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satirical and sometimes raucous manner. It is in this Brainstorm, come together and share a common thread. combining of diverse, even opposing harmonic As a set, the work was premiered at the 2005 Van AMERICAN CLASSICS materials that the two pieces, Scarlatti Cadences and Cliburn Competition. Sebastian Currier SEBASTIAN CURRIER Laura Melton

Laura Melton, Associate Professor of Piano and Coordinator of Piano Music Keyboard Studies at Bowling Green State University (Ohio), has won competitions and awards including the Mendelssohn Competition in Piano Sonata • Departures and Arrivals Berlin and a Fulbright Grant for study in Germany at the Freiburg Musikhochschule. She has performed with major orchestras including Photo: Brad Phalin the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Scarlatti Cadences • Brainstorm Washington, DC and has been featured on Südwestfunk Radio (Germany), Kol Israel, Radio Nacional de España and National Public Radio’s Performance Today in celebration of the birthday of Laura Melton composers John Corigliano and Samuel Adler. As a chamber musician, she has recorded Samuel Adler’s works for Naxos (8.559602) and Sebastian Currier’s violin and piano works with violinist Yehonatan Berick for Albany Records. Her principal teachers included Nelita True, John Perry and Robert Levin. A graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy, Laura Melton is currently a summer faculty member at the Interlochen Arts Camp. Prior to her Bowling Green State University appointment, she was on the faculty of the Idyllwild Arts Academy in California.

Laura Melton would like to thank Karl Larson and I-Chen Yeh for their assistance in the recording process, and her husband, Tim Durham, for his endless love and support.

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Sebastian Currier (b. 1959) Sebastian Piano Music CURRIER Sebastian Currier is the 2007 recipient of the prestigious Departures and Arrivals (2007) Grawemeyer Award. His music has been performed at (b. 1959) major venues worldwide by acclaimed artists and There is a feeling I have when writing music that orchestras. His violin concerto, Time Machines, is whenever I make a choice about something, even if Piano Music scheduled to have its première with the New York relatively small, that had I chosen differently, I would Philharmonic and soloist Anne-Sophie Mutter in the 2010- have sent the piece off in another direction: the piece I 11 season. Recordings include a CD of string quartets by finally write is the path I cut through this virtual forest Piano Sonata (1988) 24:43 the Cassatt Quartet, a CD of mixed chamber music by of alternatives. Departures and Arrivals mirrors this Music From Copland House, and a DVD of his multimedia process. Each of the six movements is an alternative 1 I. Bold and Defiant 4:08 work, Nightmaze for Bridge Records. He has received path that starts with the same material. In this way, one 2 II. Fragile (with outbursts) 5:40 many prestigious awards, including the Berlin Prize, Rome could think of Departures and Arrivals not so much as 3 Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the six independent movements, but as six alternate III. Anxious 2:29 National Endowment for the Arts, and an Academy Award versions of the same piece. In the first three pieces (a 4 IV. Suppressed 3:22 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. tune, a shift, a dialogue) this is quite literal: all start the 5 V. Multifarious 9:04 Residencies include the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies. same way (or nearly the same), but then branch off in His works are published by Boosey & Hawkes. different directions. In the following three pieces (a transformation, a reconfiguration, a glimpse) this Departures and Arrivals (2007) 20:34 Piano Sonata (1988) process is somewhat abstracted: in these instances the beginning material is either transformed or repositioned 6 I. a tune 3:10 Written while Currier was a doctoral student at The – but again, this is like the actual process of composing 7 II. a shift 3:47 Juilliard School, the Piano Sonata is in five movements: where the first idea one thinks of is not necessarily the 8 Bold and Defiant, Fragile (with outbursts), Anxious, first idea one ultimately hears. III. a dialogue 3:11 Suppressed, and Multifarious. In this highly dramatic 9 IV. a transformation 4:12 piece Currier pays tribute to Beethoven in several ways, Scarlatti Cadences (1996) and Brainstorm (1994) 0 V. a reconfiguration 1:46 not the least of which is the motivic development (each movement is based on the same three-note motive). Although brought together as a set of complimentary ! VI. a glimpse 4:26 Structurally the sonata is very clear, with the opening short piano pieces, Scarlatti Cadences and Brainstorm movement in sonata-allegro form, the third movement each has an independent genesis. Scarlatti Cadences @ resembling a scherzo-trio movement, and slower, more was written for pianist Emma Tahmizian. The outer Scarlatti Cadences (1996) 5:23 distant interludes in the second and fourth movements. sections take “Scarlatti-like” cadential formulas and The finale is, by far, the largest in scope and intensity, a expand upon them, creating delicate, sonorous and # Brainstorm (1994) 4:31 theme and variations replete with two fugues. There are ephemeral textures, while the middle section emulates other influences evident, that of Bach and Hindemith, in the percussive drive of many a Scarlatti sonata. the contrapuntal writing and the harmonic passages of Brainstorm, written for pianist John Kamitsuka, was stacked fourths. Currier has written a work filled with written while I was in residence at the American Laura Melton, Piano emotionally charged music, allowing the pianist free Academy in Rome and dedicated to the then United rein to play with passion and intensity. States ambassador to Italy, Ambassador Bartholomew. The piece constantly interweaves tonally ambiguous Laura Melton chromaticism with simple diatonic progressions in a

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