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Release Date: August 28, 2020
Catalog #: NV6296
Format: Digital & Physical
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Aero

Contemporary Works For Flute

John Bilotta composer
Mari Kotskyy composer
Carl Vollrath composer
Marvin J Carlton composer
Andrew Lewinter composer
Allen Brings composer
Kenneth Eggert composer
Charles Savage composer

Dieter Flury flute
Dijana Bistrović flute
Ieva Oša piano
Bruno Philipp clarinet
Branimir Pustički cello

From Mozart’s concertos to Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung,” the flute has served as a versatile tool for conveying the spectrum of human emotion. On AERO, flutist Dieter Flury puts decades of study and a handmade golden flute by Yamaha to work to breathe life into works by contemporary composers and spark the imaginations of listeners.

John Bilotta’s Capricci gives the flute a virtuosic encore with three contrasting sections full of syncopation and off-beat gestures. Mari Kotskyy’s Colors offers a cheerful musical landscape filled with conversational harmonies between flute, piano, and clarinet. Three Lais by Allen Brings envisions a poet, alone in a world of sand and stone, reading texts in an ancient tongue. The flute’s delicate side is highlighted by Romance for Flute and Piano by Marvin J. Carlton, a gentle dance that pleases the ear. Ondine’s Flute by Kenneth Eggert depicts a mermaid atop a rock, waves crashing around her as she plays her song. Andrew Lewinter’s Waltz for Flute and Cello brings the two instruments together with a tonal, three-part structure, and Charles Savage’s Mad Rush to the End shows off the power of two flutes with a drive that creates a unified “super-flute.” Carl Vollrath’s The Glass of Absinthe showcases the instrument’s ability to illustrate by capturing the mood of Degas’ painting of the same name.

Over his storied career, Flury has served as Principal Flute of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, soloist with orchestras the world over, and recording artist for a slew of albums from Baroque to contemporary. Behind the scenes, he’s also served as Artistic Director and General Manager of Vienna Philharmonic and a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz.

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"A dizzying display of highly skilled adventurousness."

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Performance Video

John G. Bilotta - Capricci | Dieter Flury, flute; Ieva Oša, piano

Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 Capricci John Bilotta Dieter Flury, flute; Ieva Oša, piano 5:05
02 Colors Mari Kotskyy Dieter Flury, flute; Ieva Oša, piano; Bruno Philipp, clarinet 5:15
03 The Glass of Absinthe Carl Vollrath Dieter Flury, flute; Ieva Oša, piano 8:52
04 Romance for Flute & Piano Marvin J. Carlton Dieter Flury, flute; Ieva Oša, piano 6:49
05 Waltz for Flute & Cello Andrew Lewinter Dieter Flury, flute; Branimir Pustički, cello 6:41
06 3 Lais: No. 1, — Allen Brings Dieter Flury, flute 2:46
07 3 Lais: No. 2, — Allen Brings Dieter Flury, flute 1:25
08 3 Lais: No. 3, — Allen Brings Dieter Flury, flute 2:36
09 Ondine's Flute Kenneth Eggert Dieter Flury, flute 4:56
10 Mad Rush to the End (Arr. for Flute Duet) Charles Savage Dieter Flury, flute; Dijana Bistrović, flute 3:32

Recorded December 9 & 19-21, 2019 at Blagoje Bersa Concert Hall in Zagreb, Croatia
Session Producer Krešimir Seletković
Session Engineer Jan Košulič (Track 5 - 10)
Session Engineer Filip Vidović (Track 1 - 4)
Addtl. Editing (track 3) Krešimir Seletković

Executive Producer Bob Lord

Executive A&R Sam Renshaw
A&R Director Brandon MacNeil
A&R Danielle Lewis, Morgan Santos, Quinton Blue

VP, Audio Production Jeff LeRoy
Recording Sessions Director Levi Brown
Audio Director, Editing & Mixing (track 3) Lucas Paquette

International Recording Sessions Manager, Editing & Mixing (tracks 1, 2, 4-10), Mastering Jan Košulič

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Patrick Niland, Sara Warner

Artist Information

John G. Bilotta

Composer

John G. Bilotta was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, but has spent most his life in the San Francisco Bay Area having attended the University of California at Berkeley and, later, the San Francisco Music and Arts Institute where he studied composition with Frederick Saunders.

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Mari Kotskyy

Composer

Mari Kotskyy is a New York-based award-winning composer, arranger and pianist, originally from Hokkaido, Japan. Her works have been performed throughout Asia, North America, and Europe.

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Carl Vollrath

Composer

Born in New York City to German parents, Carl Vollrath attended Newton High School. He received a B.A. from Stetson University, an M.A. from Columbia University, and an Ed.D. from Florida State University. Vollrath studied composition with Ernst von Dohnanyi Carlisle Floyd, and John Boda. He served with the West Point Military Band at West Point NY from 1953 to 1956 and was a music consultant in Miami FL from 1956 to 1958. He joined the Troy University (AL) faculty in 1965.Major works include six symphonies for band, an opera – The Quest – and a large collection of chamber music, all published by Tap Music (tapmusic.com). MMC Recordings has released three albums of Vollrath’s works, including a two-disc album of clarinet works recorded by Richard Stoltzman entitled Jack’s Fat Cat (2008).

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Marvin J. Carlton

Composer

Marvin J. Carlton is an American composer of opera, art song, symphonic works, choral works, and chamber music. His micro-opera 3D's DANCE HALL won the audience choice award at The Atlanta Opera's 24-Hour Opera Project in 2013, while his opera PIE, PITHE, AND PALLETTE won the judge's award in 2016. His music has been heard in concerts by Belleville (IL) Philharmonic Chorale, Centralia (IL) Philharmonic Orchestra, The Atlanta Opera, International Double Reed Society, St. Martin Chamber Players, Heart of Illinois Woodwind Quintet, The American Patriot Wind Ensemble, the Southern Illinois Grade School Vocal Music Association, and One Ounce Opera (Austin, Tx).

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Andrew Lewinter

Composer

​Before turning his attention to composition, Andrew Lewinter had a long and varied career as an orchestral horn player and soloist. As a composer, Lewinter has a decidedly tonal and neo-romantic style that is often very contrapuntal and always emotionally gripping. His works include sonatas for each of the brass instruments and piano, a quartet for trumpet, horn, trombone and piano, quintets for both horn and string quartet and oboe and string quartet, a woodwind quintet, a string quartet, and a trio for oboe, horn, and piano, among other works scored for a variety of chamber ensembles. Lewinter’s compositions have been widely performed and recorded, and are available on Navona Records and Ablaze records.

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Allen Brings

Composer

A native of New York City, Allen Brings received a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Queens College and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University, where he was a Mosenthal Fellow and a student of Otto Luening, and a doctorate in theory and composition from Boston University, where he was a teaching fellow and a student of Gardner Read.

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Kenneth Eggert

Composer

Kenneth Eggert (b. 1969) began his musical career at age 10, with a love of music theatre and an obsession with the music of Billy Joel. After starting his first of many bands at age 12, he began writing songs for them, which led him to eventually study Music Composition at Carnegie-Mellon University with Marilyn Taft Thomas. Feeling more comfortable at that time in the realm of rock and jazz, he transferred to Berklee College of Music as a Film Scoring major, and then left school to pursue a career in performance.

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Charles Savage

Composer

Charles M. Savage (b. 1958) born in Coshocton, Ohio and a longtime resident of Muskingum County, Ohio. He graduated from Ohio Valley University, Harding University with a B.A. in Music Education, and Ohio University Athens with masters degrees in Music Theory and Composition, and in Music Education. He studied theory and orchestration with William Holloway, and composition with Mark Phillips, voice with Erle. T. Moore and Ira Zook, and conducting with Kenneth Davis, Jr. and Peter Jarjisian.

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Dieter Flury

Flutist

Dieter Flury was born and brought up in Zurich (Switzerland) and studied with Hans Meyer (Principal Flute of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich), André Jaunet (at the Zurich Music Academy), and Aurèle Nicolet. In addition to his flute studies he graduated in mathematics at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. At age 25 he was appointed a member of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and in 1981 he was named Principal Flute of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

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Notes

CAPRICCI was conceived as a colorful virtuosic encore for flute and piano. A single movement approximately five minutes in length, it features three contrasting sections brimming with syncopations and off-beat musical gestures. It opens in an explosion of energy followed by an elegant central section and closes with a light-hearted dance. The first concert performances of Capricci occurred November 12-13, 2016, in Palo Alto and Belmont, California. The performers for both concerts were Teressa Orozco, flute, and Libby Kardontchik, piano.

— John Bilotta

COLORS This piece features three different “Colors.” One day in early April I was walking down the street and found that a yellow butterfly was flying around a yellow flower. The yellow colors gave me an optimistic feeling. It made me realize how colors affect people’s emotions. In the spring, flowers are in full bloom and people enjoy the colorful scenery. I can imagine people’s good feelings. On the other hand, the gray sky of winter does not produce any pleasant emotions, so the people decorate their houses with colorful lights to create nice atmosphere and generate positive emotions. I wanted to make “feel-good music.”

The piece represents the three colors, yellow, blue, and orange. The beginning of the piece represents yellow for happiness and optimism. The middle of the piece represents blue, conveying trust, calmness and peace. The end of the piece, comes back to a positive color, orange, to represent confidence and cheerfulness.

— Mari Kotskyy

This piece is an attempt to capture the mood of the painting by Edgar Degas, The Glass of Absinthe. It was written sometime in the early 21st Century for a student who showed promise as a performer but for some unknown reason never performed it, although they expressed interest in playing it.

— Carl Vollrath

The term "romance" generally implies a specially personal or tender quality. The Romance for flute and piano is written in ABA form with each section seperated by a cadenza for the solo flute.

The work opens with a gentle dance in the key of C. The flute and piano share several moments of interplay between each other. The first cadenza is in the key of G and leads into a more contemplative musical idea. This is followed by a shortened version of the cadenza. The dance returns in a shortened version to conclude the piece.

"Romance for flute and piano" was premiered on December 11, 2016 with flutist Ruth Chaput and the composer at the piano.

— Marvin J. Carlton

WALTZ FOR FLUTE AND CELLO was composed for Dawn Weiss, the former Principal flute player of the Oregon Symphony. It is tonal and has a three-part (A-B-A) structure.

— Andrew Lewinter

It wasn’t until I had completed the composition of the first of the three lais in 1975 that it occurred to me how it suggested a poem in an ancient tongue read aloud in an environment of stone and desert sand by a solitary poet and so could be called a “lai.” In 1985 I thought that the first lai might welcome the company of two others and so be regarded as the welcome member of a trio, each of which would express itself in a similar, seemingly improvisational, language that forsakes rhythmic rigidity in favor of an inspired, almost unpredictable, flow. It is for this reason that the three lais, I believe, are best performed together, each one supporting the others.

—Allen Brings

ONDINE’S FLUTE was written in 2012, while I was working on my MA at Montclair State. It was one of the first pieces I composed in my Hexagonal Modes, a modal system that I developed over 12 years’ time and used as the basis of my doctoral dissertation in 2017. Ondine uses Hexagonal Mode 8, a mode I call Phrygionian, because it is essentially a hybrid of the Phrygian and Ionian modes. It has also been referred to as “Whole Tone Plus,” and one example of its previous use is by Charles Ives in his Concord Sonata.

I associate this mode with the element of water. The name Ondine, besides being the name of one of my earliest elementary school crushes, is one of the names given to the mythical being that represents the element water, the mermaid. As I composed the piece I had an image in my mind of the Ondine sitting on a rock formation in the middle of the ocean, with the waves splashing foam over and behind her, playing this song on her flute. The song alternates between the Ondine expressing love for all life that is sustained by her, and chastising us for our callous disregard for the health of the world’s waters.

My intent was twofold. First, I wish to share Hexagonal Mode Theory with other composers, and Ondine serves as an accessible work that promotes it. Second, I would hope to raise awareness of the need to do more to protect the water. With all that is happening in the world today, from the poisoned tap water of Flint, Michigan, to the radioactive leakage of the Fukushima reactor into the Pacific Ocean, to the various oil spills and the corporations seeking to permanently own sources of spring water, the health of our water is at risk, and our access to clean water is constantly under threat. Without water, there is no life on Earth…therefore, it is sacred, and access to it is a basic human right. We must do better at keeping it safe and available for future generations.

—Kenneth Eggert

MAD RUSH TO THE END, written for Cynthia Krenzel and Thomas Doggett in 2001, has received national and international performances. Dieter Flury said, "Charles Savage arranged his own piece 'Mad Rush to the End' for two flutes. The result is a very effective duo giving the two players the opportunity to produce an unstoppable drive by means of a sort of singular 'super-flute.'" Each of the parts recognize and support each other, as well as challenge the opposite voice to accelerate to a harmonious and united conclusion.

— Charles M. Savage

Scores

Capricci (excerpt)

John G. Bilotta

Waltz for Flute and Cello (excerpt)

Andrew Lewinter

Three Lais for Solo Flute

Allen Brings

Ondine's Flute

Kenneth Eggert