Augusta Read Thomas - Magic Box - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Volume 8 in this series documenting Augusta Read Thomas' music, three major scores dominate, with 4 shorter works filling out this 80-minute sonic portrait of an inexhaustibly inventive and individual composer. The brass quintet Avian Capriccio is typically free-wheeling in it's evocation of 3 contrasting types of birds, hummingbirds, swans and canaries. Scored for wordless soprano and string quartet, Plea for Peace acts as a single, seamless block beginning in near-immobility, with the voice animating the instruments as the music embarks on it's slow, implacable progress. Even in a catalogue as multifarious as Thomas', the carillon piece Ripple Effects stands out as a one-off. Commissioned by Rockefeller Chapel, Chicago and devised in a number of versions, sculpted for carillons of three sizes, requiring varying numbers of players. The ballet score The Auditions was written for the Martha Graham Dance Company, and with it, Thomas joins a distinguished company of composers who wrote scores for this seminal figure in modern dance. It is structured in 7 sections, with the auditions of the title being the even-numbered, action-packed sections, and the odd-numbered ones acting as slower, more otherworldly frames. That Two Thoughts About The Piano's title should be identical to a work by Elliott Carter is no accident, as Thomas' work is a response to the older composer's piece without actually quoting or even emulating Carter's music. We've already encountered Selene in a previous volume of this ongoing survey of Thomas' music, but it appears here in a wholly new dress. The original was for string and percussion quartets, but here the strings are replaced by a woodwind nonet in an arrangement by Cliff Colnot, thus preserving the original's harmonic richness. Bringing this collection to a close, Your Kiss sets a love poem by e.e. cummings for soprano and piano.

Album Tracks 1. Augusta Read Thomas, Aureole for Orchestra - Depaul University Symphony 2. Augusta Read Thomas, Words of the Sea for Orchestra 3. Augusta Read Thomas, in My Sky at Twilight 4. Augusta Read Thomas, Carillon Sky 5. Augusta Read Thomas, Terpsichore's Dream 6. Augusta Read Thomas, Silver Chants the Litanies - Various Performers

For some twenty-five years I've had the inestimable privilege of collaborating with Augusta Read Thomas, and so it is with some authority that I claim she is a singular refutation of Newtonian physics she creates energy. In countless workshops, recording sessions, performances, and masterclasses I've watched her elicit previously undiscovered timbral nuance, dynamic possibility, and personal virtuosity from players and composers alike. Hers is a creative energy so irrepressible that somewhere amidst the cascade of commissions, awards, and international flights to attend performances of her work she, to mention just two examples, launched Chicago's largest-scale new music festival (Ear Taxi) as well as one of the country's most prolific incubators of new work, The Grossman Ensemble. I'm happy to report that the performances captured within this tracklist provide significant evidence in substantiating this bold claim. To my ears, Sol offers Gusty's compositional luminosity as a collection of rituals for introspection, spiritual stimulus, and, at the very least, a reminder that light can prevail in darkness. Particularly enticing is that when imbibed as a whole, this record shepherds us through an extraordinary ceremony that, as with each of the five rites comprising it, tenders the possibility for subtle yet substantive restoration and, ultimately, transformation. © Doyle Armbrust Album Tracks 1. Solstice Ritual, Homage to Varèse and Ravel for 14 Virtuosi-I. Reaching Skyward 2. Solstice Ritual, Homage to Varèse and Ravel for 14 Virtuosi-II. Two Drumming Rituals 3. Solstice Ritual, Homage to Varèse and Ravel for 14 Virtuosi-III. Bell Prayers 4. Magical Flights of the Adarna Bird-I. Invocation - Majestic, Blazing, Illuminated 5. Magical Flights of the Adarna Bird-II. Spiritus - Lyrical, Rhapsodic, Animated and Sparkling 6. Magical Flights of the Adarna Bi