BETH ANDERSON

• Anderson: The Praying Mantis and the Bluebird

“Beth Anderson’s most recent collection...maintains an integrated, sometimes meditative mood, while paying respect to Baroque and Renaissance traditions as well as minimalist style... Anderson’s compositions are deceptive in that the traditional instrumentation can belie the modern techniques she integrates so naturally... indeed both a beautiful recording and a testament to the sophisticated compositional ideas and techniques of Beth Anderson.”

Sara Holtzschue, IAWM [June 2015]

“Much of Anderson’s music is modal and very straightforward to hear and to play... The collaborators are all quite good, as is Anderson in her supporting role.”

Gorman, American Record Guide [January/February 2015]

“These new compositions are quirky and fun, and often very melodic - a great way to explore new music of a new composer. The instrumental groupings add to the interest, with a variety of combinations of winds and strings. New music is always for the adventuresome, and this particular CD has a lot of rewards for the listener.”

Kara Dahl Russell, DELMARVA Public Radio Blog [October 2014]

“This is a most charming recording with an exquisitely played program, and the sound makes the listener feel the cool, clear acoustic of a small chamber music hall. I love the young, open face of Beth Anderson on the back cover of the booklet; it makes people want to hear her music. I enjoyed this disc and recommend it as an antidote to a trying day.”

Maria Nockin, Fanfare [November/December 2014]

“[In] The Praying Mantis and the Bluebird...evokes its subjects’ delicacy and beauty. And while many of the selections reflect her fascination with John Cage-ian indeterminacy, they’re engagingly playful. The 20-minute “Skate Suite” (for baroque flute, alto recorder, baroque cello, and harpsichord) delights even at its strangest.”

Arsenio Orteza, World Magazine [September 2014]

Beth Anderson is a composer of new romantic music, text-sound works, and music theater events. She has composed and has had produced an opera, an oratorio, three off-off Broadway musicals, several downtown music theater collaborations, music for orchestra, voice, chorus, tape, instrumental solos with and without electronic modulation, and a large amount of chamber music, in the United States, Europe and in China, on radio and in concert. Born in Kentucky, Anderson studied primarily in California with John Cage, Terry Riley, Robert Ashley and Larry Austin at Mills College (MFA, MA) and the University of California at Davis (BA). Her early work was considered post-Cage and non-academic, but later the music became more lyrical while retaining the cut-up quality of the minimalists. Recent recordings appear on New World (Swales & Angels), Albany (Quilt Music), Pogus (Peachy Keen-O) and Other Minds (10+2). Anderson has taught at New York University, Mills College Preparatory, New York City Public Schools, Young Audiences, New School for Social Research, D.C. 37 and the College of New Rochelle. Articles authored by her have been published in Heresies Magazine, Paid My Dues, The Soho Weekly News and in Ear Magazine, which she created, edited and published in New York City and edited and published in San Francisco. Anderson resides in New York City where she teaches piano and recorder. [ www.beand.com ]

Andrew Bolotowsky is a well-known and frequently recorded flautist from New York City. He studied with William Kincaid, Elaine Schaffer and Jean-Pierre Rampal. He has performed more than 3000 concerts throughout the United States, with numerous orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the region, including the Pan American Orchestra, Westchester Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Brooklyn Baroque, Soho Baroque Opera Company, Downtown Music Ensemble and Wood Hill Chamber Players. Bolotowsky has performed live on numerous radio stations including WNYC as well as on NBC and CBS television. He has given premieres of countless new works for flute by composers such as Dave Brubeck, Alan Hovhaness, Frank Wigglesworth, Jackson MacLow and Beth Anderson, and can be heard on many record labels including Newport Classics, 4-Tay, Frog Peak, Stereo Society, New World Records, Orion, Quill Classics, Sonic Muse and CRI. Andrew Bolotowsky plays a Sankyo-Prima gold flute, alto flute, C flute, baroque flute, Shakuhachi, and a silver flute with Peter Noy wooden head joint.

Recorder player Gregory Bynum has received fellowships to study in England and at the Amherst Early Music Festival in Massachusetts. He has studied recorder with Marion Verbruggen, Han Tol, Matthias Weilenman, Matthias Maute, Nina Stern and Pamela Thorby, and has performed with
Brooklyn Baroque, with members of the Yale Music faculty including Jaap Schroeder, and with faculty of the Mannes College of Music. Bynum has taught at the Bloomingdale House of Music in Manhattan and in the music program at the Center for Creative Youth in Middletown, Connecticut. A Co-Director of the chamber series Music at Morris-Jumel and a former member of the Manhattan Recorder Orchestra, he also appears as a guest performer on the recordings Northern Lights: Music by Brunnemüller, Telemann, Bach, and Richter (Quill Classics 1005) and The Pleasures of the French: Music of Hotteterre, Boismortier, Jacquet de la Guerre, Corrette, Couperin and Barrière (Quill Classics 1007). In addition, he has performed live on New York City’s WKCR and WNYC radio stations.

Cellist David Bakamjian performs regularly as a recitalist, ensemble player and recording artist. As
a member of the Casa Verde Trio, he was a winner or finalist in four international chamber music
competitions. He has performed as soloist with the Allentown Symphony, Philharmonia Virtuosi,
Beijing Symphony, Bachanalia Festival Orchestra, Musica Bella, Hunterdon Symphony, Lehigh
University Philharmonic and Ensemble for Early Music in New York. He has served as principal cellist for several orchestras, including the Berkshire Opera, New York Grand Opera, Bachanalia, High Mountain Symphony and Miss Saigon theater orchestra on Broadway. Bakamjian is a founding member of Brooklyn Baroque, whose CDs were each deemed a “must buy” by the American Record Guide. He performs on baroque cello with Concert Royal, American Classical Orchestra, Ensemble for Early Music and the Long Island Baroque Ensemble. His recent CD of cello sonatas by Boismortier received critical acclaim. Bakamjian earned his BA from Yale University where he studied with Aldo Parisot, and his Master’s and Doctorate degrees at SUNY Stony Brook, where he studied with Timothy Eddy and Bernard Greenhouse. Bakamjian served as a faculty member of Lehigh University for eight years.

Born in New York City, Rebecca Pechefsky has degrees from Columbia University, Queens College, and the CUNY Graduate Center. A founding member of Brooklyn Baroque, she has performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall; in series such as Music at Morris-Jumel, American Festival of Microtonal Music and Miami Bach Society; at the Boston Early Music Festival fringe series, the Berkeley Festival Fringe, and the Harpsichord Center of Southern California. She has also given concerts in Italy and Amsterdam. Pechefsky has premiered works by Frank Oteri, Louis Pelosi, Mary Inwood, Mark Janello, Graham Lynch, Johnny Reinhard and Ben Yarmolinsky. For the Quill Classics label, she recorded the complete harpsichord works of François d’Agincour and J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. Another release on Quill, “Bach and his Circle”, featuring the music of J.S. Bach and his contemporaries, won a 2009 Just Plain Folks Award for Best Classical Solo Album. Currently organist at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Glendale, Queens, Pechefsky lives in
Brooklyn with her husband, Erik Ryding, with whom she co-authored Bruno Walter: A World Elsewhere, winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award.
 
BETH ANDERSON
THE PRAYING MANTIS AND THE BLUEBIRD
for flute and piano (1979)

SKATE SUITE
for baroque flute, alto recorder, baroque cello and harpsichord (1979/2012)
   I. Morse Code Preamble
   II. Bisecting Canons
   III. Developmental Waltz
   IV. Evolutionary Waltz
   V. Water Strider Corrente
   VI. Oh, So: Arioso
   VII. Pectoral Balletto
   VIII. Encircling Gigue

THE EIGHTH ANCESTOR
for baroque flute, alto recorder, baroque cello and harpsichord (1980)

LULLABY OF THE EIGHTH ANCESTOR
for C flute and piano (1980)

PREPARATION FOR THE DOMINANT: OUTRUNNING THE INEVITABLE
for ocarina (1979)

DR. BLOOD’S MERMAID LULLABY
for flute and piano (1980)

SHAKUHACHI RUN
for Shakuhachi (1981)

FLUTE SWALE
for alto flute (1995)

SEPTEMBER SWALE
for flute and piano (1999)

COMMENT
for flute (2003)

KUMMI DANCE
for flute and piano (2011)
 




MSR Classics