New Music For Orchestra

Synopsis

Frank Retzel's melodically lovely "Chansonnier for Orchestra" is based on three chansons by Dufay; Monroe Couper's tragic and moving "In Memoriam" ("Each day approximately 35,000 people die of hunger and starvation around the world. This is a staggering number! My hometown was only half that size." -- Couper); Allan Blank's "Concertino for String Orchestra"; Leslie Bassett's "From A Source Evolving"; Beth Anderson's "Minnesota Swale," a "new romantic" composition including some improvised sections, describes a "swale...a meadow or a marsh where a lot of wild plants grow together"; Masataka Matsuo's marvelously evocative "Hirai V" -- "hirai" is a Japanese word that means "come flying." The image occured to him as he viewed the great showfield from atop Mt. Norikura and "the space itself that expands high up in the air through the stratosphere and finally into the universe, or the color of its sky, and the sound of its wind" (Matsuo). ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny