SKU: CL.RWS-1833-01

American Dances is a three movement suite originally composed for the Boston Pops Brass. Each movement features an American popular music genre. Swing was composed based upon the American jazz and big band tradition that was popular in the 1930s and 1940s. This will have your audience tapping their toes and clapping their hands as your band sizzles throughout.

SKU: BU.EBR-521

ISBN 9790560153902. 8.58 x 12.48 inches.

Les `Kopf Kino Kantaten` (cantates de cinéma dans la tête) sont constituées de 24 pièces pour piano d'une durée d'une minute à une minute trente. Dans la tradition de la musique de salon, ces pièces naviguent entre classique et jazz.

Elles marient le connu à l'inconnu, jouent avec toute l’étendue et la sonorité du piano. Avec des rythmes très variés, des sons et des mélodies plein de coloris, les `Kopf Kino Kantaten` sont censées emmener en voyage celles et ceux qui les écoutent. Elles leur feront vivre des scènes imaginaires, tout en musique, qui expriment des moments de solitude, d'attente, de repos et de pauses.

Les `Kopf Kino Kantaten` doivent leur origine à un travail intense de l'artiste sur l'histoire du piano. Connotations, allusions ou ressemblances avec d'autres musiques pianistiques ne sont ni vraiment recherchées, ni explicitement évitées par le compositeur. Les `Kopf Kino Kantaten` sont là pour ressusciter l'histoire du piano.

Cette édition comprend une sélection de 7 œuvres.

Les `Kopf Kino Kantation` ont été enregistrés sur Compact Disc et Vinyle chez Metaracords (meta059 & meta 060). Le coffret Compact Disc est double, puisqu’il propose 2 versions des enregistrements : la première est une exécution des œuvres sur un piano à queue de concert, la seconde, vsur un vieux piano droit. Le Vinyle comporte juste cette deuxième version.

A chaque coffret est jointe une photo de Nicolas Vermont Petit-Outhenin, censée déclencher des associations, susciter un cinéma immaginaire. Un travail ‘artistes-vidéo’ effectué sur certaines pièces sont proposées à cette adresse : www.kopfkinokantaten.com.

SKU: BR.CHB-5380-00

ISBN 9790004413814. 7.5 x 10.5 inches. German / Latin.

As director of the Bavarian Radio Choir, Howard Arman has been actively engaged with international Christmas carols through various Christmas-related CD productions in the past years. This has resulted in a number of original arrangements for four- to eight-part mixed choir a cappella, shedding new light on well-known classics such as O du frohliche [O, you joyful], Stille Nacht [Silent Night] and Lasst uns froh und munter sein [Let us be happy and cheerful]. The first volume includes five Christmas carols from the German-speaking regions. They range from simple but harmonically intriguing settings such as Lieb Nachtigall, wach auf [Dear nightingale, wake up] to eight-part sound paintings with bell-like chimes as in O du frohliche and classical double choir settings such as Resonet in laudibus. The second volume includes five Christmas spirituals with English texts, forming a contrast to the solemn and festive character of the first. The choir can prove its swing and jazz qualities here; the stirring arrangements are a gain for classical Christmas concerts, too. Following the tradition of the spiritual, some settings also require soloists, which can, however, also be recruited from the choir if adequate singers are available. The first piece combines the spirituals It's a Birthday and Wasn't That a Mighty Day to form a medley, Ain't That a Rockin' gives a moment of tranquility before the likewise rousing spirituals Mary Had a Baby and Little David conclude the volume. In both volumes, Howard Arman provides a short preface in German and English, explaining the background of each piece and giving advice on performance.

SKU: PR.114414250

UPC: 680160607846.

Lowell Liebermann's 4th String Quartet was commissioned by the Canandaigua Lake Chamber Music Festival and the Wood Library, Canandaigua, NY, for the Orion Quartet in celebration of their 20th Anniversary. The quartet was premiered by the Orions at the Canandaigua Lake Chamber Music Festival in Rochester, NY on February 9th, 2008. To quote the writer Mark Greenberg: It's a remarkable piece. The mood is elegiacal and meditative, the melodic lines sinuous and searching, the harmonies rich and astonishingly beautiful. Liebermann works within the traditions of Western tonality, but that is a mansion with many rooms. Liebermann inhabits all of them as his expressive purposes require, and he doesn't mind knocking down a wall to create new harmonic spaces. The Fourth Quartet doesn't exactly fit the neoromantic niche into which Liebermann is sometimes placed. Much of the music, especially near the beginning, is a highly advanced and fluid chromatic expressionism with modernist tendencies. Sometimes this roiling cloudscape breaks open to allow a patch of near-classical harmony and almost-resolution. Near the midpoint the clouds lift in leaping modulations. Several chordal passages recall Russian Orthodox chant. Suddenly, when you've begun to think the somber, deliberate pace has gone on a bit too long, Liebermann introduces a kind of hobbled, stilted jazz idiom. The piece dies in pensive quiet.