New American Trumpet Sonatas
RODGER LEE, TRUMPET

 

		Price: $14.00 Catalog Number: CPS-8620 Audio Format: Stereo, DDD Playing Time: 57:58 Release Date: 1994
Cover Photo: Ives & Debbie Morris

 

Track Listing & Audio Samples
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		Robert Baksa
		Trumpet Sonata
	1.	Lively (4:58)
	2.	Not too slow, singing (6:27)
	3.	Very rhythmic, not too fast (3:45)
		with Mitchell Vines, piano
		Allen Cohen
	4.	Wings of Desire (4:50)
		with Allen Cohen, piano
		Paul Kirby
		Sonata for Trumpet and Piano
	5.	Cadenza: Allegro Moerato (6:34)
	6.	Andante (2:55)    Listen: RealAudio or MP3
	7.	Fast, bold (5:07)
		with Steven Graff, piano
		Robert Baksa
	8.	Earth Elegy (5:07)
		with Allen Cohen, piano
		Allen Cohen
		Song of Myself
	9.	"I am afoot with my vision"
	10.	"O unspeakable passionate love"
	11.	"I am satisfied - I see dance, laugh, sing"
		with Allen Cohen, piano

 

Releated Links
Robert Baksa

 

Reviews

American Record Guide - by Kilpatrick

"This is a collection of new pieces for trumpet and piano written expressly for Rodger Lee. Most interesting are the works by Allen Cohen; his 18-minute Song of Myself is wonderful and will become a recital favorite if it gets the exposure it is due. Its three movements bear titles by Walt Whitman. I am afoot with my vision is bold, lyrical, and often startling; '0 unspeakable passionate love' is more lyrical, yet intense; 'I am satisfied-I see, dance, laugh, sing' is playful and contrapuntal, a virtuoso effort. Wings of Desire, for flügelhorn and tinged with jazz, is based on the composer's "vague image of a nocturnal cityscape and of a lonely soul sending out a song of yearning high over the rooftops". It is mellow, contemplative, and lovely. With the composer at the piano and Mr Lee at his best, these vivid and committed readings won me over.

The other works are appealing, if less memorable. Paul Kirkby uses a varied harmonic language, uneven meters a la Halsey Stevens, and quite a bit of solo trumpet-solo piano dialog in his sonata. Robert Baksa (b 1938), a prolific composer with some 500 works to his credit, offers a lively sonata and a melodious Earth Elegy.

Rodger Lee is a DMA student at Brooklyn College. Not many brass players in their early 20s have what it takes to make a solo CD. Although clues to his youthfulness appear here and there (accentuated by the dry, close-miked sound), this is a remarkable piece of work by a musician with a bright future."

 

AWM Journal - by Sharon Mirchandani

"In all her works, Austin uses an expressive eclectic language, mixing tonal and atonal structures. Her works often place catchy rhythms in metric passages next to freer, recitative-like sections…Austin creates a variety of programmatic pieces in a postmodern neoromantic style by using musical quotes, literary and visual images and musical equivalents of the cinematic processes of juxtaposition, collage, 'cuts' and panning."

The Music Connoisseur - Volume 3, Number 1

"...Far more successful from Capstone is New American Trumpet Sonatas (CPS-8620) with Roger Lee, an instrumentalist of real skill and musicality, playing (with piano) 5 appealing new, specially written works by Robert Baksa, Allen Cohen and Paul Kirby."