American Classics – Awakenings: New American Chamber Music For Guitar Supply

Chamber music breaks exciting new ground with these three works by leading American composers. Aaron Jay Kernis’s beautiful Two Awakenings and a Double Lullaby is a touching song cycle for the unusual combination of soprano, violin, guitar and piano. In the rhythmically agile Aged Tunes, Jorge Liderman contrasts the sonorities of guitar and string quartet. Steven Mackey’s Measures of Turbulence, a remarkably subtle soundscape despite its title, explores the gonglike multiphonic sounds of acoustic and electric guitars. Each of these new pieces was written for the artists who perform them here.