Books, CDs & DVDs

Item Description

Includes 2 CDs: Michael Gandolfi's "Y2K Compliant" and Derek Bermel's "Voices".

BMOP/Sound Recordings - widely recognized as the premier record label launched by an orchestra and devoted to new music recordings.  Its composer-centric releases have garnered praise from the national and international press a like, and have appeared on the year-end "Best of" lists of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Downbeat and American Record Guide.

Michael Gandolfi's music has some of the rigor of the mid-20th-century atonalists, but it also draws on the richness of melody and timbre prized by the neo-Romantics. You would not put his work firmly in either category, and that's probably for the best, since much of its appeal is in the ease with which it moves between those poles. One moment you're taken with its braininess, its structural logic and textural intricacy; the next you're struck by the flow of fresh ideas, vivid orchestration and rhythmic vitality, all of which give it a visceral punch. The three scores included here - all played with warmth and precision, and beautifully recorded on the Boston Modern Orchestra Project's own label - offer a good overview of Mr. Gandolfi's sensibility. "Points of Departure" (1988), an essay on the beauty of angularity, transforms themes couched in the clichés of academic serialism - jumpy, zigzagging lines - into likable characters within a bracing and sometimes dark-hued musical drama. Mr. Gandolfi has a great ear for effect: the glissandos and arching violin lines in the third movement of "Point of Departure" are hard to resist, and they turn up again at the start of "Themes From a Midsummer Night" (2001), a light-spirited 10-movement suite drawn from an incidental score Mr. Gandolfi wrote for a production of Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream." A few movements are from earlier scores - he was on a tight deadline but they work: the comic tone painting of "Bottom Brays," from "Pinocchio's Adventures in Funland" (1999), suits Shakespeare's story just as well. "Y2K Compliant" (2000), the ephemeral title referring to fears that digital gadgets might stop working at the turn of the century, uses a bustling Neo-Classicism (tinged, as always, with sharp-edged modernism) to offer a tongue-in-cheek view of our mechanistic age. - Allan Kozinn Selected for The New York Times 2008 Holiday Gift Guide --The New York Times

Voices is a compilation of three orchestral works and one solo piece by Derek Bermel. Seductively called his spectral potion, Elixir reflects Bermel's influences as varied as John Lennon, Charles Ives, and the Isley Brothers. Thracian Echoes embraces the soulful harmonies of traditional Bulgarian melodies whereas Dust Dances is a translation of an African gyil music session into orchestral idioms. In Voices, Bermel himself performs the brilliantly written concerto for clarinet with impressive virtuosity. Thanks to the infectious charisma of Gil Rose and his musicians, this recording brings to life the eclecticism and verve that defines the music of Derek Bermel.

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