D a v i D W o l f s o N J e nn y l i N l a u r a B o N t r a g e r piano cello a c k N o W l e D g m e N t s Recorded on August 16 & 17, 2012 at Patrych Studios, Joe Patrych, engineer/owner. Mixed and Mastered September–November, 2012 at PPI Studios, Chip Fabrizi, engineer/owner. All music ASCAP, Wiwo Music, publisher. Photo of Laura Bontrager by Matt Dine. Photo of David Wolfson by Liyako Kishi. Photo of Jenny Lin by Liz Linder Photography. Cover Photo by Heather Ringler. SEVENTEEN W I N D O W S for Solo Piano SONATA www.albanyrecords.com for Cello & Piano TROY1407 albany records u.s. 915 broadway, albany, ny 12207 tel: 518.436.8814 fax: 518.436.0643 albany records u.k. box 137, kendal, cumbria la8 0xd tel: 01539 824008 © 2013 albany records made in the usa ddd waRning: cOpyrighT subsisTs in all Recordings issued undeR This label. t h e c o m p o s e r Mr. Wolfson embraces collaboration with writers, choreographers and directors in music theatre, music David Wolfson has lived in New York City since 1986. In addition to composing, he has worked as a theatre, opera and dance. In the 1990s, Mr. Wolfson was resident composer and music director of EM/R music director, conductor, arranger, pianist, keyboard programmer or copyist for dozens of theatrical Dance Co., a choreographer’s collective, and co-artistic director (with choreographer Lynn Wichern) of productions in venues ranging from Broadway theatres to elementary school cafetoriums. Wichern/Wolfson dance & music, a company dedicated to performances involving both dance and live music, culminating in Wichern/Wolfson dance & music’s production of Breath: The Passionate Life and Mr. Wolfson studied composition with Eugene O’Brien, Marshall Griffith Extraordinary Language of Emily Dickinson, an evening-length music-theatre work at St. Mark’s Church and John Rinehart at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Shafer in New York City in 1996. From 2005-2009, he was the Associate Artistic Director and Music Director Mahoney, Richard Burke and Robinson McClellan at Hunter College. of Experience Vocal Dance Company (EVDC). Mr. Wolfson’s collaborations with EVDC Artistic Director He enjoys a particularly eclectic and varied compositional career, Experience Bryon were performed in venues in Hannover, Germany, London and New York. which has included chamber music, musical theatre, opera and various other areas. Multimedia collaborations include an upcoming film by Chidi Ozieh and Grethe Holby, based on his short opera Maya’s Ark, and sound design for a set of Macy’s display windows by designer Paul Zacharek. His chamber and solo works have been performed throughout the United States and Europe. Some of the more notable include: Margaret In addition, Mr. Wolfson is the composer of Story Salad, a series of stage revues for children, which Leng Tan’s premiere of Twinkle, Dammit! An Obsessive Variation was toured nationally for thirteen consecutive years by Maximillion Productions and seen by well over on a Well-Known Children’s Song for toy piano and toys at the 1st a million children, teachers and parents. He has composed incidental music for several plays, and his International Toy Piano Festival; The Gotham Ensemble’s premiere of songs for Riverside Amusement Park’s big-headed-costumed-character show Country Critter Jamboree Recurve on the Cornelia Street Café’s “Classical at Cornelia” series; were played 510 times over the course of one summer there. His theatrical song cycle Dreamhouse, tenor Gregory Weist’s premiere of Six Love Songs for tenor and piano in Cologne, Germany; and perfor- based on the poetry of Barbara DeCesare, premiered in 2005 in New York City as part of the Sixth mances of Feet First for solo violin in both New York City and Bucharest, Romania. He was also the first Annual Midtown International Theatre Festival. “Song For An Accident” from Dreamhouse was recorded composer to give a concert of his music (with soprano Tamra Hayden) by Tamra Hayden on her CD A Day At The Fair. in the Broadway Live area of the virtual world of Second Life. Mr. Wolfson’s work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer, The Puffin Foundation, and the Manhattan Cultural Arts Fund. His music has been called “brilliant” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer; the New York Times referred to it as “musically inventive” and “theatrically forceful.” Please visit www.davidwolfsonmusic.net for more information and music. t h e m u s i c No wonder they didn’t want to let us write them, though—we might have found out how much fun they Many years ago I decided to make a Contribution to the Piano Literature, and wrote a large, sprawling, are. Sonata for Cello and Piano follows the four-movement classical model pretty closely, with brisk outer ambitious, fiendishly difficult and obnoxiously self-important piece, which I then gave the unfortunate title movements, a slow second movement and a scherzo in the third slot. For those technically inclined, the The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Math. One of the pianists I showed it to returned it with no comment whole piece is constructed around a tension between B natural and its neighbor tone C. B serves as tonic other than to wonder plaintively: “Why do composers always make their music so hard? Why doesn’t a in the first movement, as a third in the second, as a fifth in the third, and as a tonic again in the final composer ever hand me a piece with the simplicity and power of a Bach prelude?” movement. Enjoy the music! —David Wolfson The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Math never got performed, which is probably just as well. But that comment burrowed into my subconscious and made itself at home, popping its head out every few years to see if conditions were favorable. In 2008 I finally decided to take the challenge, and wrote a short piece that I called Simple Prelude. I showed it to the pianist whose remark had sparked the idea all those years t h e p e r f o r m e r s ago; she gravely thanked me for letting her see it. I showed it to a few other pianists, who seemed to enjoy Jenny Lin is one of the most respected young pianists today, admired for her adventurous programming it. And then I showed it to Jenny Lin, who cheerfully said, “Write sixteen more!” and charismatic stage presence. She has been acclaimed for her “remarkable technical command” and “a gift for melodic flow” by The New York Times. The Washington Post praises “Lin’s confident fingers... That was the origin of Seventeen Windows for solo piano. It took me the better part of two years to “write spectacular technique...” and Gramophone Magazine has hailed her as “an exceptionally sensitive pianist.” sixteen more;” it was harder than it looked! (Please picture balled-up wads of staff paper ankle-deep on the floor near my piano.) The seventeen short pieces range in length from one minute to nearly four; they Jenny’s recent orchestral engagements have included Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy can be excerpted, mixed and matched to create shorter sets if so desired. Simple Prelude, the piece that with Collegiate Chorale and American Symphony, Valentin Silvestrov’s Metamusik started it all, is Window I. with Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Garden of Spain with La Orquesta Sinfónica de Gijón; Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 with When I was an undergraduate studying composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music, my fellow students SWR Rundfunkorchester; world premiere of Stefano Gervasoni’s Piano Concerto with and I were strongly discouraged from writing pieces using classical forms or key signatures in favor of more Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI, and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with National Symphony modernist approaches. Twenty-five years later, I said to myself, “I’m a grown-up man now, and if I want to Orchestra of Taiwan. try and write a sonata, no one’s going to stop me!” And no one did. Her concerts have taken her to Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Kennedy Center, Miller Theatre, MoMA, Born in Taiwan and raised in Austria, Jenny studied with Noel Flores at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, Whitney Museum, San Francisco Performances, Freer Gallery of Art, Wordless Music Series, (Le) Poisson with Julian Martin at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and with Dominique Weber in Geneva. She Rouge, National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery, Spivey Hall, and throughout Europe and the Far East; as has also worked with Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, and Blanca Uribe, and with Dimitri Bashkirov and well as Festivals worldwide at Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart, BAM’s Next Wave, MATA, Spoleto and Portland Andreas Staier at the Fondazione Internazionale per il pianoforte in Como, Italy. She holds a bachelor’s International Piano Festivals in the USA, Chopin Festival in Austria, Flanders and Ars Musica Festivals in degree in German Literature from The Johns Hopkins University and serves on the faculty of the 92nd Street Y. Belgium, Shanghai New Music Festival in China, Divonne Festival in France, Potsdam and Husum Piano Rarities Festivals in Germany, Millennium Festival in Spain, Festival Archipel in Switzerland, and Winnipeg Laura Bontrager came to New York City in 1986 to attend the Juilliard School, where she received her New Music in Canada. bachelor’s and master’s degrees.