modern classical

I composed this work in January of 2013 for the Mars Hill College Saxophone Quartet. The MHC Sax Quartet premiered it April 20, 2013 during the Mars Hill New Music Festival. 
The hall was in complete darkness. Each performer began playing in a different corner of the concert hall surrounding the audience.  Slowly each performer began moving to the front of the hall. When they played the last chord the lights quickly filled the hall.

Quartet for El Anatsui was inspired by the artwork of the Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui. He creates wonderful sheets of metal, wood and cloth that are hung on walls or stand alone on the floor. Each time one of his sculptures are presented at a museum they are presented differently. Which inspired me to write this piece which can be played differently at every performance.

Mars Hill College Saxophone Quartet
Alan Theisen - Alto
Andrew Jenkins - Alto
Dalton Woody - Tenor
Bradley Smith - Baritone

Quartet For El Anatsui (Open Piece No. 3)

The composer's best-known work, Peter Boyer's "Ellis Island: The Dream of America" was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in the 48th Annual GRAMMY® Awards (2005).

This work for actors and orchestra (and projected images in live performance), which celebrates the early 20th-century American immigrant experience, was commissioned by The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, and premiered there in 2002 by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra under Boyer's direction, along with a cast of New York actors directed by Martin Charnin. Since then, the work has received nearly 150 performances by 65 different orchestras, making it one of the most-performed American orchestral works composed in the last decade. In 2010, The League of American Orchestras' Symphony magazine profiled "Ellis Island" as one of "a handful of recent works by living composers becoming orchestral standards."

The Philharmonia Orchestra was recorded at London's AIR Studios, and the cast of renowned actors was recorded in New York City.

This track contains the words of Lazarus Salamon, one of the seven real-life Ellis Island immigrants whose stories are told in Boyer's work. The composer chose the words from the first-person accounts contained in the Ellis Island Oral History Project. These words of Salamon, who immigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1920, are read by renowned stage and screen actor Eli Wallach.

For more information:
http://propulsivemusic.com/work/concert-music/ellis-island-the-dream-of-america/

© 2005 Propulsive Music, under exclusive license to Naxos Rights International Limited

iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/boyer-ellis-island-dream-america/id72884070

Ellis Island: The Dream of America

Buy on Amazon

Ellis Island: The Dream of America – Words of Lazarus Salamon – Eli Wallach/ Philharmonia Orch/Boyer

City Boy

Catalog #: SSSRCD0001
Release Date: October 16, 2006
Label: Sweetspot
Format: CD+DVD
Ensemble:: Alarm Will Sound
Notes: percussion credit (glockenspiel) 

(excerpt) Music for Mallet Instruments Voices and Organ

Peter Boyer's Symphony No. 1 was commissioned by the Pasadena Symphony, and premiered by that orchestra under his direction in April 2013. The three-movement, 24-minute symphony is dedicated to the memory of Leonard Bernstein. This is the first movement, "Prelude."

The symphony is the centerpiece of a new recording of Boyer's music by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the composer at historic Abbey Road Studio One in 2013. Released worldwide by Naxos in its American Classics Series in February 2014, the recording also includes four other Boyer orchestral works. It has been broadcast on over 150 radio stations around the U.S. and abroad.

"Boyer, who claims more than 300 performances by more than 100 orchestras, writes in a fluent, powerful style that fuses conservative American currents with Hollywood-ish size and populist sentiment... eloquent, spaciously recorded performances…"
-- Gramophone

"Like all of the music on this disc, the symphony is tuneful, expertly crafted, colorfully scored… Boyer knows what he wants, and how to do it. This very well engineered disc is lots of fun, and a really good listen."
-- ClassicsToday.com

"The performances here are simply superb, showing off [Boyer's] engaging and easily accessible cinematic style. This is certainly a recording that should have broad appeal, and one which you will likely find yourself returning to time and again. The music is brilliantly orchestrated with engaging thematic ideas and a fine sense of dramatic shape."
-- Cinemusical

"Classical music listeners apprehensive about 'new music' have nothing to fear, and everything to love, about Peter Boyer. The American composer writes music in a neo-romantic style with an unabashedly direct and popular appeal… His Symphony No. 1, a tribute to his muse Leonard Bernstein, is a stirring work, filled with soaring, 'American sounding' themes and propulsive rhythms… a recording that’s sure to win him many new fans."
-- WRTI (Philadelphia), New Releases

To purchase on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/boyer-symphony-no.-1/id804059505

Music © 2013 Propulsive Music. Recording © 2014 Naxos Rights US, Inc. Used with permission.

Symphony No. 1 - Movement I: Prelude – London Philharmonic Orchestra/Peter Boyer, conductor

Music: Excerpt from “Vertigo”
Composer: Bernard Hermann
Artists: Danish National Symphony Orchestra; Danish National Concert Choir; Klaudia Kidon, soprano; John Mauceri, conductor
Album: Music for Alfred Hitchcock
Label: Toccata Classics TOCC 0241
Street Date: August 12, 2014

Buy on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KZKWQQ6

Alfred Hitchcock commissioned his film scores from composers who were Hollywood’s master-craftsmen. The concert items prepared from those scores feature a dazzling variety of styles, from Baroque and jazz to dark Romanticism and angular angst, all using the orchestra with breathtaking virtuosity. The conductor John Mauceri, as at home with this repertoire as any other musician, has prepared a number of concert suites from the film scores and some of them receive their first recordings here. This recording was made live in concert in Danish Radio’s new concert hall in Copenhagen. The booklet contains an introductory text by John Mauceri and an extensive, illustrated essay on Hitchcock and his use of film music and work with composers by British film-music historian John Riley.

Hermann: Vertigo — Music for Alfred Hitchcock

Track: Nr. 1 Scene in the Garden / Szene Im Garten 

Robert Schumann: „Szenen aus Goethes Faust“ / 
„Scenes from Goethe’s Faust“
Chor & Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Daniel Harding, conductor
Christian Gerhaher, Christiane Karg et al.

The work is not an opera, nor is it an oratorio, a cantata or a choral symphony. Indeed, Robert Schumann's "Scenes from Goethe's Faust" is very hard to categorize. The professional world has recently re-appraised the "Faust Scenes" as one of Schumann's major works, and this BR-KLASSIK recording reflects today's increased interest in a piece considered by the composer himself to be among his best. At the helm of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks is the outstanding English conductor Daniel Harding, and with the "Faust Scenes" he presents a large-scale masterpiece that traces Goethe's complex and highly philosophical literary work in a loose sequence of musical scenes. In the last decade of his life in particular, Schumann repeatedly fathomed the possibilities of music-dramatic and vocal-symphonic composition. In his "Genoveva", "Manfred," "Requiem for Mignon" and also the "Faust Scenes" he goes beyond the opera, oratorio and cantata and treads entirely new musical ground. The development process for the work lasted over a decade, and Schumann only finally completed it in 1853 shortly before the sudden deterioration in his health. With its lyrical and dramatic movements, Schumann's creation spans the story from Gretchen to Faust's death, and on to the mysterious transfiguration and redemption of the final Chorus mysticus. The part of Faust is sung by outstanding baritone Christian Gerhaher. He is joined by Christiane Karg as Gretchen and other internationally renowned soloists, together with the Chamber Choir of Augsburg Cathedral Boys' Choir and the Bavarian Radio Choir. 



Robert Schumann: Szenen aus Goethes Faust.  Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Me playing the opening movement of Beethoven's Pastoral sonata. LVB walking through nature, wrestling his demons, being all immortal... Hope you like.

Beethoven Piano Sonata In D Major, Op. 28 - 'Pastoral'  I. Allegro

Philip Glass’ Fifth String Quartet is the most substantial of his five quartets and the most traditional, using formal structures and expressive contrasts that go far beyond minimalism. While maintaining Glass’ unmistakable personal style, this is a quartet that delivers both driving energy and an unforgettable, threnody-like tenderness. Glass chose a string quartet for his score to the film Dracula to ‘evoke the feeling of the world of the 19th c.’, the music underpinning the film’s visual drama while avoiding obvious ‘horror’ effects. The String Sextet is an arrangement of Glass’s Third Symphony (Naxos 8.559202), combining symphonic scale with the intimacy synonymous with the chamber music genre. 

Glass: String Quartet No. 5 - Dracula - String Sextet

String Quartet No. 5, Part V

Aubade for Large Orchestra, Op. 77

Invention for Piano is the first piece I ever completed. This is a midi recording. One day I will work on the score again and make it a little more playable.

Invention for Piano

I composed this piece in the summer of 2012. I had heard a few open instrumentation works by different composers and I felt i should give it at try.

Open Piece No. 1 was premiered by the Central Michigan University New Music Ensemble December 9, 2012 in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. 

I will post the names of each performer when I receive them.  They did a fine job.  

CMU New Music Ensemble:

Mike Romaniak - Electronics
Kevin Keith - Piano
Jennifer Blackwell - Soprano Saxophone
Jenna Veldboom - Alto Saxophone
Nathan Brown - Trombone
Melissa Bialecki - Cello
Kevin Wilson - Double Bass
David Abraham - Percussion
Steve Bott - Percussion

Open Piece No. 1 for any instruments performed by the CMU New Music Ensemble

Warner CD - Steve Reich - Different Trains - III After The War

Specializing in state-of-the-art distribution, marketing and promotion, Naxos of America distributes nearly 32,000 SKUs to traditional brick and mortar retail, as well as offering a comprehensive suite of services tailored to consumer direct fulfillment. Naxos of America is also the largest digital distributor of independent classical music, supplying a catalog of over 30,000 albums to hundreds of digital download and mobile outlets worldwide. Naxos of America offers marketing, e-marketing, publicity, e-publicity, physical and digital e-commerce services, licensing opportunities, streaming services, sales and customer service for all new releases and active catalog titles of Naxos Records and more than 150 distributed labels.

String Quartet No. 5, Part V

NaxosUSA

Related tracks