Patrice Michaels - Divas of Mozart's Day - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Composer Eric Moe draws from a wide well of influences, integrating various elements from across the aesthetic spectrum into music that is rhythmically propulsive and preserves an emphasis on melodic development and harmonic context. The works on his latest collection, InchUncanny Affable Machines,Inch are all engaged, in one form or another, with the paradigm of human/machine interaction. Firmly within a polemical tradition related to electro-acoustic composition, Moe engages with the complex dynamics suggested by a performance involving a live human and a prerecorded track. Many of the sounds on the playback are InchorganicInch themselves, however, involving manipulated recordings of human performers, or recorded sounds from the environment. And of course, in order to coordinate with the playback, a live performer needs to discipline themselves to execute the passagework precisely with the tape each time, making themselves more machine-like. This is just one of the ways that the medium invites us into a fascinating dialogue blurring the lines between the technological and the human, and Moe is acutely aware of this in his approach.

This features live recordings from the historic 1983 tour of Russia, Latvia, and Romania signaled Rova's talent for musical diplomacy, a boon to whomever they have partnered with. Rova Saxophone Quartet is a San Francisco-based saxophone quartet formed in October 1977. The name InchRovaInch is an acronym formed from the last initials of the founding members Jon Raskin, Larry Ochs, Andrew Voigt, and Bruce Ackley. When Voigt left in 1988, he was replaced by Steve Adams, but the group did not change the acronym. The quartet's music was inspired by a broad spectrum of influences, such as John Cage, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Charles Ives, Edgard Varése, and Olivier Messiaen. It's debut album, Cinema Rovaté, was released by Metalanguage Records in 1978. Metalanguage was founded in 1978 by Henry Kaiser and Ochs. It showcased Rova as well as many independent artists and produced the Rova Arts Festival in 1980. Rova's tour of the Soviet Union in 1983 was filmed and shown on PBS. In 1985, it became a non-profit organization.

Conductor Mei-Ann Chen and the Chicago Sinfonietta - the adventurous, MacArthur Award-winning orchestra that champions racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in classical music - give world-premiere recordings of newly commissioned American works by Jennifer Higdon, Clarice Assad, Jessie Montgomery, and Reena Esmail on Project W Works by Diverse Women Composers, the capstone project of it's 30th anniversary season. Higdon, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and two Grammy Awards, invites listeners to luxuriate in the beauty of a virtuosic string orchestra with Dance Card, a five-moment suite that San Francisco Classical Voice praised for it's Inchpleasurable soundsInch and Inchintellectual heft.Inch Assad is a Grammy-nominated, Brazilian-American composer and performer. Her Sin Fronteras (Without Borders) lives up to it's title with an exotic blend of musical influences from throughout the Americas. Juilliard-trained African-American composer Montgomery, a violinist member of the acclaimed Catalyst Quartet and a collaborator with Yo-Yo Ma's Silkroad Ensemble, imbues her Coincident Dances with the frenetic energy and multicultural sound worlds of her native New York City. Esmail, an Indian-American graduate of Juilliard and the Yale School of Music, draws from Western and Hindustani (north Indian) classical music for #metoo, a composition rooted in her own personal experiences. Founded by pioneering African-American conductor Paul Freeman (1936-2015), the Chicago Sinfonietta also presents the first-ever recording William Grant Still's orchestral arrangement of Florence Price's buoyant, lyrical Dances in the Canebrakes.