Release Date: August 12, 2016
Catalog #: NV6051
Format: Digital & Physical
21st Century
Chamber
Electroacoustic
Large Ensemble

Modes

Society of Composers, Inc. Volume 30

Karen Keyhani composer
Robert A. Baker composer
Nolan Stolz composer
Arthur Gottschalk composer
Benjamin D. Whiting composer
Yip Ho Kwen Austin composer
Chin Ting Chan composer

Navona Records proudly presents MODES, the 30th edition of the celebrated Society of Composers, Inc. CD Series and the sixth SCI release on the label. The album features a diverse array of compositions, with influences from around the world and experiences that are new and thrillingly avant-garde.

The album’s contributions span the globe, featuring exciting contemporary musical elements. Yip Ho Kwen Austin’s A Mournful Cry incorporates the ancient Chinese zither instrument Guzheng, along with poetry from China’s South Song Dynasty. Iranian composer Karen Keyhani integrates the Persian santour into his piece As Far As Possible, written in response to the loss of three mountaineers (including a close friend) while descending the Himalayan Broad Peak in 2013. Nolan Stolz’s Princess Ka‘iulani calls on the soloist to sing, speak, and whisper fragments of Hawaiian words and phrases into their flute. Arthur Gottschalk’s song cycle for soprano and string quartet, Five Songs of Love, features poems from sources as diverse as Harlem poet Langston Hughes to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Robert A. Baker, in Valance III, continues his cycle of chamber pieces that explore interactions between energy, timbre, and musical continuity. Benjamin Whiting experiments with the intersections of acoustic and electronic composition in Melodía sin melodía (stereo mix). Chin Ting Chan draws from Olivier Messiaen’s “Modes of Limited Transposition” for his explorations of timbre and harmony across time in Acoustic Field. These composers all bring their own unique blend of understanding, ingenuity, and craft to their contributions to this diverse new edition.

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Artist Information

Robert A. Baker

Composer

Robert A. Baker (born 1970, Toronto, Canada) is a composer, theorist, pianist and conductor of new music. His compositions have been performed at concerts and at festivals and conferences in North America and Europe including: the St. Magnus and York Spring New Music Festivals (UK); Jihlava International Choral Festival (Czech Republic); Festival "Giuseppe Rosetta" (Italy); New Music North (Canada); Miami New Music ISCM Festival (USA).

Art-Gottschalk

Arthur Gottschalk

Composer

Arthur Gottschalk is Professor of Music Composition at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where he founded and directed the school’s electronic music laboratories until 2002, and chaired the composition and theory department for 15 years. His early work as a studio musician led to his co-founding of Modern Music Ventures, Inc., a company which held a recording studio complex, a record production division, four publishing firms, and an artist management division, and for whom he produced records for the PolyGram and Capitol labels, among others.

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