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Second Flight

James David composer
Jennifer Higdon composer
Joan Tower composer
Philip Glass composer
John Adams composer
David Biedenbender composer

Dan Goble alto & soprano saxophones
Russell Hirshfield piano

Release Date: June 14, 2024
Catalog #: NV6634
Format: Digital
21st Century
Solo Instrumental
Piano
Saxophone

Saxophonist Dan Goble and pianist Russell Hirshfield join forces on SECOND FLIGHT to deliver virtuosic performances of works by a variety of today’s leading composers, several of them winners of GRAMMY® awards, the Pulitzer Prize, and more.

The title track is Joan Tower’s exhilarating sequel to the popular clarinet piece Wings; written explicitly for the saxophone, echoing the grandeur of flight and the vastness of the human spirit. Jennifer Higdon’s dynamic Yes, No, Maybe? captivates with its intricate melodies and compelling rhythms, a testament to her mastery of contemporary composition. James David’s Pradakshina: Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano takes inspiration from the Buddhist architecture of Colorado’s Great Stupa, finding connection between the seemingly disparate composition and improvisation.

Three-time Academy Award winner Philip Glass and Pulitzer Prize for Music laureate John Adams contribute pieces that resonate with depth and humanity, while critically-acclaimed composer David Biedenbender’s Images offers a glimpse into the ethereal realms of dreams and imagination.

Produced by multiple GRAMMY®-winner Judith Sherman, SECOND FLIGHT unites today’s foremost compositional figures with the inimitable talents of Goble and Hirshfield, who celebrate 20 years of collaboration in the arts with this release.

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Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 Pradakshina: Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano (2018): I. Prelude a la Courante James David Dan Goble, alto saxophone; Russell Hirshfield, piano 3:41
02 Pradakshina: Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano (2018): II. Ciacona di “Gradus” James David Dan Goble, alto saxophone; Russell Hirshfield, piano 6:10
03 Pradakshina: Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano (2018): III. Hoquetus James David Dan Goble, alto saxophone; Russell Hirshfield, piano 5:06
04 Yes, No, Maybe? (2021) Jennifer Higdon Dan Goble, alto saxophone; Russell Hirshfield, piano 7:54
05 Second Flight (2018) Joan Tower Dan Goble, alto saxophone 7:31
06 Facades (from Glassworks) (1981) Philip Glass Dan Goble, soprano saxophone; Russell Hirshfield, piano 7:17
07 Postmark (from Fearful Symmetries) (1989) John Adams Dan Goble, soprano saxophone; Russell Hirshfield, piano 3:05
08 Images (2008): I. Deep David Biedenbender Dan Goble, alto saxophone; Russell Hirshfield, piano 3:31
09 Images (2008): II. Still David Biedenbender Dan Goble, alto saxophone; Russell Hirshfield, piano 7:34
10 Images (2008): III. Wild David Biedenbender Dan Goble, alto saxophone; Russell Hirshfield, piano 6:12

Recorded March 13-14 & May 22-24, 2023 at the Veronica Hageman Concert Hall, Western Connecticut State University in Danbury CT
Session Producer & Engineer Judith Sherman
Session Engineer & Editing Assistant Jeanne Velonis
Mastering Judith Sherman

Piano Technician Christopher Ferrell
Saxophone Technician Shawna Glendenning

Executive Producer Bob Lord

VP of A&R Brandon MacNeil
A&R Chris Robinson

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Aidan Curran
Digital Marketing Manager Brett Iannucci

Artist Information

Dan Goble

Saxophonist

Dr. Dan Goble currently serves as the director of the School of Music, Theatre and Dance at Colorado State University in Fort Collins CO and was previously the Dean of the School of Visual and Performing Arts at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury CT. An arts administrator who is also an active performer, Goble performed with the New York Philharmonic for over 19 years, and was featured with the orchestra as the saxophone soloist on Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and Ravel’s Bolero, among other works. In addition to the New York Philharmonic, Goble has performed with the New York City Ballet, The American Symphony Orchestra, The Mariinsky Orchestra, the New York Saxophone Quartet, and the Harvey Pittel Saxophone Quartet.

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Russell Hirshfield

Pianist

Pianist Russell Hirshfield has received critical acclaim for his original and powerful interpretive insights across a wide repertoire. He has performed in recitals regularly throughout the world, giving concerts across the United States, Brazil, China, Belgium, England, Serbia, Costa Rica, and South Africa, including recent performances at the Sheldonian Theater and Holywell Music Room in Oxford, and the Royal Flemish Academy in Brussels. His latest solo recording, ALEXANDER SCRIABIN: EARLY WORKS (Navona Records, 2020) has been programed in radio broadcasts in at least 20 countries. It features a brilliant program of Scriabin’s earlier, and lesser-known, works for solo piano.

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James David

composer

Dr. James M. David is an internationally recognized composer who currently serves as professor of music composition at Colorado State University and is particularly known for his works involving winds and percussion. His symphonic works for winds have been performed by some of the nation’s most prominent professional and university ensembles including the U.S. Air Force Band, the U.S. Army Field Band, the Dallas Winds, the Des Moines Symphony, the Showa Wind Symphony (Japan), and the North Texas Wind Symphony among many others.

His compositions have been presented at more than 50 national and international conferences throughout North and South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Among the distinctions David has earned as a composer are the 2022 William D. Revelli Award, an ASCAP Morton Gould Award, the National Band Association Merrill Jones Award, national first-place winner in the MTNA Young Artists Composition Competition, two Global Music Awards, and national first-place winner in the National Association of Composers (USA) Young Composers Competition.

His music is available through Murphy Music Press, C. Alan Publications, Wingert Jones Publications, and Potenza Music and has been recorded for the Naxos, Mark, GIA WindWorks, Albany, Summit, Luminescence, and MSR Classics labels.

jamesmdavid.com

​Jennifer Higdon

composer

​Jennifer Higdon is one of America’s most acclaimed and most frequently performed living composers. She is a major figure in contemporary Classical music, receiving the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, a 2010 GRAMMY® Award for her Percussion Concerto, a 2018 Grammy for her Viola Concerto and a 2020 Grammy for her Harp Concerto. In 2018, Higdon received the Nemmers Prize from Northwestern University which is given to contemporary classical composers of exceptional achievement who have significantly influenced the field of composition. Most recently, the recording of Higdon’s Percussion Concerto was inducted into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. Higdon enjoys several hundred performances a year of her works, and blue cathedral is today’s most performed contemporary orchestral work, with more than 600 performances worldwide. Her works have been recorded on more than 70 CDs. Higdon’s first opera, Cold Mountain, won the prestigious International Opera Award for Best World Premiere and the opera recording was nominated for two GRAMMY® awards.

jenniferhigdon.com

Joan Tower

composer

Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of the most important American composers living today. During a career spanning more than 60 years, she has made lasting contributions to musical life in the United States as composer, performer, conductor, and educator. Her works have been commissioned by major ensembles, soloists, and orchestras, including the Emerson, Tokyo, and Muir quartets; soloists Alisa Weilerstein, Evelyn Glennie, Carol Wincenc, David Shifrin, Paul Neubauer, and John Browning; and the orchestras of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Nashville, Albany, and Washington DC among others. Her 2021 commissioned premieres included the cello concerto A New Day and the orchestral 1920/2019.

In 2020, Chamber Music America honored her with its Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award; Musical America chose her to be its 2020 Composer of the Year; in 2019 the League of American Orchestras awarded her its highest honor, the Gold Baton. Tower is the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission of 65 orchestras. Leonard Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony recorded Made in America in 2006 (along with Tambor and Concerto for Orchestra). In 2008 the album collected three GRAMMY® awards: Best Contemporary Classical Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance. Nashville’s latest all-Tower recording includes Stroke, which received a GRAMMY® nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

In 1990 she became the first woman to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Silver Ladders, a piece she wrote for the St. Louis Symphony where she was Composer-in-Residence from 1985–1988. Other residencies with orchestras include a 10-year residency with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (1997–2007) and the Pittsburgh Symphony (2010–2011). She was the Albany Symphony’s Mentor Composer partner in the 2013–2014 season. Tower was co-founder and pianist for the Naumburg Award winning Da Capo Chamber Players from 1970–1985. She has received honorary doctorates from Smith College, the New England Conservatory, and Illinois State University. She is Asher Edelman Professor of Music at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972. Tower’s music is published by Associated Music Publishers.

wisemusicclassical.com/composer/1605/Joan-Tower

Philip Glass

composer

Through his operas, his symphonies, his compositions for his own ensemble, and his wide-ranging collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen to David Bowie, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times.

The operas — Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, Akhnaten, and The Voyage, among many others – play throughout the world’s leading houses, and rarely to an empty seat. Glass has written music for experimental theater and for Academy Award-winning motion pictures such as The Hours and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, while Koyaanisqatsi, his initial filmic landscape with Godfrey Reggio and the Philip Glass Ensemble, may be the most radical and influential mating of sound and vision since Fantasia. His associations, personal and professional, with leading rock, pop, and world music artists date back to the 1960s, including the beginning of his collaborative relationship with artist Robert Wilson. Indeed, Glass is the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film and in popular music — simultaneously.

Glass has composed more than 25 operas, large and small; 14 symphonies, 13 concertos; soundtracks to films ranging from new scores for the stylized classics of Jean Cocteau to Errol Morris’s documentary about former defense secretary Robert McNamara; nine string quartets; and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, and Doris Lessing, among many others.

philipglass.com

John Adams

composer

Composer, conductor, and creative thinker John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of American music. His works stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes.

Among Adams’ works are several of the most performed contemporary classical pieces today: Harmonielehre, Shaker Loops, Chamber Symphony, Doctor Atomic Symphony, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and his Violin Concerto. His stage works, in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, include Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, Doctor Atomic, A Flowering Tree, and the Passion oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary. Adams’ most recent opera, Girls of the Golden West, set during the 1850s California Gold Rush, was premiered by the San Francisco Opera in 2017.

In 2019, Adams received Holland’s prestigious Erasmus Prize, “for contributions to European culture,” the only American composer ever chosen for this award. Adams has additionally received honorary doctorates from Harvard, Yale, Northwestern University, Cambridge University, and the Juilliard School. Since 2009 he has held the position of Creative Chair with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A provocative writer, he is author of the highly acclaimed autobiography Hallelujah Junction and is a contributor to the New York Times Book Review.

Adams’ 2019 piano concerto Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? was recently recorded by pianist Yuja Wang with the LA Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, and released by Deutsche Grammophon.

Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.

David Biedenbender

composer

Composer David Biedenbender’s music has been described as “simply beautiful” (twincities.com) and is noted for its “rhythmic intensity” (NewMusicBox) and “stirring harmonies” (Boston Classical Review). “Modern, venturesome, and inexorable… The excitement, intensity, and freshness that characterizes Biedenbender’s music hung in the [air] long after the last note was played” (Examiner.com). Biedenbender has written music for the concert stage as well as for dance and multimedia collaborations, and his work is often influenced by his diverse musical experiences in rock and jazz bands as an electric bassist, in wind, jazz, and New Orleans-style brass bands as a euphonium, bass trombone, and tuba player, and by his study of Indian Carnatic Music.

His present creative interests include working with everyone from classically trained musicians to improvisers, acoustic chamber music to large ensembles, and interactive electronic interfaces to live brain data. He has had the privilege of collaborating with and being commissioned by many renowned performers and ensembles, including Alarm Will Sound, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Albany (NY) Symphony Orchestra, Stenhammar String Quartet, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, U.S. Navy Band, Philharmonie Baden-Baden (Germany), VocalEssence, and Eastman Wind Ensemble, among many others.

He is currently Associate Professor of Composition in the College of Music at Michigan State University. He holds degrees in composition from the University of Michigan and Central Michigan University and has also studied at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, the Aspen Music Festival, and in Mysore, India where he studied carnatic music.

davidbiedenbender.com

Notes

“Pradakshina: Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano was inspired by a recent trip I took to the Great Stupa located near the Red Feather Lakes CO. The stupa is a remarkable example of Buddhist architecture, especially among those in the Western hemisphere, and is renowned for both its impressive scale and connection to the surrounding landscape. Like many stupas, visitors are encouraged to circumambulate the building as a form of meditation known as pradakshina. During my circular walk, I found myself thinking about the nature of music as both a product of the intellect and a physical experience, and also how improvisation and composition are similar, but fundamentally opposite. My saxophone sonata is an attempt to manifest these ideas.”

— James David

David’s music is available through Murphy Music Press, C. Alan Publications, Wingert Jones Publications, and Potenza Music and has been recorded for the Naxos, Mark, GIA WindWorks, Albany, Summit, Luminescence, and MSR Classics labels.

Yes, No, Maybe? was commissioned by the North American Saxophone Alliance for their 2022 Collegiate Solo Competition as required repertoire for the final round. It was premiered by the first-place winner, Colin Crake. Higdon’s music is published exclusively by Lawdon Press.

“I followed some of the imagery of flying from Wings — my clarinet solo from 1981 — in Second Flight (which also includes a snippet of music from that earlier work). To me, the saxophone matches the power of the clarinet in its ability to do so many different things — its slow-to-fast speeds, soft-to-loud dynamics, short-to-long notes, and huge register — which gives it a great musical expressive flexibility. This all inspired me — again — to think of something powerful that flies high and wide above a large landscape.”

— Joan Tower

Second Flight is Joan Tower’s sequel to the highly acclaimed Wings, originally for clarinet, and later transcribed for saxophone. The World-Wide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Fund, an organization founded by Ken Radnofsky 25 years ago, organized the co-commission of Second Flight by 50 saxophonists. Their premieres took place around the world beginning September 30, 2018.

“During my time performing with the New York City Ballet Orchestra I had the privilege of sitting in the saxophone section with among the finest saxophonists in the music industry, including Al Regni, Ed Joffe, Lino Gomez, John Campo, Dennis Anderson, and Allen Won, among others. Fearful Symmetries is a stunning work that features a full saxophone section and especially the soprano saxophone in the section of the ballet presented on this recording. I have fond memories of listening to Al Regni perform this solo beautifully and flawlessly, night after night during our residencies in Saratoga Springs NY. I typically played baritone saxophone in the section, so did not perform this solo with the orchestra, and am thrilled to be able to present it as part of this project.

Glassworks is a part of the NYC Ballet’s standard repertoire rotation and also features brilliant choreography and virtuosic dancing. The excerpt included on this recording is one that I played soprano on several times, but for the most part, I played tenor saxophone on this piece with the orchestra. The performance of both of these ballet excerpts is dedicated to my mentors and colleagues, Al, Ed, John, Dennis, Lino, and Allen.”

— Dan Goble

“I wrote Images following a dream I had one night. After waking from this dream, I was left with a rather indistinct image of what had actually taken place, yet the impression that it left on me was so unmistakably vivid, I felt compelled to write this piece based on the elusive memory. The first is sleep and lucidity; the second articulates a beautiful stillness that is distorted and then transformed back to tranquility; and the third reflects a wild, late night jam session.”

— David Biedenbender