Ascot Media Group Blog
  • Home
  • prestissmo strings
Welcome to the Ascot Media Group BLOG! Visit our main website at www.ascotmedia.com

Posts Tagged ‘prestissmo strings’

Award-Winning Composers and World-Class Musicians Bring Three Tributes CD to Life

Award-Winning Composers and World-Class Musicians Bring Three Tributes CD to Life

Immerse yourself in an emotional violin solo, get swept up by stunningly prestissimo strings, and experience the layered splendor of four hands on two pianos. Three Tributes is a music CD (with an accompanying booklet) featuring three breathtaking, original scores that would make a welcome addition to anyone’s collection of chamber orchestra music.

The CD features award-winning composers Kevin Puts, Andrea Clearfield and Gunther Schuller, along with a host of world-class performers. Three Tributes was commissioned by fellow musicians (and brothers) Robert and James Freeman as a way of honoring their family’s musical legacy, which spans three generations. Their parents, Henry and Florence Knope Freeman, were both children of musicians and graduated the Eastman School of Music in Rochester in 1930.

Both Robert and James Freeman studied piano and theory at Cambridge’s Longy School while graduating from Milton Academy, and studied performance during the summers at Tanglewood, Blue Hill and Marlboro. They went on to Harvard, where each graduated with honors, followed by travelling fellowships for study in Europe.

Robert took his Ph.D. in music history at Princeton and taught there for five years before moving to MIT, where he made tenure just before moving for 24 years to the directorship of the Eastman School — his parents’ alma mater — followed by two years as president of the New England Conservatory and six as dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

James went straight from Harvard to Swarthmore College, where he taught and conducted for 37 years, served as departmental chair for 16 years and as Daniel Underhill Professor of Music. In 1988 he founded Philadelphia’s new music group Orchestra 2001, directing it until 2015 when he resigned to take on a new ensemble, Chamber Orchestra FIRST EDITIONS. In 1991 he was a Fulbright lecturer and conductor at the Moscow Conservatory, and has returned to Moscow many times since then to give concerts of new American music.

Both brothers have made lots of recordings, and have published their share of well-reviewed books and articles. When the idea arose to commission some original scores to honor their family legacy, Robert and James sought out music’s finest to bring their vision for Three Tributes to fruition.

Two of the composers featured on the CD have won the Pulitzer Prize. Kevin Puts is currently at work on an opera for the Metropolitan Opera. Andrea Clearfield, who took her DMA at Temple, is the founder of the Philadelphia Salon Concert Series, featuring contemporary, classical, jazz, world and electronic music, together with multimedia and spoken word arts. The late Gunther Schuller was one of the 20th Century’s music stars as composer, conductor, author and administrator. He was a great admirer of their father’s bass playing, and a good friend.

Robert and James hope that Three Tributes will inspire others to undertake similar projects. Neither of them is aware of any similar event in the history of music where two brothers from a family of professional musicians — spanning at least two generations before them — have commissioned significant works as a tribute to their parents and for future generations to enjoy.

Three Tributes CD
Available at: https://www.innova.mu/albums/james-and-robert-freeman/three-tributes

Trish Stevens
Teresa Hinojosa
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
832.569.5773 Direct
281.333.3507 Phone
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail