MARK
ZUCKERMAN
New Music for Strings
SEATTLE
SINFONIA
Joel Eric Suben
MOMENTA
QUARTET
Miranda Cuckson & Annaliesa Place
violins
Stephanie Griffin
viola;
Joanne Lin
violoncello
WORLD
PREMIERE RECORDINGS
$14.95 ~ MS1223
"Zuckerman's
works are...highly accessible; coupled with the detailed program notes,
listeners are carefully guided through some very enjoyable musical metaphors. The
Elegy for Victims of Terrorism, heard on this CD in
both its string quartet and string orchestra versions, is quite moving and makes
the album worthwhile on its own... Sound quality is appealing...and the
ensembles are successful in guiding listeners through some of the more
minimalistic components of the compositions."
All Music
Guide ~ June 2007
"Shir
Kinah: Elegy for the Victims of Terrorism …is a touching elegy that works
equally well in this and its string quartet version. The Momenta Quartet… play
marvellously and idiomatically throughout."
MusicWeb
International ~ June 2007
* * *
Mark
Zuckerman holds a Ph.D.
in composition from Princeton University, and was a student of Milton Babbitt,
David Epstein, J. K. Randall and Elie Yarden. He has taught composition, tonal
and atonal theory, orchestration and computer music at Princeton and Columbia
Universities, and published numerous scholarly articles and a book on listening
to jazz, drawn from a popular jazz survey course he taught at Princeton and
Columbia. Mr. Zuckerman also played saxophone in stage bands, clarinet, sax and
keyboards in rock bands, washtub bass in bluegrass and jug bands, and has sung
in several Yiddish choirs including Di Goldene Keyt, The Yiddish Chorale,
which he founded and for which he was Composer-In-Residence.
Zuckerman’s
music is published by Carl Fischer, Ludwig Music, E. C. Schirmer,
Transcontinental Music, Mobart, the APNM and ACA. His catalog includes an
extensive collection of choral music – achieving a growing international
reputation – in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish (available on
"Because," MSR Classics MS1146), with some 20 arrangements of Yiddish
songs for a cappella mixed chorus, released as "The Year in Yiddish
Song" on Centaur. He has also written instrumental music for virtuoso
soloists – as exemplified by pieces recorded by flutist James Winn for CRI and
pianist Peter Vinograde for Phoenix USA – as well as numerous chamber
ensembles, string orchestra, full orchestra, concert band, and wind ensemble,
including music recorded by the Rutgers University Wind Ensemble for Mark
Masters. His chamber opera, "The Outlaw and the King," was developed
in the Opera Workshop at Rutgers University.
Mark
Zuckerman received a 2004 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the
Arts.
In
addition to a residency at Temple University, the Momenta
Quartet (Miranda Cuckson
and Annaliesa Place, violins; Stephanie Griffin, viola; Joanne Lin, cello) has
quickly gained a following in New York City after its debut concert at the
Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture in November 2004. Since then, the quartet
has been featured in faculty concerts and special programs at a variety of
conservatories and colleges. Deeply committed to collaborations with the next
generation of composers, the quartet has already given at least fifteen
premieres in its first two years of existence.
Joel
Eric Suben has led first
performances and commercial recordings of more than 450 works by American and
European composers, among them Pulitzer Prize winners Roger Sessions and Leslie
Bassett. A frequent guest conductor of major Central European orchestras, Suben
records more than ten hours of symphonic music and opera each season. His work
is represented on some 50 commercially released CDs on the Albany, Centaur,
Capstone, CRI, Naxos/Marco Polo, New World, Opus One, Parnassus, and Soundspells
International labels. Suben’s activities as a composer encompass some 60
published works.
