ANDREW PELLETIER

• Randall Faust

"[The Concerto] is a rewarding work...Call & Response is a welcome tonal introduction to the horn-alone medium...Meditation is a beautiful slow moving, expressive work... Fine performances all around by Andrew Pelletier and friends."
The Horn Call - February 2008
"Randall Faust is a fine composer whose many horn works sound both modern and immediately attractive...The performance are first-rate. Andrew Pelletier has a very full sound and plays with authority and imagination. All three keyboard players collaborate expertly."
American Record Guide - July / August 2007
"Faust's music as presented here searches into the unfathomable, and unable to be articulated in words, realms of what moves us. In this release, he has struck, as far as I am concerned, a proverbial chord, and the result is both joyful and celebratory. Hornist Andrew Pelletier is phenomenal...he is undeniably in tune with what he plays, and Faust provides him a fine showcase. As for the sound on this release, it is in all ways effective...the organ pedals actually pushed my 800-horsepower sound system almost to its limits, but did so cleanly and with no distortion whatsoever."
Fanfare - July / August 2007
"It's hard to decide whether one should be more impressed by the adventurous but lyrical writing of Randall Faust, or by the virtuosic but tasteful playing of the young Andrew Pelletier. Both are very impressive, and this disc is a delight -- one that should find a place in the collection of any library supporting a brass curriculum."
CD Library HotList, April 2007 Randall E. Faust is a Professor of Music at Western Illinois University where he teaches Horn and is the hornist with the Camerata Woodwind Quintet and The Lamoine Brass Quintet. For more than two decades, Dr. Faust served on the Summer Horn Faculty at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. The compositions of Randall E. Faust are regularly heard in concerts and recitals at universities and festivals around the country. The works have been discussed in several doctoral theses, including The Horn in Mixed Media Compositions Through 1991 by James Alan Criswell, Doctor of Musical Arts Dissertation, University of Maryland, 1995 and A Performance Guide to the Horn Works of Randall Edward Faust by Alan Franklin Mattingly, Doctor of Music Treatise, Florida State University, 1998. In 1976, the National Gallery Orchestra of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. commissioned his Concerto for Brass Quintet, Percussion, and Strings. The Quartet for Four Horns, commissioned by Philadelphia Orchestra hornist Randy Gardner in memory of Philip Farkas has been recorded for Summit Records. Faust's Symphony for Band was premiered by the Auburn University Band at the Conference of the Alabama Music Educators Association. Further, his University Scenes for Wind Ensemble was the featured musical composition at the Centennial Convocation of Western Illinois University on April 24, 1999. Faust’s Calls of the Night for Horn and Electronic Media was performed by Steven Gross at Weill Recital Hall in New York on February 7, 2001. Randall E. Faust is an ASCAP artist.
Called "A soloist capable of anything on his instrument" by The Los Angeles Times, hornist Andrew Pelletier is a Grammy Award-winning soloist and chamber musician regularly performing across the United States. He was the first-prize winner of the 1997 and 2001 American Horn Competition; America’s only international competition for the horn, and has been in regular demand for artistic residencies and clinics at universities and conservatories. Mr. Pelletier appeared as a soloist and clinician at the International Horn Society Annual Symposia in 1997, 2003 and 2005. As a member of Southwest Chamber Music, he won a 2005 Grammy Award for Best Classical Recording (small ensemble category) for their recording of the chamber music of Mexican composer Carlos Chavez. His solo recital tours have taken him to 16 states, Quebec, Canada and Shropshire, England. Passionate about furthering the art of the horn through new music, Mr. Pelletier has commissioned and premiered numerous works for the horn from noted composers such as Meredith Brammeier, Carson Cooman, Randall Faust, Christina Laberge, Scott Vaillancourt and Howard Yermish. He spent more than seven years as an active freelance performer in Los Angeles and can be heard on film soundtracks like Lethal Weapon 4 and X-Men, as well as on various television movies for the Lifetime and Sci-Fi channels. He has recorded for Cambria Master Classics, Criterion, Delos and MSR Classics. A native of Lewiston, Maine, Mr. Pelletier holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Southern Maine and a Master’s Degree and Doctorate from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. His primary teachers are hornists John Boden and James Decker and trumpeter Roy Poper. Now residing in Ohio, he is the Assistant Professor of Horn at the Bowling Green State University College of Musical Arts. He performs exclusively on horns by Gebr. Alexander, Mainz, and mouthpieces by Paxman.
Staff Accompanist and Coordinator of Accompanying at Western Illinois University, pianist Jason Aquila received his Master of Music Degree in Accompanying and Chamber Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied with Anne Epperson and Anita Pontremoli. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance from Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. He also spent a summer in the Instrumental Accompanying program at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. He has served as a staff accompanist for the Quartet Program at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, and at the Missouri Fine Arts Academy. Mr. Aquila has participated in Master Classes given by Elly Ameling, Warren Jones, Zvi Zeitlin, Denis Brott, and William Preucil. He has also collaborated with flutist Donald Peck, trumpeter Crispian Steele-Perkins, cellist Bion Tsang, violinist Charles Castleman and mezzo-soprano Mary Ann Hart.
Harpsichordist Hyung-Ja Kim, Assistant Professor Emeritus of Music in Piano at Western Illinois University, received her Bachelor’s Degree in piano at Ewah Women's University, Seoul, Korea where she was selected as an outstanding musician in piano, receiving a Silver Medal for performance. She received her Master of Arts Degree from Western Illinois University and completed Post-graduate study at the University of Illinois. Previous teaching experience includes five years at the Lab School (Junior and Senior High) at Ewah Women's University, and private teaching of piano in Macomb, Illinois. Professor Kim studied piano with John Perry in Aspen, Colorado; piano and harpsichord with William Heiles and Kenneth Cooper; and accompanying with Eric Dalheim. She is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, MTNA and Mu Phi Epsilon.
Brian Rotz is the organist at Monroe Street United Methodist Church, Toledo, and has served as the Director of Music and the Arts at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Toledo, Ohio for more than a decade. His undergraduate studies in music took place at Indiana University with Dr. Robert Rayfield. In 1983 he placed second in the Region IV American Guild of Organists National Open Competition in Organ Playing. In 1984 Brian was awarded the prestigious Performer's Certificate in Organ Performance by the faculty of the School of Music at Indiana, and also won the National First Prize in Organ of the Music Teachers National Association Wurlitzer Collegiate Artists Competition. Mr. Rotz earned a Master of Music degree from Northwestern University as a student of Wolfgang Rubsam. He has completed the final exam period of the doctoral program at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music, where his teacher was Dr. Roberta Gary. He has served previously in church positions at Christ Church Episcopal in Winnetka, Illinois; Trinity Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, Indiana; St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Shreveport, Louisiana; and the Episcopal Church of the ascension in Middletown, Ohio. Brian is the past-Dean of the Toledo Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

 
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www.faustmusic.com RANDALL E. FAUST (b.1947)
Horn Call for Horn and Electronic Media (1976)
Concerto for Horn and Wind Ensemble (1987)
Call and Response for Solo Horn (1997)
The English Folk Songs for Horn and Piano (2006)
Rondo for Horn and Piano (1997)
Declamation: Fantasy Variations for Horn and Harpsichord (2004)
Meditation for Horn and Organ (1983)
celebration for Horn and Organ (1974)
Fantasy on "Von Himmel Hoch" for Horn and Organ (2001)
Sesquicentennial Prelude (2004)
Festive Processional for Horn and Organ (2001-2002)



MSR Classics