Adriano del Sal - Laureate Guitar Series: Adriano Del Sal Recital - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

At the age of 16, Alysson Light, born and raised in Chapel Hill, is prodigious singer/songwriter. She started piano at age 9, cello at 12, and guitar only recently. She's been singing since she was 9 months old! Her first musical mentor (beginning at age 5) was her grandmother, a piano teacher and former singer with the famous choral director, Robert Shaw. Alysson wrote her first piano piece at age 10 and, last year, started writing several songs a month. She now has two CDs produced in her home studio. The first CD, 'Softly Fading Into Silence', is a cover album featuring the works of Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Natalie Merchant and Paula Cole. The second CD, titled 'Water' featured here, is entirely original works written, sung and played by Alysson herself. Many of the songs on 'Water' were inspired by Alysson's year spent in Utah in 1999-2000, where the dry climate of the high desert left her dreaming of the ocean ('Underwater') and showery days ('Rain') of her North Carolina home. Her most popular songs include 'Liquid Eyes' and 'Minna', both with a mysterious, poetic imagery that is supported by an unusual musical backdrop. Alysson's vocal style is amazingly mature, and the songs move the listener with her emotions and dynamics. 'Liquid Eyes' was number 1 for many weeks in North Carolina on MP3, and was #13 in the World on MP3 in the very competitive Acoustic Rock Genre!

Marko Topchii, winner of the 2017 Michele Pittaluga Guitar Competition, has selected a rich and varied repertoire ranging from neo-Romanticism to serialism, each work offering a unique vision of the instrument's technical and expressive capabilities. Antonio Jose's Sonata is remarkably inventive, bringing a new language to ancient dance forms, while Frank Martin's Quatre Pieces breves, written in the same year, offers the flourish and vigor of contemporary harmonic vocabulary. Ronald Dyens' Libra Sonatine is one of the most virtuosic and brilliant of late 20th-century guitar works. Ukranian-born guitarist Marko Topchii, has been the winner of more than 40 international guitar competitions. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Salle Cortot, Yamaha Ginza Hall, and at the Tchaikovsky Hall. He often performs with orchestras, having performed more than ten concertos for guitar and orchestra. He is sponsored by the D'Addario Strings Company and records with a guitar made by Jim Redgate.

With a catalogue of more than 200 works with opus numbers, and many others without, few composers have written such a wide variety of immediately appealing music, as rewarding for performers and listeners alike, as Castelnuovo-Tedesco.