Spindrift Music Company
38 Dexter Road, Lexington, MA 02420
Press Release January 26, 2009
Contact: Pamela Marshall pmarshall [ at ] spindrift.com
Living Artist Recordings releases CD: Just In Time Now and Then
Living Artist Recordings has released a new CD Just In Time Now and Then with music by members of the composers’ collective Just In Time Composers and Players. Local concert-goers will perhaps remember Just In Time concerts in and around Lexington--at Follen Church, First Parish of Lexington, and Middlesex Community College. The group presented concerts from 1997 through 2004. They have since disbanded and members have moved to the West Coast and Germany, but they still get together now and then to talk about music and plan projects. The group’s motto is “to share amusing, thought-provoking, deeply felt music that has arrived Just In Time to move and entertain you.”
The composers and the music
Just In Time Now and Then was instigated by Lexington composer Hayg Boyadjian who had a recording made in Armenia of his Piano Sonata No. 2 and a promise of a release on the Living Artist label, so he enlisted his colleagues to fill out the recording. Boyadjian’s Piano Sonata No. 2 was composed as a tribute to those who died in the Armenian earthquake of September 1988. His intention was to explore his inner feelings and reactions to the tragic event, and evoke an emotional response from the listener.
The other composers on the CD include Lexington composer Pamela J. Marshall with Elusive Sleep for cello and piano. The music is alternate approach to the idea of lullaby, depicting the restless mind as it searches for rest and sleep. She wrote the music for a Just In Time concert in 2003.
Marc W. Rossi, classical and jazz composer/performer and Berklee professor, composed Blues Among Us for cello and presented it on Just In Time concerts in 2000. He created it in the style of an improvisation, with the blues-infused theme returning several times, like a rondo.
John Sarkissian’s Theme and Variations for Piano is another reaction to an earthquake, the one in Los Angeles in 1987. It is a set of 10 variations, some adhering to the theme in the Classical manner and others more free metamorphoses of thematic elements. Sarkissian doesn’t think of the work as programmatic, but it does reflect the evolution of one’s feelings and attempts to understand in the face of a major force of nature. Sarkissian now lives in Germany.
The title of Jorge V. Grossmann’s Pensar Geométrico al Transluz translates as “Thinking Translucently Geometric”. As a native of Peru, Grossmann applies his abstract compositional style to interpret Peruvian themes of personal significance, creating an emotional response to a renewed self-identity. Grossmann is now a professor in Nevada.
Performers
The CD features several brilliant performers. Armenian pianist Ani Yeghiazaryan plays Boyadjian’s Sonata. Austrian pianist Gottlieb Wallisch plays Sarkissian’s Theme and Variations. Boston cellist Rafael Popper-Keizer plays Rossi’s Blues Among Us and is joined by local pianist and professor Carmen Rodríguez-Peralta in Marshall’s Elusive Sleep. The Talea Ensemble plays Grossmann’s Pensar Geométrico al Trasluz. Its members are Daria Binkowski, flute; Victoria Bass, cello; and Alexander Lipowski, percussion.
Boyadjian also created the CD’s cover art. It is a symbolic drawing of five shapes representing the five composers, done in his imaginative and colorful style.
The CD is available at Amazon.com, CDBaby.com, and Marshall’s publishing company Spindrift Music (spindrift.com). Celebrate local music-making and get a copy now!
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