New Music for Baritone & Chamber Ensemble

Baritone Thomas Buckner performs works by Annea Lockwood (Luminescence), Tania Leon (Canto), and Petr Kotik (Conceptuality/Life) on this recording. Annea Lockwood is known for her explorations of the rich world of natural acoustic sounds and environments, in works ranging from sound art and installations, through text-sound and performance art to concert music. Lockwood¹s Luminescence is a song cycle based on eight poems from Etel Adnan¹s 'Sea¹. It falls into three movements, opening and closing with Adnan¹s voice. The piece celebrates their three-way friendship and their shared love of the Pacific Ocean. Tania León, born in Cuba, a vital personality on today¹s music scene, is highly regarded as a composer and conductor recognized for her accomplishments as an educator and advisor to arts organizations. León¹s Canto is a song cycle for baritone and mixed ensemble. It is: rhythmically driven lines orbiting each song around its core... multi-dimensional checkerboard of harmonic colors...Diaspora of images in words. Poetic voices of Cuban roots at the center of a musical universe. Petr Kotik is a performing musician (conductor and flutist) and the founder and director of the S.E.M. Ensemble which expanded in 1992 as The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble (debut at Carnegie Hall tribute to John Cage with soloist David Tudor). Kotik¹s Conceptuality/Life was created specifically for Thomas Buckner. The baritone solo is sung simultaneously with instrumental sections excerpted from Kotik¹s Chamber Music (1982). There is no general score and the superimpositions of individual sections are prearranged. The pulse of the music unites all simultaneously performed parts into one homogenous unit.