LESLIE BASSETT: MUSIC FOR PIANO
AND PIANO-VIOLIN DUO

Gabriela Lena Frank, Piano
Wendolyn Olson, Violin

Leslie Bassett (b. January 22, 1923) received early musical training in California. Following service as trombonist and arranger with Army bands in the U.S., France and Germany during World War II, he became a pupil of Ross Lee Finney, Roberto Gerhard, and, as a 1950 Fulbright Fellow, with Nadia Boulanger and Arthur Honegger in Paris. He has been awarded the Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, two Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships, the Naumburg Recording Award, and is the Albert A. Stanley Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Michigan, where he was the 1984 Henry Russel Lecturer, the University's highest faculty honor. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Mr. Bassett received the 1966 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Variations for Orchestra, following its U.S. premiere by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. His U.S. Bicentennial score, Echoes from an Invisible World, has received over 60 performances by the country's finest orchestras. There have been performances of some of his dozen orchestral scores by Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Rome, Zurich, Chicago, Detroit, Florida, Seattle, Indianapolis, Moravia, Grand Rapids, Oporto, Syracuse, Baltimore, American Composers Orchestra, Toledo, and others. His most recent Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra (Peters #67970) will be released on Equilibrium Records in performance by Clifford Leaman and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Kenneth Kiesler, conductor.