American Journeys

Editorial Reviews
About the Artist
During nearly twenty years as a full-time concert pianist, Frederick Moyer has established a vital musical career that has taken him to thirty-six countries and to such far-flung venues as Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Sydney Opera House, Windsor Castle, Carnegie Recital Hall, Tanglewood, and the Kennedy Center. He has appeared as piano soloist with world renowned orchestras including the Cleveland, Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras, the St. Louis, Dallas, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Houston, Boston, Singapore, Netherlands Radio, Latvian, Iceland and London Symphony Orchestras, the Buffalo, Hong Kong and Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestras, the National Symphony Orchestra of Brazil, and the major orchestras of Australia. His recordings on the Biddulph, GM, Jupiter and JRI labels comprise works of over thirty composers and reflect his affinity for a wide variety of styles.

Christine Michelle Smith is currently Principal Flute of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, on the faculty of Western Michigan University, and a former faculty member of the Interlochen Arts Camp and the University of Oklahoma. She has performed with the National Symphony of Bogota (Colombia), the Oklahoma City Symphony, the Oklahoma City Chamber Orchestra, the Nebraska Sinfonia, and the Greater Lansing Symphony. A frequent recitalist and chamber musician, she was a member of the Oklahoma Wind Quintet when it made its New York Carnegie Hall debut in 1985. She has appeared abroad at the Shanghai, Beijing, Amsterdam, Kiev, and Leningrad Conservatories. In 1988 she was featured in a live interview and concert on National Public Radio's Performance Today from Washington, D.C. Her solo performances of the David Ott Alto Flute Concerto have included the premiere with members of the New Orleans Symphony at the National Flute Association Convention in 1989, and in 1997 with member! s of the Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera Orchestras as part of the 25th Anniversary celebration of the National Flute Association.

Album Description
As befits a young country, Americans have traditionally been on the move - traveling to the frontier (and the future), to be sure, but also making occasional visits back to the places we came from. American composers share such expeditions. David Ott and John Adams were born in the same year (1947), Ott in the midwest (Michigan), Adams in the east (Massachusetts). Both have enjoyed professional training at distinguished academic institutions and have reached their flourishing middle years with a substantial list of compositions to their credit. And both have found ways of "traveling" that is reflected in the works contained in this recording.

Some journeys are physical, others are spiritual or psychological or historical. Of the four works recorded here, John Adams's two arrangements for chamber orchestra (made for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, with which he was associated for a number of years) represent a kind of cultural time-travel, dipping back into history and into the tradition that has nourished European and American music in the form of two specific compositions by masters of a time gone by, in order to rethink them for a modern concert. David Ott's travels, on the other hand, are less literal in this instance; he has immersed himself in the broad traditions of the concerto and created new works that, in one case, evokes a misty, impressionistic, even quasi-Asian mood in music that is yet undeniabely American, while in the other he pays homage to the great virtuoso keyboard concertos of the Romantic era. Some of these journeys seek out the roots of modern music in daring inventions of the past, and so! metimes they offer a whole world-view different from the one we know. And in the end - when the traveler returns home - they provide the spiritual and psychological wherewithal to enrich the new creative adventures on which the composer embarks. - from notes by Steven Ledbetter

Tracks:

Forgotten EMpires
Sacref Flutes
Chichen Itza
Mayan Lullabye
Volcanos
Children of the Sun
Morning Star
Lost Tribes
, Danzantes
Journeys to Yucatan
Xochipilli
Native Lands

Product Description

Flutes, often playing in unison, take listeners on a unique journey tracing the migration of Native people from the American Great Plains to the Andean Mountains. Flutes are framed by a variety of instruments including percussion, guitar and keyboards.

Customer Reviews:

Uplifting and inspiring music.......2003-06-26

I LOVE this music! I play it while I'm writing and I find it relaxes me as well as inspires me to create. I have sent several copies to friends as gifts and they all write back saying how much they love it too. Highly recommended!

Splendid!.......2000-09-18

I bought this album 5 years ago in Toronto, and since then it has been with me anywhere I have gone. The Gomez-Blanchett-Rife trio`s work never ceases to amuse me with its genuine purity, power and originality. I now own all of their CDs, and I wouldn`t hesitate a bit to recommend each and everyone of them to anybody who likes native music. GOOD WORK!!

EXCELLENT!.......1999-06-09

I love this CD even more than the first one of theirs I bought, 'Flute Dreams' Both are beautifully done.

Journeys: Orchestral Works by American Women

Average customer rating:

Journeys: Orchestral Works by American Women
Carolann Martin , Katherine Hoover , Peter Kane , Bournemouth Sinfonietta , and Arioso Chamber Orchestra
Manufacturer: Leonarda Productions
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

Classical | Indie Music | Stores | Music
ASIN: B000004AER
Release Date: 1997-11-25

Tracks:

Journeys for orchestra (Van de Vate)
Rainforest for chamber orchestra (Gardner)
Overture-Parachute Dancing for orchestra (Larsen)
Lament for string orchestra (Richter)
Summer Night for string orchestra, solo flute and horn (Hoover)
Elegy from "Concertino" (Mamlok)
Perihelion II for strings (Brockman)

Album Description

This recording is made possible with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Additional support provided by Mobil Foundation, Inc. and the University of Connecticut. © Leonarda Productions, Inc., 1987. Cover Photo © Adele Einhorn, 1998. DDD.

Carolann Martin joined the faculty of Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa to develop the opera program there and was assistant conductor at the Eastern Music Festival for two summers. She has made guest conducting appearances in the Eastern, Midwestern and Southwestern United States.

The Bournemouth Sinfonietta is one of the finest chamber orchestras in Great Britain. Arioso is based in Hartford, Connecticut.

Nancy Van de Vate (b.1930) has received performances in major cities throughout the world and her music is widely recorded.

Much of Kay Gardner's (1941-2002) music was designed for meditation, relaxation, and healing. Her music has been included in films and videos produced in England, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA.

Libby Larsen (b.1950) was Composer-in-Residence with the Minnesota Orchestra from 1983-1987. Her music has been performed by most of the leading orchestras in the USA.

Marga Richter's (b.1926) music has been performed by 50 orchestras including the Czech Radio Symphony, London Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, and the Seattle, Milwaukee and Atlanta Symphonies.

Ursula Mamlok's (b.1928) works are performed at festivals such as Tanglewood and by prominent ensembles such as the Group for Contemporary Music, ISCM, the Da Capo Chamber Players, New Music Consort and Parnassus.

Katherine Hoover's (b. 1937) works have been performed by more than fifteen orchestras, and her concertos have featured Sharon Robinson and Eddie Daniels.

Tracks:

Life Is For Living
Grendl's Tune
Children's Song
Children's Dance
Rainy Nights In Taos
The Rez Bunnies
Seven Improvisations: No.1 in g
Seven Improvisations: No.2 in g
Seven Improvisations: No.3 in E
Seven Improvisations: No.4 in A
Seven Improvisations: No.5 in A
Seven Improvisations: No.6 in g
Seven Improvisations: No.7 in A

Product Description

Tracks:

"The Black Gondola" (by Franz Liszt, arranged by John Adams)
"Berceuse giaque" (by Ferruccio Busoni, arranged by John Adams)
Concerto for Alto Flute and Strings (by David Ott)
Piano Concerto No. 2 (by David Ott)

Album Description

As befits a young country, Americans have traditionally been on the move - traveling to the frontier (and the future), to be sure, but also making occasional visits back to the places we came from. American composers share such expeditions. David Ott and John Adams were born in the same year (1947), Ott in the midwest (Michigan), Adams in the east (Massachusetts). Both have enjoyed professional training at distinguished academic institutions and have reached their flourishing middle years with a substantial list of compositions to their credit. And both have found ways of "traveling" that is reflected in the works contained in this recording.

Customer Reviews:

Liszt's Gondola isn't the only thing that is lugubrious here.......2003-06-16

I have the utmost respect for the opinions of my fellow reviewer, Bob Zeidler, whose review appears on this page. But this time I have to differ with him. I found this release to be dispiriting, possibly because I had such high expectations for it. I also have great respect for John Adams and consider him one of our great orchestrators (anyone who has heard his 'Harmonielehre' would have to agree, I think). And I've liked the music of David Ott that I've heard. The recording of his second and third symphonies played by the Grand Rapids Symphony led by Catherine Comet is very attractive. But this disc left me in a sour mood. Let me explain:

We are close to thirty minutes into the disc before there is a tempo that is much above quarter note = mm. 60; that's a lot of slow music! To be successful, music that slow needs to have melodic and harmonic interest along with inevitability in its forward motion. This CD begins with two very slow, mournful pieces which are chamber orchestrations by John Adams of Liszt's late piece, La lugubre gondola (in Liszt's second version) and Ferruccio Busoni's Berceuse élégiaque. Neither is particularly appealing; the Liszt is the typical hermetic late Liszt; the Busoni is one of the first pieces he wrote after he decided to change from his earlier Schumannesque style and the language simply hadn't settled yet. Further, each piece has been set better for chamber orchestra by Erwin Stein, a pupil of Schoenberg's. The conductor, Gisèle Ben-Dor, a talented Argentine conductor, lets this already slow music go slack.

David Ott (b. 1947) is also a master orchestrator and, at least in the two symphonies, a very good composer. But in these two pieces there is a good deal of noodling - all the proper romantic gestures are there, and god knows the soloists are superb - with not a lot to show for it. The Alto Flute concerto never catches fire. It, too, like the preceding pieces, is predominantly in a lugubrious tempo, with the exception of a couple of periods of outrage in the flute (think, though, of the Nielsen Concerto, and you'll come away thinking this is a pale imitation of that). Christine Michelle Smith is an expert alto flutist and does a very good job here.

The Piano Concerto No. 2 has a couple of fast sections but it, too, tends to be slow in tempo and undistinguished in its musical materials, until the last movement which finally blossoms into a rollicking, slam-bang finish. Interestingly, in both concerti some of the greatest orchestral interest comes in the rare allegro sections with skittering contributions from the xylophone. Frederick Moyer, the pianist here and the concerto's dedicatee, is a superb soloist who certainly gives this performance his all; I doubt the concerto could be performed better. But I also suspect it will not be taken up by very many other pianists and orchestras.

The title of this issue, 'American Journeys,' is cryptic and doesn't really tell us much. I suppose if the label 'American Elegies' hadn't already been used (ironically for a much superior disc conducted by John Adams on Nonesuch) it would have been a more fitting description.

Review by Scott Morrison

The Adams is great, and Ott is a terrific find........2003-05-02

This is an unusual and really intriguing release. Considering that the works here were recorded seven years ago, and the CD released some five years ago, I am hard-pressed to explain why I've been unsuccessful in finding any previous mention of it, either in print or on the web.

John Adams, for those having a predisposed "take" on him, is more than "mere minimalist." Although he tends to get lumped in with Philip Glass and Steve Reich as one of "the big three of the Second-Wave American Minimalist Movement," he has moved well past this limitation in works too numerous to mention. But he is also an orchestrator of no mean ability, having orchestrated, in addition to the two works in this album, a number of songs by Charles Ives. (Five of these orchestrated Ives songs can be found on an equally remarkable album titled "John Adams: American Elegies," available elsewhere at Amazon.com; highly recommended.)

There is certainly nothing "minimalist" about Adams's orchestrations of the Liszt and Busoni pieces (the Liszt a late piano work, the Busoni a work for full, rather than chamber, orchestra). Both are of late Romantic "Gothic" style, rather reminiscent, in mood, of Rachmaninoff's "Isle of the Dead" symphonic poem, particularly the Liszt, with its musical depiction of waves lapping against the gondola. Despite the chamber orchestra settings, both pieces are satisfactorily rich-sounding, and elegiac, rather than purely gloomy, in mood. Exquisitely performed here by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gisèle Ben-Dor, these must be a good match to Adams's own performances, available on a different CD (along with his "El Dorado"), which I have yet to hear.

Anyone wondering "What ever happened to those great, brilliant Romantic-era piano concertos?" (last seen, in mild disguise, in the piano concertos of Serge Prokofiev, and a few to follow later, such as Samuel Barber's) need look no further than the Piano Concerto No. 2 by David Ott. This work has to be one of my "finds of the year" in that I've somehow managed to totally miss Ott's works (and the fact, as noted at the top, that there seems to be little if any publicity regarding this album certainly doesn't help). Born in the same year (1947) as Adams (apparently the single common factor between the two composers), Ott - based on the two works on this CD - works in a very tonal post-modernist neo-Romantic idiom.

Written in 1994, for a commission by Frederick Moyer, the soloist in this performance, the work is a big, brilliantly splashy concerto "in the old style" suggestive of some of the great showpieces of Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and others without being purely derivative. I've got more of this post-modern neo-Romantic music in my library than I care to admit, because so much of it is forgettable. But not this Ott work. Sure, it's a throwback in some respects. But it is written with craft, and sounds so well, and shows off the soloist so well, that I've got it figured as eventually being a repertoire piece; I just can't see how it could lose. Unlike other, lesser works in this post-modernist neo-Romantic style that languish in my library because they wore out their welcome on the very first listen, this work is eminently relistenable; a real gem, and, I'm sure, a real crowd-pleaser in the concert hall. Moyer plays this piece for all it's worth (which is quite a bit); his technique is nothing short of prodigious.

Ott's other concerto, for alto flute and strings, is equally attractive. The smaller-scale scoring means that the soloist, with a mellower instrument not having the penetrating power of the conventional soprano flute, doesn't have to "do battle" with orchestral forces that could easily swamp the instrument. But, mellower or softer or not, the alto flute has every bit of the agility that the standard instrument does, and Ott's writing brings this agility - as well as other tricks well-known to flautists - to the forefront. As in the piano concerto, the soloist - Christine Michelle Smith - is closely tied to the work, being its dedicatee.

Gisèle Ben-Dor, an excellent conductor from Argentina by way of Israel and presently the music director of the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra, has already begun to make a name for herself in the Latin American repertoire of the 20th century (Ginastera, Revueltas, Villa-Lobos). Here, leading the London Symphony Orchestra in these American works, she is superb, turning in thoroughly idiomatic - and brilliant - performances. And the recorded sound is nothing short of splendid.

The album title is almost too cryptic - and hardly original enough - for the treasures it contains. This is particularly the case for the two David Ott concerted works, which deserve "repertoire" status; the Adams transcriptions are, as I previously noted, available elsewhere, conducted by Adams himself.

Bob Zeidler

Average customer rating:

Butterfly Road

Manufacturer: Foster Kings
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Southern Rock | Classic Rock | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CA9P72
Release Date: 2001-07-10

Average customer rating:

Unexpected Journeys
Jeff Jenkins
Manufacturer: American Gramaphone
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | New Age | Styles | Music

Meditation | New Age | Styles | Music

General | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000008H0X
Release Date: 1989-12-29

Tracks:

Out of Towner
Hanging Lake
Port-Au-Prince
Jessie
Two Souls
Night

Average customer rating:

Impeccable tone, terrific musicianship, eclectic selections

Pan American Journeys
The Modern Mandolin Quartet
Manufacturer: Windham Hill Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | New Age | Styles | Music

Meditation | New Age | Styles | Music
Similar Items:

Intermezzo
New Words (Novas Palavras)

ASIN: B000000NK1
Release Date: 1993-10-12

Tracks:

Redona
Elements IV: Water
Berceuse
Ojos Brujos
Four, For Tango
Assanhado
Piano Preludes I
Piano Preludes II
Piano Preludes III
Danca, Bachianas Brasilieras #5
The Louie Louie Variations

Customer Reviews:

Impeccable tone, terrific musicianship, eclectic selections.......2003-02-16

In a departure from the acoustic New Age of much of the rest of the Windham Hill catalog, and in a further departure of the mandolin from its bluegrass association, the MMQ interprets modern classical pieces of the Americas. With arrangements ranging from the sweet (Brouwer's "Berceuse"), to the opaque (Piazzolla's "Four for Tango"), to garage mandolin (The Louie Louie Variations), don't dismiss this disc as dinner music. You may find yourself coming back to it when you won't be distracted.

Average customer rating:

Latin American Journeys
Globe Trekker
Manufacturer: Pilot Productions - Globe Trek
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | International | Styles | Music

General | New Age | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000N0QY2K
Release Date: 2005-09-13

Tracks:

Pork Salsa (Mako Sakamoto and Jesper Mattsson)
Andale (Jon Wygens)
The Boys From Brazil (Colin Winston Fletcher)
Andean River Run (Michael Conn and Chris Hill)
Sundowner (Michael Conn and Chris Hill)
Call and Response (Colin Winston Fletcher)
Toro Salvaje (Jon Wygens)
Toolay (Colin Winston Fletcher)
Peru Girl (Martyn Swain)
Take The Slow Train (Ian Ritchie)
Amazon (Amanda Kramer)
Rodeo Costa Rica (Mark Tayler)
Rio Das Gatas (Caned and Able)
Spanish (Daniel Pemberton)
Moving On (Colin Winston Fletcher)
Cuban Rodeo (Mark Tayler and Stig Manley)
Ranchero (Colin Winston Fletcher)
Caribbean Sea Sol (Mako Sakamoto and Jesper Mattsson)
Adios Amigo (Colin Winston Fletcher. )

Product Description

Includes music from the popular PBS series Globe Trekker. Music is taken from the episodes Central America, South East Brazil, Peru, Southern Mexico, Ecuador, Rio de Janeiro, Baja California and Cuba. You can listen to these tracks and more information about them can be found on the Globe Trekker website.