Search - David Liptak, Scott Wheeler; Bradley Lubman, Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble; Eastman Philharmonia :: Music of David Liptak

This CD presents premiere recordings of four works by the gifted American composer, David Liptak. Liptak's music builds large detailed structures from small and simple means. Frequently, a simple rhythmic gesture will generate an entire movement or a melodic figure will often transform itself, becoming a flower from a seed. Broken Cries was composed for the Tarab Cello Ensemble, which performs it here. The composer writes that "I imagined a kind of of music that was filled with hesitation. Pauses and silences break the flow of sounds, as a voiced cry is sometimes broken by a breath, or perhaps, a sudden thought." Liptak's stunning Ancient Songs takes most of its texts from ancient oral traditions of various cultures- the Passamaquoddy Indian tribe from Maine, the Papago Indian tribe from the southwest, the African Gabon pygmy culture, and a Scottish nursery rhyme. At the end of the cycle, a poem by the American poet James Wright provides a remarkable apotheosis.! The songs are sung with intensity by the work's dedicatee, the wonderful American baritone, William Sharp. The composition of Liptak's hauntingly beautiful Serenade was begun at the composer's summer home in Denmark, and Liptak writes that it "represents the warmth and ease of a Danish summer evening." The five extremely varied movements of this serenade run from simple and meditative to dance-like and highly energetic. The closing work is certainly this disc's simplest and most direct- a short Forlane for solo guitar. Guitarist David Starobin is the performer of this hypnotic little gem. Music of Tom Flaherty Tom Flaherty (b. 1950) Vorarlberg Resonance (1991) for two pianos, Karl and Margaret Kohn, pianos; Timeflies (1996) for guitar and cello, Peter Yates, guitar, Tom Flaherty, cello; Trio for Cello and Digital Processor (1991), Tom Flaherty, cello; Semi-Suite (1990) for solo cello, Tom Flaherty, cello; Quartet for Viola, Cello and Digital Processor (1991), Cynthia Fogg, viola, Tom Flaherty, cello; Time to Travel (1996) for two pianos, Karl and Margaret Kohn, pianos.