-1998) wrote Five Dialogues at the request of June Emerson, who concerts in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. I still recall the thrill of discovering the beautiful sounds commissioned works for flute and clarinet duos. The work is light-hearted and tuneful. of flute and clarinet in ensemble. No doubt some of the sounds in Three Facets of Friendship Addison is best known for his Oscar–Award-winning score for the movie Tom Jones. are nostalgic recollections of that youthful experience, and in the fast-paced conclusion there may be a touch of a youngster’s carefree enthusiasm. On its publication in 1992 this The perforMers work received the Newly Published Music Award given by the National Flute Association. The scott/garrison Duo, featuring clarinetist Shannon Scott and flutist (b. 1935) studied in Bern and Paris and lives in Basle, where he teaches Jürg Wyttenbach Leonard Garrison, has performed together since 1988, with a long commitment contemporary music and piano at the Music Academy. He calls the Serenade for Flute and Clarinet to contemporary American music. They have been featured at five conventions “four short, light ‘n’ airy pieces for two players with a sense of fun and virtuosity.” He explains of the National Flute Association, once as winner of the NFA’s Chamber Music his appreciation for theatrical gestures as “an attempt at showing existential problems.” Competition, have been awarded grants from the Brannen-Cooper Fund and the Oklahoma State Arts Council, and are members of the Flute-Clarinet Consortium, which (1894-1981) is best known for his triumphs as the arranger for robert russell bennett commissions new compositions from major composers for flute and clarinet. Broadway musicals Oklahoma! (1943), South Pacific (1949), The Sound of Music (1959) and the television epic Victory at Sea (1952). He befriended many flutists, including Georges Barrère, shannon scott is the instructor of Clarinet and History of Music and clarinetist for Solstice William Kincaid and John Wummer. He wrote Rondo Capriccioso for four flutes for the New Woodwind Quintet at Washington State University School of Music. In summers she teaches and York Flute Club, which published the work in 1922. The Suite for Flute and Clarinet was com- performs as principal clarinetist of the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina. She played in the posed around 1953 for Frances Blaisdell and her husband Alexander Williams, both active Marlboro Music Festival, where she participated in Music from Marlboro tours and recorded for in the New York music scene. The suite is a picturesque mix of Americana (Horse Race) and the Marlboro Recording Society. Dr. Scott holds degrees from Juilliard, École Normale de Musique Bennett’s customarily humorous take on standards (Strauss Waltz, Low-Down Hoe-Down). de Paris, Conservatoire Regional Marcel Dupré, Yale University and Northwestern University. robert DickoW (b. 1949) has received several prizes and commissions and is on the faculty leonarD garrison is Assistant Professor of Flute and Aural Skills at the University of Idaho, of the Lionel Hampton School of Music, University of Idaho. According to the composer, flutist in the Northwest Wind Quintet, and Principal Flute of the Walla Walla Symphony. In summers he teaches and performs at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan and the Red Lodge Four Little Duos for Flute and Clarinet is a concert duet set in a traditional four-movement Music Festival in Montana. Leonard has been flutist in the Chicago Symphony and the Tulsa design with a classical sense of structural clarity and formal balance. The lyrical first Philharmonic and soloist on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today” and has served as movement is followed by a fast canonic palindrome. The third movement blends Chair of The National Flute Association. He holds degrees from Northwestern University, arabesque-like flourishes and atmospheric figuration, followed by an energetic dance-like The State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. finale. The piece freely mixes more or less tonal, freely atonal, and even serial devices, and there are passages reminiscent of the music of Stravinsky, Bartok, and other twentieth- Jay Mauchley, a brilliant soloist and chamber musician, is Professor Emeritus of century composers. Piano at the University of Idaho. He has performed on National Public Radio’s —Shannon Scott & Leonard Garrison “Performance Today,” at national, district and state MTNA conventions, and at American Liszt Society Festivals, often as a duo-pianist with his wife, Sandy. Each summer he coaches and performs at the Red Lodge Music Festival and at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. A recipient of the Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University, Jay is on the international roster of Steinway Artists. creDits publishers Recorded by Aaron Mayhugh. John Addison, Five Dialogues (1992), Emerson Editions Edted by Aaron Mayhugh, Leonard Windmill Farm, Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, England. Garrision, Shannon Scott and Jay Mauchley. Mastered by Ken Robert Russell Bennett, Suite (1958), WB Music Corp. Gilstrap. Cover photo by Leonard (out of print).