Orchestral Music from Tucson Composers

PETE FINE (b.1950): Landscapes, BRUCE STOLLER (b.1948): from Open Spaces: Desert Nights and Distant Space (Bruce Stoller [yucca shakuhachi flute]), JAY VOSK (b.1948): Running the Rim, RICHARD WHITE (b.1947): For Patte - A Simple Song, Celebration, "If Life Were As It Seems" from Rappacini's Daughter, Op. 73 (Christi Amonson, Erika Burkhart, Yunnie Park [sopranos], Karen Knudsen, Naomi DeVries [altos]) A.F. SCHULTZ (b.1942): from Sinfonietta for STring Orchestra: Introduction and Allegro, Passacaglia and Fughetta and Country Dance.

Description: An appealing sample of accessible, tonal works by Tucson, AZ-based composers. Not entirely surprisingly, given the awe-inspiring natural landscapes of the desert southwest, three of the composers evoke aspects of this immense natural beauty in their music. Fine's Landscapes consists, of a series of episodes depicting scenes of nature, increasing in grandeur to a final peroration suggesting the vastness of the mountainous desert in its entirety. Stoller's two movements bear the evocative titles 'Desert Nights' and 'Distant Space', and with the composer his own eloquent soloist on yucca flute, both are picturesque, spiritual meditations, strongly atmospheric, with a potent sense of place and folklike timelessness of melody. Vosk evokes the Grand Canyon in music of energetic brightness with a Bernsteinian touch. White's pieces are a lively, tuneful concert overture, bold and colorful; For Patte is a memorial piece, gently melodic. Goodall's work refers to the January 2011 Tucson shootings, a somber but uplifting prayer arising out of a dissonant haze, with something of the harmonic flavor of Panufnik's still, spiritual meditations about it. Three movements of Schultz's Sinfonietta are appealing neo-baroque forms with a modern harmonic twist; the composer's program note refers explicitly to Bloch's Concerti Grossi, a particularly apt comparison. Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra; Linus Lerner.