AMERICAN COMPOSERS AT PLAY:

William Bolcom, Ricky Ian Gordon, Lori Laitman, John Musto
w/ AttacCa Quartet | Charles Neidich | Jason VieAux

Autographed Copies Available
Release Date: SEPTEMBER 11, 2020

American Composers At Play is my modest effort to produce definitive interpretations. For decades, I’ve wanted to perform the work of living composers with the composers themselves playing their compositions. It’s a singer’s dream. Musicians typically interpret composers’ music based on what we’ve learned in conservatory about historic performance practice. We rarely ever meet the creators. But this venture would be different…

…now is a time of renewal — personal, artistic, perhaps even spiritual. Through the eloquence of their example, these four composers have taught me that one’s time of life does not dictate one’s capacity for creativity. At every age, we should remain stubbornly dissatisfied, always pushing the frontiers of what we — and the music itself — can contribute to the world. In sharing this lesson with me, these four giants have liberated my American voice.

-Stephen Powell

COMPOSERS

Ricky Ian Gordon (b. 1956 in Oceanside, NY) studied piano, composition and acting, at Carnegie Mellon University. After moving to New York City, he quickly emerged as a leading writer of vocal music that spans art song, opera, and musical theater. Mr. Gordon’s songs have been performed and or recorded by such internationally renowned singers as Renee Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Nathan Gunn, Judy Collins, Kelli O’Hara, Audra MacDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, Nicole Cabell, Frederica Von Stade, Andrea Marcovicci, Harolyn Blackwell, Betty Buckley, and the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, among many others.

Described by Fanfare Magazine as “one of the most talented and intriguing of living composers,” Lori Laitman has composed multiple operas and choral works, and hundreds of songs, setting texts by classical and contemporary poets, including those who perished in the Holocaust. Her music has generated substantial critical acclaim. The Journal of Singing wrote “It is difficult to think of anyone before the public today who equals her exceptional gifts for embracing a poetic text and giving it new and deeper life through music.” For more information, please visit artsongs.com.

Composer and pianist John Musto is that all too rare exemplar, the classical composer whose work is both critically acclaimed and widely performed, who has also distinguished himself as an instrumental soloist and chamber musician. His activities encompass virtually every genre: orchestral and operatic, solo, chamber and vocal music, concerti, and music for film and television. His music embraces many strains of contemporary American concert music, enriched by sophisticated inspirations from jazz, ragtime and the blues.

National Medal of Arts, Pulitzer Prize, and Grammy Award-winner William Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer of chamber, operatic, vocal, choral, cabaret, ragtime, and symphonic music.

He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan's School of Music in 1973, was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition in 1994, and retired in 2008 after 35 years. Bolcom won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano, and his setting of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience on the Naxos label won four Grammy Awards in 2005.

As a pianist Bolcom has performed and recorded his own work frequently in collaboration with his wife and musical partner, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris. Cabaret songs, show tunes, and American popular songs of the 20th century have been their primary specialties in both concerts and recordings. Their 25th album, "Autumn Leaves," was released in 2015.

In 2018, nine world premieres of Bolcom works commemorated William Bolcom's 80th birthday.