Catalog

MUSIC FOR THE END OF WINTER: NEW AMERICAN WORKS FOR SOLO PIANO features Kate Boyd performing contemporary works from Halle, Frazin, Felice, Schelle, and Koontz. The pieces range from improvisations to classical challenge studies to experimentations in aural resonance. Their variety showcases Boyd's versatility and adaptability at the piano.

Amy Briggs brings to life a variety of tangos from different composers on TANGOS FOR PIANO. Proposed by composers from UC Davis, the disc features works from Laurie San Martin, Yu-Hui Chang, Pablo Ortiz, Ross Bauer, Yvar Mikhasoff’s International Tango Collection, Astor Piazzolla, and many more. The different backgrounds and compositional variety of each composer highlight the breadth and possibilities of the tango, which Briggs captures impeccably on the solo piano.

PRELUDES & BAGATELLES is the latest release from renowned composer Michael Matthews, featuring his dramatic 14 Preludes, selections from his collection of Bagatelles, and the epilogistic Postlude. Expertly performed by acclaimed Belgian pianist Daan Vandewalle, the pieces on this disc encapsulate Matthews’ brilliance with solo piano composition and highlight his versatile craftsmanship, which he is able to alter to accommodate a wide variety of moods, emotions, and aspects of musicality.

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.

Phillip Schroeder's MUSIC FOR PIANO was originally released in 2004, and was lauded as "resonant music played with exceptional grace" (New Classics) and "viscerally relaxing" (NewMusicBox).

COMPOSITIONAL IMPROVISATIONS: FROM THE MYSTERIA, VOL. 1 is Gregory Hall's debut collection of improvisational classical music based on contemporary music theory, performed by the composer himself. Hall's improvisations feature sprawling-yet-contained passages that weave in and out of harmonic motives, drifting away from centralized themes and seamlessly returning to the source material. The tracks on COMPOSITIONAL IMPROVISATIONS draw from Hall's live concerts of compositional improvisation, which harken back to the days when improvisation was commonplace in classical performance.

Musical idioms have changed and adapted over the centuries. AN EVOLVING CYCLE, Gheorghe Costinescu's second Ravello release features four works for solo piano in which the composer explores the transition of these idioms from Baroque to 21st-century contemporary, charting the evolution of form and technique with a deft control of style. Stephen Gosling, a ubiquitous NYC pianist hailed as "brilliant" and "luminous and poised" (New York Times), performs the four works: Theme and Variations, an energetic, virtuosic, and challenging piece with a chorale-like theme; Sonata for the Piano, a combination of classical sonata and variational forms with elements, toward the end, of ragtime and jazz; Evolving Cycle of Two-Part Modal Inventions for Piano, a multi-part piece whose character, from simple to complex and from traditional to innovative, sets the tone for the entire album; and Essay in Sound, a reflection of Costinescu's own experience, thoughts, and feelings regarding the piano.

RUNES, the new album by composer Robert Dusek and pianist Bryan Pezzone, is a compilation of specially selected solo piano works, and provides the listener with an immersive and cohesive listening experience. Often sparse, sometimes impetuous – "The music is at once very stark, and then seems to propel itself to the next scene or chapter with some unseen, and unheard, energy", says PARMA Recordings Lead Producer, Andy Happel.

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.

On the Ravello Records release WISCONSIN SOUNDSCAPES, pianist Jeri-Mae G. Astolfi performs solo piano works by six Wisconsin composers that highlight people, places, scenes, and events chosen by each composer to create a well-rounded portrait of the state.

On their debut Ravello Records release, PLAYFUL EDGE OF THE WAVE, composers Robert J. Martin and Neely Bruce join a love of beauty with the willingness to engage in spirited, magical, even outrageously unexpected sounds and gestures. These composers, with pianist Shirley Blankenship, present a collection of image-based works whose titles and descriptions open a direction to understanding the music.

On his debt release on Ravello Records, JUST MUSIC: MUSIC FOR PIANO IN FIVE LIMIT JUST INTONATION, Croatian composer Zoran Šćekić presents an open series of compositions aiming to explore the harmony of a non-tempered microtonal system based on integer harmonics, or just intonation. Performed by Croatian pianist Ana Žgur, the pieces on this album explore the use of intervals in five limit just intonation, a method in which intervals are built on the prime numbers 2, 3, and 5. Šćekić’s economical use of notes emphasizes the contrast between consonant and dissonant intervals in harmony and melody, chord inversions, and use of the syntonic comma.

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.

On her debut release on Ravello Records, PIANO SONORITIES, composer Betty R. Wishart presents a collection of her solo piano works, performed by award-winning pianist Jeri-Mae G. Astolfi, which highlights the composer’s use of distinctive harmonic structures, tension, and space. In many of Wishart’s works including Toccata II, Toccata III, Sonata, and Night Visions, the composer employs the intervals of seconds, fourths, and sevenths to create melodic and harmonic material which unifies the style of her writing while creating a variety of colors and textures throughout the album.

Works For Electronics & Piano Sidney Bailin composer "I write what is inside me," says Sidney Bailin. "To me, revealing the psyche’s vulnerable parts is the essence of serious art. With each piece I write, I am trying to tell my secrets." On his first Ravello release, 16-2-60-N-5: WORKS [...]

Pianist Gayle Martin achieved international prominence as the sole American laureate of the sixth International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. The Washington Post called her performance “a tour de force” and praised her artistry for its “intense passion and deep-seated emotional response to the music.” The Woodstock Times cited her recital as one “which, if recorded on 78’s, could have fooled the average pianophile into thinking he or she was listening to one of the greats of the past.” A native of Texas, Gayle was a student of Madame Rosina Lhévinne at The Juilliard School, where she was awarded the coveted Josef Lhévinne Prize.