AMERICAN BYWAYS
The Music of Michael Daugherty
Brian Lamb, Conductor


The University of Central Oklahoma Wind Symphony is the premier performing group in the Winds and Percussion Division of the UCO School of Music. During the last decade, they have performed for audiences at three Oklahoma Music Educators Conventions, a College Band Directors National Association Convention, the Society of Composers International Convention, and they have played on both of the famed stages at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Other recent CD releases also include the music of Ernest S. Williams and the wind music of Samuel Magrill.

Brian Lamb, Director of Bands and Professor of Conducting at the University of Central Oklahoma, spearheaded this varried music ranging from full Wind Ensemble to small Chamber Music settings recorded by his top ensemble members.

Michael Daugherty is a Grammy Award winning composer who is one of the most commissioned, performed, and recorded composers on the American concert music scene today. His music is rich with cultural allusions and bears the stamp of classic modernism, with colliding tonalities and blocks of sound; at the same time, his melodies can be eloquent and stirring. Daugherty has been hailed by The Times (London) as "a master icon maker" with a "maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear." Daugherty first came to international attention when the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Zinman, performed his Metropolis Symphony at Carnegie Hall in 1994. Since that time, Daugherty's music has entered the orchestral, band and chamber music repertory and made him, according to the League of American Orchestras, one of the ten most-performed living American composers.

Born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daugherty is the son of a dance-band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. He studied music composition at the University of North Texas, the Manhattan School of Music, and computer music at Pierre Boulez's IRCAM in Paris. Daugherty received his doctorate from Yale University where his teachers included Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, Roger Reynolds, and Bernard Rands. During this time, he also collaborated with jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York, and pursued further studies with composer György Ligeti. After teaching music composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daugherty joined the School of Music at the University of Michigan in 1991, where he is Professor of Composition and a mentor to many of today's most talented young composers.

"To observe the American landscape in Michael Daugherty's company is an unforgettable experience which I had during a long nocturnal walk through the streets of New York. Naturally we talked about music, but our talk was interrupted every minute because he kept stopping ecstatically outside a show window or some public building. He wanted to call my attention to some gadget or individual abounding in symbolic value. Clothing, menus, items for everyday use, gestures, posters, billboards, photographs, and architecture, all inspired lengthy observations endowed with great insight, but, at the same time, an affectionate irony. Like the energy that radiates from the icons housed in our European museums and art galleries, Michael Daugherty's music successfully releases the poetic power of American icons." (Enzo Restagno, Artistic Director, Settembre Musica, Italy)

TRACKS
1. Firecracker [1991]
Kadee Bramlett, oboe soloist; The UCO Chamber Collegium; Brian Lamb, Conductor
13:57
2. Regrets Only [2006]
Hong Zhu, violin; Tess Remy-Schumacher, cello; Ben Davis, piano
11:36
3. Rosa Parks Boulevard [2001]
Jeff Kidwell, Kent Kidwell, Wayne Clark, trobone soloists; The UCO Wind Symphony; Brian Lamb, Conductor
12:10
4. Walk the Walk [2005]
Jared Cathey, bari sax; Nick Steward, percussion; Tommy Goddard, percussion
7:26
5. Blue Like an Orange [1987]
The UCO Chamber Collegium; Brian Lamb, Conductor
10:01
6-8   Diamond in the Rough [2006]
Yida Hu, violin; Michael Jones, viola; Nick Steward, percussion
9:21
6. Magic 3:26
7. Fifty-Five Minutes Past Midnight 3:48
8. Wig Dance 2:27
9. Bizarro [1993]
The UCO Wind Symphony; Brian Lamb, Conductor
10:18
Total Playing Time 75:14

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[CD112]

American Byways CD Image

American Byways CD The Music of Michael Daugherty