august 2017 recent reviews

Three major recording magazines praised Juliana Hall's newest album Love's Signatures for its sensitivity, power, beauty, and inspiration.

Juliana Hall's album "Love's Signatures: Songs for Countertenor and Soprano" features the stunning voices of Darryl Taylor and Susan Narucki. Since its release, the album has garnered positive critical acclaim from critics. The album highlights three art song collections.

O Mistress Mine (2016) is a set of 12 songs for countertenor and piano based on William Shakespeare texts.

Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush (1989) is a collection of seven songs soprano and piano on letters of Emily Dickinson.

Since 1923, Gramophone Magazine continues to devote itself to reviewing classical music, particularly recordings.  The August 2017 issue featured two albums in the ECS Publishing Group catalog: Seven Last Words by Michael John Trotta and Revelations by Su Lian Tan.

Seven Last Words, review excerpt

By Guy Rickards

"Trotta’s musical style is fairly straightforward....not unlike that of Eric Whitacre or Ēriks Ešenvalds. The performance is more than

38 Chorals by Lionel Rogg, ECS #6210

Swiss composer Lionel Rogg's 38 Chorals is an organ collection distinguished by a great variety of styles, but the natural harmonization of each melody has been maintained in most cases. Some of them are treated in a Romantic manner, perhaps evoking the sound of Brahms or Reger. In general, the pieces are of medium difficulty, with a few being easier and a few more demanding. The chorals may be grouped for the purpose of playing them in a recital since most are two or three pages in length.

Tom Leeseburg-Lange (St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Fulton, MD) recently reviewed Rogg's collection in In Tempo

All reviews were reprinted by permission of Fanfare Magazine. 

Let’s be clear from the off: Wants List material. Malaysian-born in 1966, Su Lian Tan has a uniquely expressive voice. My colleague Barnaby Rayfield, interviewing Tan in Fanfare 34:4, waxed lyrical about Tan’s achievements (FTCL, or Fellow of Trinity College, London, by age 17; postgraduate degrees from Princeton and Juilliard; flute prodigy). But it is the sheer force of invention, an invention that is clearly heart-based, that sends the listener heading for the repeat button after the final item has finished.

The word “Wayang” in the title of the first piece,

CD180

Julian Wachner and the Grammy-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street, The Trinity Youth Chorus, and the NOVUS NY orchestra collaborated to create The Snow Lay on the Ground (CD 180). A stunning recording of nine brilliant carol settings and three organ improvisations performed by Wachner, the album continues to garner widespread enthusiasm from critics.

“Julian Wachner continues to do fantastic work with the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, as

On July 12, 2017, conductor Fawzi Haimor led the Grant Park Orchestra in a tour-de-force program, which included the Midwest premiere of Syrian-born composer Kareem Roustom's Ramal. The performance was met with widespread enthusiasm from critics, both for the Grant Park Orchestra's performance under Haimor's leadership and for Roustom's music.

Michael John Trotta

Scene4, an international magazine of arts and culture, featured Michael John Trotta in the July 2017 edition of the magazine.

The article begins with Rainer Maria Rilke's quote, "The work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity." Trotta notes this quote defines the current season of his career. "Everything is a tradeoff," he writes. "I have traded one classroom in one location for many classrooms in many locations. There is so much fine music being made...across the country. I now have more time to work with many groups from all over America and to take on the larger works when the need arises."

Later in the article, Trotta examines what his music offers both the performers and the audience. "As I have searched