Christopher Shultis, a professor at the University of New Mexico, is known primarily as a scholar specializing in John Cage and as a percussionist, but he is also a composer and this Navona CD is the first devoted to his own music. Shultis writes that all the music was inspired by his forays into the New Mexico wilderness, and each work is associated with the composer's poetic reflections on the landscapes he knows well. The pieces are varied in their instrumentation and their style. The four-movement Openings is ...
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Christopher Shultis, a professor at the University of New Mexico, is known primarily as a scholar specializing in John Cage and as a percussionist, but he is also a composer and this Navona CD is the first devoted to his own music. Shultis writes that all the music was inspired by his forays into the New Mexico wilderness, and each work is associated with the composer's poetic reflections on the landscapes he knows well. The pieces are varied in their instrumentation and their style. The four-movement Openings is beautifully performed by the University of New Mexico Wind Symphony, led by Eric Rombach-Kendall. It's an evocative and lovely work. The vocal cycle Songs of Love and Longing is generally less distinctive than the other pieces on the album, but the first song and the third (actually a solo piano interlude) have an attractive lyrical wistfulness. "a little light, in great darkness," with a title taken from Ezra Pound, is scored for soprano saxophone and wind quintet. In its spacious silences,...
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