UMG - Choeur des Moniales Ben dictines de l'Abbaye de Notre-Dame d'Argentan - Chants from Services: - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Sugarland Run is a fantastic album containing outstanding performances by the talented musicians of the United States Navy Band's Country Current ensemble. Country Current, the premier country-bluegrass group of the United States Navy Band in Washington, D.C., showcases a five-member acoustic ensemble performing traditional, contemporary, and original bluegrass compositions. The extraordinary talents of the musicians are evident throughout this album and continue to set the standard for the group even today.

John W. Duarte was born in Sheffield, England on 2 October 1919. His father was a Scottish soldier, who died in 1919, and he was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents. He started playing the ukulele, but soon moved to the guitar at the age of 15. The advent of guitar phenomenon John Williams, whom Duarte taught for 18 months before the young musician's entry into the Royal College of Music, London, gave the composer an opportunity to expand his chamber music oeuvre. An article by Williams's father, Len, in The Classic Guitar Journal (January-April 1956) informed readers that 'Duarte is already at work' on what became the Concertante Quartet Op.22, a substantial work in four movements. The 1st movement, in a Neo-Baroque style, is in Sonata form with a substantial guitar cadenza. The sharp-eared listener may hear a reference to the folk song 'Barbara Allen'. The 2nd movement is a lovely lilting siciliana, and the opening theme is first a guitar solo, then for violin with a guitar descant in the style of Renaissance divisions. The 3rd movement, also arranged as a guitar duet for the Presti/Lagoya duo in 1964 under the title Badinerie, also suggests baroque origins. In 2021 the composer's son, Christopher Duarte, discovered some folk songs arranged for guitar and small orchestra among his father's manuscripts. There is no mention of these arrangements in his list of works and no correspondence relating to their creation, but from the composer's handwriting these probably date from the mid-late 1950s and may have been written for John Williams to play with fellow RCM students. Next Market Day, scored for piccolo, snare drum and strings, is an energetic rendering of an Irish love song which Duarte revisited several times. The Coolin of Rùm (or, The Rùm Cuillin), scored for flute, oboe and strings, is a tune from the Isle of Rùm, one of the small islands near the Is

This album features great piano works by Prokofiev and Sibelius. Pianist Tatiana Shustova was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and studied there at the Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory. Moving to the U.S., she earned a Doctor of Music Arts degree at the University of Illinois. She is currently on the faculty of the Millikin University School of Music