Mark Winges – “Night Voiced”
“Runes”, the new album by Robert Dusek and 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. Several stand-alone works appear, cleverly embedded, in the twelve-song program. Track one is a prelude-and our journey begins. Tracks two through four constitute, separately, Dusek's Piano Sonata No 2, and after an intermezzo, the listener receives the Piano Sonata No 3. Tracks seven, eight, and nine: "After the Rain", "Cloud Chaser", and "Light" constitute a larger embedded work, Autumn Sky. The album sets the audience down gently with a gorgeous and meditative postlude. Robert Dusek is the recipient of numerous awards and honors in composition, including Columbia University's Bearns Prize, the ASCAP Raymond-Hubbard Award, an AHAB - the Neodata Fellowship for his Symphony No 1, and others. His music has been performed world wide and recorded by such groups as North-South Consonance and the Warsaw Philharmonic.
“Chiaroscuro”, Chamber Music by Richard Lavenda is a bright and engaging new album of some of composer Richard Lavenda's favorite chamber works-all written for personal friends. The title track refers to the visual art technique of a strong contrast between dark and light, and this motif aptly describes the listening experience. The opening quartet, written for the unusual ensemble of alto flute, bassoon, vibraphone, and double bass, is bold-says the composer, “Chiaroscuro” explores many of the timbre and textural combinations afforded me by the unusual ensemble we created. The alternating fast and slow sections differ in affect and character, and while I would hesitate to label either as the light or the dark areas that define the eponymous painting style there certainly are audible shadowings, blurred borders, and complementarities." A native of New Jersey, Lavenda received degrees from Dartmouth College, Rice University, and the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University in 1987, where he is Professor of Composition and Theory.
“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 Forche, "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. Mark Winges is resident composer/advisor for the chamber choir Volti and has recently received commissions from the Verge Ensemble (Washington, DC) and Earplay (San Francisco). He is also active as a freelance organist. He has studies at the College-Conservatory of Music (Cincinnati), San Francisco State University, and the Musikhogskolan in Stockholm, Sweden.
