Catalog

THE MUSIC OF GUI SOOK LEE is the latest release from Ravello veterans the McCormick Percussion Group, featuring the works of South Korean composer Gui Sook Lee. The McCormick Percussion Group, directed by Robert McCormick, has recorded and released over two dozen CDs since its formation.

DREAMS is the latest release from New York-based composer Craig Madden Morris. This album features a variety of Morris’ compositional styles, including the passionate Violin Concerto, the Caribbean-flavored Tropical Dances, the intimate Piano Trio, the elegiac Cello Rhapsody and the loving, gentle Dream Songs. Known for his intelligently complex and unique-yet-accessible compositions, Morris complements his works with his knowledge of the instruments for which he composes.

Throughout his musical career and childhood, American composer Scott Brickman has gathered influences ranging from the European-American classical tradition of the 2nd Viennese School to Elvis Costello and The Beatles. On WINTER & CONSTRUCTION, his debut release on Ravello Records, Brickman maintains these disparate influences and brings them together into well-crafted whole to create sharp, pointed, and modernistic 12-tone pieces for guitar, piano, and violin.

MUSIC FOR SOLO PIANO AND VIOLIN AND PIANO was originally released in 2006 and was lauded as “an attractive release” (American Record Guide) and as having “distinctive harmonic and melodic language” (JIAWM). Featuring the complimentary performances of pianists Robert Conway, Lenore Hall, and Tomoko Deguchi and violinist William Bouton, MUSIC FOR SOLO PIANO AND VIOLIN AND PIANO highlights Laurel Firant as an expert of small ensemble and instrumental composition.

RESONANT EDGES was originally released in 2007 and features performances by pianists Dianne Frazer Cross, Peter Henderson, Mark E. Hussung, and Denise Fillion, clarinetist Karen Dannessa, flutists Deanna R. Little and Lisa A. Jelle, soprano Dorothy Maddison, and the Seattle New Music Ensemble.

With THE PALEST ROSE, a collection of works for solo piano, chamber ensemble, chorus, and orchestra, Oregon-based composer Mark Vigil strives to appeal to the listener's heart, urging them to hear the music based on its beauty alone. This release serves as a retrospective of Vigil's varied works for a variety of configurations, and serves as an astute sampling of his compositional output as a whole.

Bruce Mahin’s TIME CHANTS was originally released in 1995, and was lauded as “a well-constructed essay” by Twentieth Century Music.

Phillip Schroeder's SONGS OF MY AFFINITIES was originally released in 2003, and was lauded as "gems of the American repertoire" (New Music Connoisseur) and "striking and beautiful" (Sequenza21).

FANTASIES FOR ADULTS AND OTHER CHILDREN was originally released in 1999 was lauded as "awesome" and "at times Cageian and Crumbian" (ClassicalNet).

NIGHT VOICED, the new release by San Francisco composer Mark Winges, is a collection of warm sounding and texturally rich works featuring the viola in a lush variety of solo, duo, and trio contexts. The title of the album is based on the individual composition of the same name, which is from a poem by Carolyn Forché, "a viola, night-voiced, calls into its past but nothing comes," and reflects the often nocturnal feeling of the program. Other titles such as wary-gliding, ghostly, "Melted Red, Frozen Black", and "Here (marginally buoyant)," offer a hint of the delightful vignettes and turns the music takes along the way.

Joyous and energetic, sad and lyrical, images of light and cascading colors-these varied striking moods can all be used to describe composer Kirk O'Riordan's six chamber works on his premiere Ravello Records release, STRANGE FLOWERS. The six pieces on the album tell a story together, captivating the audience with its accessible but nuanced sound.

Illustrating the impact of Appalachian folk music on his often unconventional yet appealingly direct style, APPALACHIAN INSPIRATION, composer John Beall's debut album on Ravello Records, features three piano and string pieces that display a strong, expressive grasp of folk tunes and traditional classical techniques.

The breadth of musical textures and colors capable of being produced by a piano and saxophone pairing is larger than expected. Turning expectations upside-down, METROPOLIS, the debut release on Ravello Records by the Harrington/Loewen Duo, comprised of saxophonist Allen Harrington and pianist Laura Loewen, highlights the adventurous and unpredictable approach to the two instruments.

Ravello Records is pleased to announce the first installment of its compilation series, VANGUARDS VOL. 1, presenting a deep cross-section of the label's contemporary and eclectic catalog. The album features performances by the London Symphony Orchestra, pianist Kate Boyd, the McCormick Percussion Group, the New Hudson Saxophone Quartet, pianist Amy Briggs, the Grammy-nominated Strung Out Trio, and many more in works by contemporary composers such as Alan Beeler, Stefan Poetzsch, Michael Veloso, Lisa Miles, Hubert Howe, Scott Brickman, Alan Schmitz, and others.

Composer Debra Kaye's debut Ravello Records release, AND SO IT BEGINS, catapults the listener into her deep universe of sound - an expedition down one New York City street and up another, through the warp and weft of interior landscapes, to Taos Mountain, on a journey through a dream, a dying, a love - as she blends her classical roots with traces of jazz, pop, world music, the pulse of city rhythms, and the expansiveness of spacious landscapes.

Ravello Records announces the second installment of its compilation series, VANGUARDS 2, presenting a deep cross-section of the label's contemporary and eclectic catalog. The album features performances by the London Symphony Orchestra, pianist Gregory Hall, the McCormick Percussion Group, mezzo-soprano Elaine Huckle, the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Musica Viva, guitarist Alex Lubet, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and many more in works by contemporary composers including Mary Ann Joyce-Walter, Herbert Deutsch, Walter Ross, Rachel Lee Guthrie, Mark Vigil, Kim Halliday, Andrew May, Mel Mobley, Marga Richter, and others.

This album features works by composer Michael Sidney Timpson that combine three different "spheres of influence:" European avant-garde, American jazz and pop, and various Asian musical traditions. These spheres "collide" with inventive friction, often fuse to "reinvent" convention, and merge to "fertilize" the mind with inspirational seeds for further hybrid creativity.

On his Ravello Records release BALANCING ACTS, composer and sound designer Russell Pinkston showcases a selection of his compositions for acoustic instruments and electronic sounds. Most of these pieces combine the two, capitalizing on the absolute precision and unlimited sonic potential of electronic media, while still taking advantage of the spontaneity and expressivity of live performance. Several works feature interactive software written by the composer, which tracks a live performer and generates an electronic accompaniment in real time.

Composer Joseph Koykkar, described by American Record Guide as writing “music with a crystalline kind of clarity and rhythmic urgency that places him among the more exciting of contemporary composers,” presents his debut full-length release on Ravello Records DOUBLE TAKES AND TRIPLE PLAYS. Featuring works spanning a 20-year period in the composer’s career, this album exemplifies Koykkar’s practical approach to writing, dictated by the bounds and the interplay within chamber ensemble combinations, occasionally using computer-generated sounds.

The trumpet is a robust instrument which has been widely employed in several genres of music, from the jazz and free form music of Miles Davis, to the world and electroacoustic music of Jon Hassell. Trumpeter James Zingara continues to expand the performance repertoire of the trumpet with TEXTURES, his debut release on Ravello Records. Hinged on the 21st-century art music style of composition, the works in this collection, all written after 2002, strengthen the trumpet’s diversity and adaptability in settings with computer-generated sounds, syncopated rhythms, blues forms, and atonal harmonic structures.