ABOUT THE WORKS The first recording of works by composer Andy Vores, described by Lloyd Schwartz in The Boston Phoenix as "the most compelling of the generation of Boston-based composers after John Harbison" and "brilliant and always surprising". Richard Dyer of The Boston Globe says "Vores's elegantly fashioned music is passionate and dodgy". Quartet No.3 was commissioned by ChamberMusic America for the Borromeo String Quartet in 1997. It has five movements: Land-introductory; snippets of music that will return later ending with a stream of chords accelerating and decelerating. Electricity-a pentatonic melody is heard against and over insistent surging techno-flavored dance music; they fuse and stop with repeated notes speeding up and slowing down. Pansori-loosely based on the Korean form of musical recitation. The cello's speech-like line is interrupted increasingly by the rest of the quartet playing chords first heard in Land. Mahalia-taken from the gospel song "How I Got Over" (in particular, performances by Mahalia Jackson and by Aretha Franklin). The music gets headier as it closes, climbing higher and higher as one by one the lower instruments drop out. Pastorale-A recomposing of a Boccherini Concerto Grosso, but with the sections extremely compressed and the musical language quite changed; a nod to an imagined period of gushing fountains, boarhunts, and baroque ornamentation. Kreutzette was written for the Lewin-Muresanu Duo as a foil to the Kreutzer Sonata. It isn't exactly a set of variations; it isn't exactly a paraphrase; nor is it a fantasia; more an excursion around one or two of the most arresting moments in the Beethoven. Urban Affair, commissioned by the Bank America Celebrity Series for The Boston Trio, describes the course of an amorous involvement in nine short related movements constructed palendromically around In Deep, the passionate heart of the work. ABOUT THE COMPOSER Andy Vores was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1956 and has lived in the United States since 1987. In 1986 he was a Fellow in Composition at Tanglewood, studying with Oliver Knussen. Hammer and Darkness, Mirror and Knife, written that summer, was awarded the Tanglewood Prize for Composition. Commissions include Return to a Place for Sanford Sylvan and David Breitman, Wetherby Nocturne for Kathy Supové, Cleopatra for Dominique Labelle, Goback Goback for Collage New Music, World Wheel for The Cantata Singers, Umberhulk for Boston Musica Viva, An Other I for the New England Philharmonic with violinist Danielle Maddon, and Uncertainty Is Beautiful for BMOP with soprano Kendra Colton. His comic opera Freshwater was commissioned by the Boston University Opera Institute. His song "In a Parlor Containing a Table" has been performed frequently by Dawn Upshaw and Gil Kalish throughout the US and in Europe. From 1999 to 2001 he was Composer-in-Residence to the BankBoston Celebrity Series: Emerging Artists. He is currently Composer-in-Residence for the New England Philharmonic. Since 2001 he has taught at The Boston Conservatory where he is Chair of Composition, Theory, and Music History. ABOUT THE PERFORMERS The Borromeo String Quartet Audiences around the world respond with exhilaration to what the critics call the "razor sharp intensity and heart stopping" performances of the award-winning Borromeo String Quartet. Quickly establishing itself as one of the most important string quartets performing today, the Borromeo Quartet has been hailed by The New York Times as "outstanding" and the Boston Globe as "simply the best there is".Considered the resident quartet at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, they also perform over 100 concerts a season around the world. The Borromeo Quartet has appeared in many of the world's foremost concert halls, including Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Boston's Jordan Hall, the Library of Congress, the Philharmonie in Berlin and the Dai-Ichi Semei, Suntory, and Casals Halls in Tokyo. A frequent guest at many of the most prestigious international chamber music festivals, the Quartet's recent and upcoming appearances include Ravinia, Tanglewood, the Prague Spring Festival, the Spoleto Festival, the Orlando Festival in The Netherlands, and Norway's Stavanger Festival andt the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, where first violinist Nicholas Kitchen serves as Artistic Director. The Quartet's first recording project for Image Recordings, featuring the Quartet and String Duo of Maurice Ravel, was honored with the Chamber Music America/WQXR Award for Recording Excellence in 2001. The Quartet, which served as the Ensemble-in-Residence for National Public Radio's "Performance Today", is heard frequently on NPR, and also works extensively with WGBH in Boston, WNYC in New York, NHK Radio & Television in Japan and KBS Radio and Television in Korea. The Lewin-Muresanu Duo Irina Muresanu The Romanian violinist Irina Muresanu has won international acclaim as an outstanding young soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. Ms. Muresanu has appeared as a soloist with Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Boston Pops, the Metropolitaine Orchestra in Montreal, the Boston Philharmonic, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the Romanian National Radio Orchestra, and many others. Ms. Muresanu's competition honors include top prizes and awards in the Montreal International Competition, Queen Elizabeth Violin Competition, UNISA International String Competition, and the Washington International. Michael Lewin Michael Lewin's career was launched with victories in the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in the Netherlands (1986), the American Pianists Association Beethoven Award (1983) and the William Kapell International Competition (1982). The Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts have awarded him significant career grants. His recordings on Naxos, Marco Polo and Centaur have won extraordinary critical praise. Bamboula! Piano Music by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, was chosen as a "Top 10 Pick" by the Boston Herald. Other releases on Naxos include a collection of 19 Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti and the first-ever-complete recordings of the piano music of Griffes. A native of New York, Michael Lewin is Chair of the Boston Conservatory Piano Faculty. He studied at the Juilliard School of Music, earning Bachelor's and Master's Degrees. His teachers have included Leon Fleisher, Irwin and Lillian Freundlich, Adele Marcus, and Yvonne Lefébure. The Boston Trio "Whenever this trio plays, drop everything and go hear them!" wrote the Boston Globe after The Boston Trio's Tanglewood debut at Ozawa Hall. Since their formation in 1997, the Boston Trio (Irina Muresanu, violin; Allison Eldredge, cello; and Heng-Jin Park, piano) has quickly become one of today's most exciting young piano trios. They enjoy a devoted following in Boston and a steadily growing reputation throughout the United States, as they continue to have brilliant success wherever they play. Soon after their debut, they were asked to become Trio-in-Residence at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the trio continues its residency there today.They have since been presented by the prestigious FleetBoston Celebrity Series in Jordan Hall; at the Bay Chamber Concerts in Rockport, Maine; twice at Seiji Ozawa Hall in Tanglewood as part of the Tanglewood Prelude Concert Series; the Harvard Musical Association; for several summers in the Rockport Chamber Music Festival in Rockport, MA; at Brigham Young University in Utah; and at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. More information and full program notes available at www.andyvores.com