European American Music Distributors Company is a member of the Schott Music Group

Three New Kamran Ince CDs in Digital Release by Naxos

Sep. 07, 2010

Kamran Ince’s already impressive discography took a major leap forward in August when Naxos released three new CDs of his music exclusively online. “Music For a Lost Earth” comprises a single 17-part work also referred to as “the ambient music project.” Its music – described as “wild and intuitive,” “utterly ambiguous and somehow poignant,” with “constant surprise within the familiar” by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Tom Strini-was written by Ince as musical sustenance for an imagined new world without the current world’s massive dysfunction.

The second CD, “Curve/Hammers and Whistlers/Istathenople/Strange Stone,” features four pieces performed by Present Music under the direction of Kevin Stalheim; the disc’s musical expression ranges from the whirl of Hammers and Whistlers to the tentative longing of Curve to the quirky and humorous Strange Stone, a work intended to invoke the Turkish zurna, a “notably loud, rowdy, and nasal wind instrument.”

Ince’s Symphony No. 5 is the centerpiece of the third disc, framed by three shorter works - Before Infrared, Requiem Without Words, and Hot, Red, Cold, Vibrant. The symphony, subtitled “Galatasaray,” celebrates the one hundredth anniversary of Turkey’s most successful and storied soccer team; besides the traditional orchestra, the “epic occasional piece” features female and male solo voices as well as a boy soprano. Another highlight of the CD, Ince’s Requiem Without Words, reflects on quite a different occasion–the 2003 terrorist bombings in Istanbul. This work opens with a “microtonally-inflected wail of a melody,” which expresses wordless grief before combining with and morphing into other signals of horror–nonsense syllables of panic and confusion, clarinet sirens, and the tense heartbeat of a brutally persistent bass drum.

Turkish-American composer Kamran Ince has been honored with many of classical music’s most prestigious awards, including the Prix de Rome, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Lili Boulanger Prize. The Los Angeles Times recently described Ince as “that rare composer able to sound connected with modern music, and yet still seem exotic,” and his music has been described by reviewers as “often beautiful and always exciting,” “communicat[ing] instantly and clearly in a language quite its own.” Ince is currently completing his first opera, Judgment of Midas, which was commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Sardis/Lydia excavations.  The opera is currently in workshop at American Opera Projects in Brooklyn and is set for a concert reading and recording by the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra in Ankara, Turkey on January 15, 2011.

For more about Kamran Ince, visit www.kamranince.com or www.schottmusic.com.

For more information on the CDs or to order, visit www.naxos.com

Kamran Ince
Music For a Lost Earth (2007)
for violin and ensemble: fl(pic).bcl-perc-hp.pno-vn.va.vc.db
60'

Symphony No. 5 “Galatasaray” (2005)
for boy soprano, soprano, tenor, chorus and orchestra
text by Izzeddin Calislar
0.2.1.asax.tsax.2-4.2.2.1-timp.3perc-egtr.elec bgtr.synth.pno
34'

Curve (1996)
for string quartet
14'

Hammers and Whistlers (2006)
for violin, violoncello, women's chorus, children's chorus and orchestra
text by Izzeddin Calislar
1.2(Ebcl).0.asax.tsax.0-0.2.1.btbn.0-2perc-elec bgtr.pno-str
20'

Strange Stone (2004)
for chamber ensemble
fl(pic, afl).ob(ca).asax(ssax)bsn(cbsn)-perc.pno(slide whistle)-va.db
12'

Requiem Without Words (2004)
for voices and chamber ensemble
fl.cl.tsax-tpt.btbn-perc(b.d, turkish village drum (w/snares), darbuka, vib, rh synth).lute(tambour).elec bgtr.kemence.pno(synth)-vn.va.vc
20'

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