VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
Chamber Music for Violin, Soprano and Piano

GABRIELA LENA FRANK
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

SHEM GUIBBORY violin
SUSANNA EYTON-JONES soprano
SONIA RUBINSKY
CRAIG KETTER
ELIZAVETA KOPELMAN piano

  MS1344  ~  $14.95  

The selections on this disc are musical embodiments of one of mankind’s most compelling life searches: the quest for a society structured so that all may have the opportunity to thrive without unfair hardship. Rarely is this achieved in the ideal. Artists are most threatening to those who would usurp absolute power, since they encourage people’s hope and their use of the imagination, which can’t be controlled, unless the artists themselves become tools of the power holders. Of the composers represented in this recording, Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) is the most celebrated and, since his death and increased access to post-Soviet-era material, in many ways the most controversial. Denounced twice by one of the 20th century’s most brutal dictators, though by a chance stroke of luck physically unharmed, he found many musical ways, overt and concealed, to express his revulsion at the cruelty of the Stalin regime even while functioning within it. He became a musical representative of the Russian people suffering stoically under the yoke of Stalin and Bolshevism. Gabriela Lena Frank (b.1972) is a young American composer who has already earned many awards and prestigious publication. Her music celebrates, but also mourns, the uneasy coexistence between indigenous Peruvian culture and the invading, and ultimately ruling, European Spanish culture.

Artist Statement

This CD represents not only music that vividly captures a portion of the universal human experience of life, but it also represents in a small way a community of musicians who desire to study, perform and record with artists of like mind and spirit. We have given special attention to the presentation of the sound as well, enabling you to experience the music, rather than listen to the music.

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Internationally acclaimed violinist Shem Guibbory, an award winning soloist and chamber musician, has created an indelible mark on the face of today’s new music industry as an extremely talented performer, a creative producer, and a successful entrepreneur. Hailed for his interpretations of 20th Century music, his recording of Violin Phase on the ECM label has become an American classic of avant-garde music. Having founded Innovative Music Programs in 2002, Mr. Guibbory has developed a series of original musical programs with a growing number of affiliate artists, offering the opportunity to serve global communities and organizations through specifically designed projects, recordings, and performances. Throughout his career, he has looked for and found ways to use new music to bring mutual understanding to the global community. With co-creator and director Margaret Booker and writer Robert Schenkkan, he created the musical fable, A Night at the Alhambra Café, which will have its World Premiere Season opening at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in 2011. For the past 15 years, Mr. Guibbory has been a member of the First Violin section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and has appeared as soloist with various other prestigious orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic. He is proud to have been the original violinist in the Steve Reich Ensemble, of recording five CDs with Anthony Davis (Gramavision) including Davis’ violin concerto Maps, co-commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony, as well as performing recitals and chamber music throughout the world. Shem Guibbory made his recital debut at New York City’s Alice Tully Hall in 1988. His recordings can be found on the ECM, Gramavision, Opus 1, Deutsche Grammophon, Albany, Bridge and CRI labels. He has studied with Broadus Erle, Romuald Tecco, Evelyn Read and Sophie Feuermann. 

Canadian-born soprano Susanna Eyton-Jones, whose diverse repertoire includes opera, oratorio and concert music, has sung many of the world’s leading operatic roles, from Donna Anna and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni to Violetta in La Traviata to Lucia in Lucia de Lammermoor throughout North America, Italy and the Netherlands. She has also appeared as Abigaille in Nabucco and Beatrice di Tenda with the Toronto Opera in Concert. Having made her Lincoln Center debut at Avery Fisher Hall in 2005 with Mozart’s Requiem, she has also performed Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, Beethoven’s Symphony No.9, Verdi’s Requiem and oratorio/cantata solos of Bach, Britten, Handel, Haydn, Liszt and Mozart. Her talents as a singer, composer and lead actor are further exemplified in soundtracks and films, such as Strawberries and Wine, Lana in Love, A Bullet in the Head (a recent Canadian entry in the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film), Clair Obscur, and Seductio, among others. Her discography includes a recording by the Début Concert Series entitled An Afternoon at the Opera; Matter, with Centrifugal Force (Mainstream Recordings); Different Angels, with Choeur Maha for Studio XXX; and Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 with the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony. She recently recorded Stephen Hartke’s Iglesia Abandonada. Ms. Eyton-Jones has sung with noted Canadian symphony orchestras, and for five summers appeared as Guest Artist at The Chamber Music Festival of the East. Ms. Eyton-Jones collaborates in performance with members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in works such as the Seven Early Songs of Berg, Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2, and Seven Romanzes by Shostakovich. She has performed Cuatro Canciones Andinas, with composer Gabriela Lena Frank, who is currently composing a symphonic song cycle for Ms. Eyton-Jones entitled, Cifar Songs. A native of Montreal, Ms. Eyton-Jones earned a Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from McGill University and further studied at the Studio Lirico di Firenze, Oakland Opera Academy and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Having won top honors at international competitions, including the Beniamino Gigli International Voice Competition, she has performed as a featured artist in the Début Concert Series and has been recorded on national broadcast for the CBC.

Identity has always been at the center of Gabriela Lena Frank’s music. Born in Berkeley, California, to a mother of Peruvian-Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, Ms. Frank ardently explores her multicultural heritage through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bartók and Ginastera, she is considered by many to be somewhat of a musical anthropologist and her pieces reflect and refract her study of Latin-American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology and native musical styles into a western classical framework uniquely her own. Her compositions include challenging idiomatic parts for solo instrumentalists, vocalists, chamber ensembles and orchestras, as well as reflect her virtuosity as a pianist--when not composing, she is a sought-after performer, specializing in contemporary repertoire. Recent premieres include New Andean Songs for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella new music series, Inca Dance for guitarist Manuel Barrueco and the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Peregrinos for the Indianapolis Symphony and works for guitarist Sharon Isbin, the Chiara Quartet, the Concertante sextet, American Portraits? for the Modesto Symphony, and Two Mountain Songs for a consortium comprising of the Young People’s Chorus of New York, the San Francisco Girl’s Choir and the Glen Ellyn Children’s Choir. Gabriela Frank earned a BA and MA from Rice University in Houston, Texas, and has studied composition with Paul Cooper, Ellsworth Milburn and Sam Jones and piano with Jeanne Kierman Fischer, whom she credits with introducing her to the music of Bartók and Ginastera. She also holds a DMA from the University of Michigan where she studied composition with William Albright, William Bolcom, Leslie Bassett and Michael Daugherty.