Track 1. 17:43

Harmonia Mundi. (2001)

c. David Crumb.

p. Quattro Mani (Susan Grace, piano; Alice Rybak, piano); David Colson, percussion; John Kinzie, percussion.

Tracks 2-5.

New World Landscapes. (1989, rev. 1998)

c. Robert G. Patterson.

p. Quattro Mani (Susan Grace, piano; Alice Rybak, piano).

2. Nightlit Sierra. 6:43

3. Land Rush. 3:21

4. City Before Sunrise. 14:09

5. The Avenues of the Dead/Rebirth. 8:08

Track 6. 14:40

Organum: from Canto LXXXI (Ezra Pound) (1976)

New Beginnings (1987)

c. Carlton Gamer

p. Susan Grace, piano; David Colson; percussion.

Track 7. 12:06

The Whisperer (1999)

c. David Crumb

p. Quattro Mani (Susan Grace, piano; Alice Rybak, piano).

Total Time: 77:06

Credits

Recording Engineers: Michael Grace (Crumb and Patterson) and

Keith Seppanen (Gamer)

Editing Engineer: Robert Patterson (Crumb and Patterson) and Keith Seppanen (Gamer)

Mastering Engineer: Silas Brown

Harmonia Mundi (2001) and The Whisperer (1999)

Produced by David Crumb

Recorded May 23-24, 2002

Organum: from Canto LXXXI (Ezra Pound) (1976) and New Beginnings (1987)

Produced by Carlton Gamer and David Colson

Recorded Nov. 22-23, 1992

Robert Patterson, New World Landscapes (1989, rev. 1998)

Produced by Robert Patterson

Recorded April 18-19, 2003

Front Cover Art: Ying Tan

This recording was made possible by a generous grant from The Colorado College.

Special thanks to Jonathan Lee for helping to make the project possible.

David Crumb

David Crumb’s music has been widely performed throughout the United States and abroad. His imaginative and dramatic compositions are richly tonal, and intensely coloristic. Among numerous awards, he has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Tanglewood Music Center Fellowship, and grants from Meet the Composer and the A.S.C.A.P. Foundation. Crumb has accepted commissions from the Fromm and Barlow Foundations, the National Association of Wind and Percussion Instructors, the Los Angeles Symphony New Music Group, and the Chicago Civic Orchestra. He joined the music faculty at the University of Oregon in 1997, where he continues to serve as a member of the composition department. 

Harmonia Mundi (2001)

I view composing for two pianos as analogous to scoring for two orchestras, since each piano occupies an independent acoustical space. In the slow first section of Harmonia Mundi, I explore this spatial relationship through the use of various antiphonal effects. The alternation between normal and muted tones characteristic of the opening theme is one example of this responsorial technique. In the animated middle section, I am intrigued by the possibilities of pure color. Here the texture is replete with tremolo effects, passages involving parallel triads, splashes of diatonic clusters, all of which are enhanced by the colorful use of resonating percussion. A polytonal/polychordal fabric pervades much of the piece, suggesting a world of harmony, or perhaps, as in the title, "Harmony of the World."

The Whisperer (1999)

Out of the quiet intensity of the opening measures evolves a music suspended both in time and tonality, yet full of portentous meaning. From an increasingly sonorous landscape, a chorale-like tune gradually emerges, and this becomes the primary “thread” of the composition. As tonal development ensues, the music reveals a bold dramatic context suggestive of the Romantic era. Yet my tonal language, which is often triadic and even functional, is nevertheless modern and highly idiosyncratic. In The Whisperer, I strive for a strong sense of comprehensibility, something that I feel is lost in many contemporary styles. Ultimately, I believe in breaking new ground while reconnecting some of the broken threads that link the music of our time to music of the past.

Both Harmonia Mundi and The Whisperer were composed for Susan Grace and Alice Rybak, the performers featured on this disc.

Carlton Gamer

Carlton Gamer's music has been featured in such venues as New York's Carnegie Recital Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and abroad in Sydney, Guadalajara, Oxford, Salzburg, Rome, and Warsaw. He holds degrees from Northwestern University and Boston University and has taught at The Colorado College, Princeton University, The University of Michigan, and The Salzburg Seminar in American Studies. Among his teachers and mentors have been Hubert Kessler, Roger Sessions, and Milton Babbitt. He was a member of the Princeton Seminars in Advanced Musical Studies and a Senior Fellow of the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. A discussion of his composition "Organum: from Canto LXXXI" can be found in a paper on "Microtones and projective planes," which he wrote with the mathematician Robin Wilson, in Music and Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 2003).

Organum: from Canto LXXXI (Ezra Pound) (1976)

New Beginnings (1987)

Organum: from Canto LXXXI (Ezra Pound) and New Beginnings are intended to be heard in succession. Organum is a digitally synthesized organum-like setting of the following lines by Ezra Pound, whereby electronically generated signals are filtered through the formants of the composer's own voice: 

What thou lovest well remains,

the rest is dross

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee

What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage

Whose world, or mine or theirs

or is it of none?

First came the seen, then thus the palpable

Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,

What thou lovest well is thy true heritage

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee

New Beginnings, which follows without interruption, is based upon ideas of renewal and regeneration, both figurative and musical. It employs techniques of continuous thematic transformation, extension of the percussive resources of the piano, and exploratory notational procedures enabling the use of free improvisation within a carefully controlled compositional context. It is dedicated, with admiration and affection, to Susan Grace and David Colson.

"Canto LXXXI" (excerpt) by Ezra Pound, from The Cantos of Ezra Pound, copyright 1948 by Ezra Pound. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Robert Patterson

[Note to Innova editor: do not insert apostrophe in "Finnegans Wake"]

Robert G. Patterson lives in Memphis, Tennessee—a city brimming with music. His compositions are infused with popular rhythms and melodic fragments, which provide source material for his own voice. In addition, he has made a special study of notating music with computers. His computer plug-ins for Finale software are used world-wide.

New World Landscapes

New World Landscapes comprises four impressionistic musical portraits of the New World that together form a cyclical history resembling the histories in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Similar to Joyce’s work, the end of New World Landscapes dovetails with the beginning to create a continuously circular composition. “Nightlit Sierra” alternates between a sense of violence suggestive of the geologic forces that created snow-peaks, and majestic repose, evocative of the craggy results that often appear now on a crisp, clear night. “Land Rush” races ahead much as European settlers raced to fill the American frontiers. “City Before Sunrise,” a set of variations on an original ragtime tune, reflects the hopes and uncertainties of the eternal present. “Avenues of the Dead/Rebirth” echoes the turbulent journey of dust propelled down the courses of the ponderous Mississippi drainage system until it wells out into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. There the dust is transformed, and the cycle begins anew.

New World Landscapes was commissioned by the Tennessee Music Teachers Association.

Performer Bios

Quattro Mani

Pianists SUSAN GRACE and ALICE RYBAK bring together two distinguished careers. Each has earned recognition as a soloist and chamber musician in the United States and abroad. Both artists share a special interest in the vast repertoire for two pianos and the unique collaboration involved in its performance. Quattro Mani's special interest in twentieth century repertoire has led to collaborations with such composers as George Crumb, Joan Tower and Frederic Rzewski and to participation in contemporary music festivals throughout the USA, Asia and Europe.

Quattro Mani's debut CD, A Game of Go, was recently released on the Klavier label. Of this CD Fanfare writes: "Grace and Rybak play all of this music with power and intelligence, shaping large expressive phrases. Quattro Mani's blistering performance forms the beating heart of an arresting recital." Quattro Mani's latest CD―a recording of George Crumb's music for two pianos―was issued by Bridge Records, and immediately nominated as "Best Chamber Music CD of the Year" at the Cannes Classic Awards. This CD received Fanfare's “Critics Choice” and highest ratings from France's Repertoire and ClassicsToday.com. Speaking about Quattro Mani, the Pulitzer Prize‑winning Crumb writes: "The duo piano team Quattro Mani is one of the very finest I have heard. Susan Grace and Alice Rybak are wonderful artists and their performances are both technically and musically superb."

In January 2001, Quattro Mani made its New York debut in Carnegie's Weill Hall to a sold‑out hall and was immediately re‑engaged for the 2001‑2002 season. Quattro Mani returned to NY for a third time in December 2003. Susan Grace is Artist‑in‑Residence and Lecturer in Music at Colorado College and Music Director of the Summer Music Festival; her duo partner Alice Rybak is on the faculty of the Lamont School of Music, University of Denver, and teaches at Indiana University's summer Piano Academy.

David Colson, percussion

DAVID COLSON was educated at the Interlochen Arts Academy, the University of Michigan, the University of Iowa, and Rice University where he received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition. Major composition teachers have included William Bolcom, William Albright and William Hibbard. Awards and Honors include the University of Iowa's Philip Greely Clapp Composition Award and Rice University's Sallie Shepherd Perkins Prize for "highest achievement in music."

Throughout his career Colson has been a leader in the performance of new music. He founded the Current and Modern Consort, a new music ensemble based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and was a member of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa. At Rice University, he formed thePierrot Plus Ensemble, that school's new music ensemble. Colson is also an active percussionist and conductor. As percussionist he has performed with the Toledo Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Houston Ballet, and the Sacramento Symphony. At Rice, he was Music Director of the Campanile Orchestra and Shepherd School Chamber Winds, and Assistant Conductor for the Shepherd Symphony.

Currently, Colson is on the faculty of California State University, Chico, where he teaches music theory and studio instruction in composition and percussion. From 1994– 2000 he was Music Director and Conductor of the Chico Symphony Orchestra.

John Kinzie, percussion

JOHN KINZIE has been heard frequently as a soloist and chamber musician. He is the principal percussionist of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, a position he has held since 1985. Prior to his appointment with the CSO, Mr. Kinzie was principal percussionist with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra from 1977 to 1985, a position he won at the age of 19. He has also performed with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Kinzie is currently on the faculty of the Lamont School of Music of the University of Denver, where he teaches percussion and timpani performance as well as percussion ensemble, masterclasses and percussion pedagogue. He has taught masterclasses and clinics at all the major universities in Colorado. He also performs in the CSO chamber group Once Upon a Time, a group formed to inspire the imaginations of young schoolchildren and to excite them about music.

Mr. Kinzie was born in Pittsburgh in 1958 and began his musical studies on the piano at the age of five. When band was introduced in the schools, he quickly switched to the drums. His interest in band continued through high school and led to his performing with drum corps, particularly the Glassmen, Anaheim Kingsmen and the Phantom Regiment. Mr. Kinzie received scholarships to the University of Toledo and the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Robert Bell, Richard Weiner and Paul Yancich. He has appeared at Colorado’s “Strings in the Mountains” festival, and at National Repertory Orchestra music festivals; he currently performs with the Grand Teton Music Festival.

Mr. Kinzie has been a featured soloist with many orchestras and recently performed the premiere recording of Libby Larsen's "Marimba Concerto: After Hampton with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.