David J. Martins

David J. Martins is Professor of Music at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Adjunct Professor of Music at Boston University. Combining an active teaching and conducting schedule, Martins directs both the Boston University Wind Ensemble and the University of Massachusetts Lowell Wind Ensemble. During the past several years, he has been in demand as a guest conductor and has conducted festival ensembles throughout the Eastern United States. As clarinetist of both orchestral and chamber music, he performs with the Boston Classical Orchestra, and as substitute, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Orchestra, Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and the Boston Ballet Orchestra. He can be heard on orchestral and chamber recordings on the CRI, Koch, Titanic, Gasparo, and Albany labels.

Albums

Thresholds

Release Date: July 30, 2013
Catalog Number: RR7876
21st Century
Concertos
Piano
Wind Ensemble
Written in the summer of 2011 for David J. Martins and the Boston University Wind Ensemble, Boston-based composer Ketty Nez's thresholds is a piano concerto inspired by music of different eras, including the canonic manipulations of Renaissance vocal music, piquant harmonies of Elizabethan virginal composers, Stravinskian reinterpretations of Baroque idioms, and occasionally, a huge barrel organ. As a kind of musical actor, the piano soloist theatrically leads the ensemble in abrupt changes of style and character so as to create a fractured world with sonic allusions changing rapidly and repeatedly.