Catalog

Owing to the collaboration and performance of hundreds of students, faculty, and staff collaborators, the Penn’s Woods Festival Orchestra, the University of Maryland Wind Orchestra, and the Penn State University Wind Ensemble perform alongside Lee Hinkle to acclaim the percussion concerti of three modern American composers. Hinkle meets the evolving modal complexity of Maurice Wright’s Concertpiece for Marimba and Orchestra with the same central drumset vivacity that breathes life into Evan Ziporyn’s Impulse Control, while still saving space for the solemn anthem layered in the rich solo instrumentation of Steven Stucky’s Concerto for Percussion and Wind Orchestra. Whether on marimba, drumset, or any percussive tool between, Hinkle shines solo in the seven-year cumulation of a monumental musical undertaking, coming together as MODERN AMERICAN PERCUSSION CONCERTI.

On TRIUMVIRATE, composer Walter Ross' second release on Ravello Records, the concerto is showcased as a genre, illustrating that tension and opposition can create balance and richness. Throughout the three concerti, themes, timbres, rhythms, and tempos juxtapose each other, building webs of contrasting musical elements and textures. In Ross' Clarinet Concerto, the two outer movements, "Fantasia" and "Capriccio," move with the energy of dance rhythms while the middle movement, "Romanza," drifts with dreaminess and impressionistic lyricism.

Written in the summer of 2011 for David J. Martins and the Boston University Wind Ensemble, Boston-based composer Ketty Nez's thresholds is a piano concerto inspired by music of different eras, including the canonic manipulations of Renaissance vocal music, piquant harmonies of Elizabethan virginal composers, Stravinskian reinterpretations of Baroque idioms, and occasionally, a huge barrel organ. As a kind of musical actor, the piano soloist theatrically leads the ensemble in abrupt changes of style and character so as to create a fractured world with sonic allusions changing rapidly and repeatedly.

CONCERTO FOR PIANO WITH PERCUSSION ORCHESTRA is the fifth Ravello release from the acclaimed McCormick Percussion Group. Living up to their reputation as vanguards of percussion repertoire, the Group uses this album to explore the possibilities of collaboration between piano and percussion wherein neither steals the spotlight. Along with Ji Hyun Kim ("a masterful pianist" - Piano Magazine), the McCormick Percussion Group performs the works of Igor Santos, Mel Mobley, David Gillingham, and David Noon with precision, emotion, and purpose.

THROUGH THE REEDS is a collection of woodwind concerti from American composer Walter Ross. Ross, a lifelong musician and composer, has historically worked most closely with instruments in the woodwind family; the four concerti on this album, all of which feature a woodwind solo, highlight his preference for the family and his keen ability to compose works for oboe, bassoon, and flute.

LYRIC IMAGES is a collection of guitar pieces written by composer Alan Schmitz over a period of 25 years (1977 to 2002). The works (presented here in reverse chronological order) display a variety of styles and include tonal variations, atonal-intervallic writing, and 12-tone techniques. The use of such different approaches, sometimes in the same piece, is indicative of what has developed in the works of many artists (musical, visual, poetic, dance) during the second half of the 20th century.

CULTURE SAMPLES was originally released in 2008 and features the McCormick Percussion Group with flutists Kim McCormick and Margaret Lancaster performing works by Chihchun Chi-sun Lee, Andre Jolivet, Zack Browning, David Rogers, Daniel Adams, and Michael Sidney Timpson.

CON MOTO, VOLUME 2 is a the second release in the Ravello Records Con Moto series of digital releases featuring unreleased works for orchestra and ensemble. Included on this volume are the modern orchestral and ensemble compositions of Stephen Kemp, Stephen Rush, Larry Barnes, Raymond E. Fahrner,, HyeKyung Lee, Paula Diehl, and Paula Diehl. All of the pieces on this release are completely original, contemporary compositions for orchestra, ensemble, and solo instruments.

EXCURSIONS is a two-disc set featuring the works of Utah composer Marie Nelson Bennett. Bennett paints beautiful portraits with her music, musically illustrating the scenery of a field of flowers, the movements of the ocean, the sorrow of a funeral, and more. Featured performers on EXCURSIONS include Richard Stoltzman, Holly Gornick, and Solveig Lunde Madsen.