Nadia [CD]

Following critical acclaim from The New York Times, Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine for his album Forgotten Sounds, clarinetist Graeme Steele Johnson returns to Delos with Windsync. "A major force in the American chamber music landscape," the wind quintet has performed throughout the United States and abroad, presenting largely self-generated repertoire - commissioned by the group or arranged in-house. On this album, the musicians trace the stylistic diversity of American music back to a single source: not a founding father but a French mademoiselle, Nadia Boulanger. The composer, conductor, music theorist and legendary composition pedagogue wielded immense influence over American music and musicians. The formidable roster of Boulanger students featured on this album bear witness to this: Philip Glass, Elliott Carter, Quincy Jones and Marion Bauer, whose Woodwind Quintet has been revived and recorded here for the first time. On Nadia, Windsync hopes to humanize Mademoiselle, as she was known by her pupils, by telling her story through a century's worth of music written by teacher and students, a legacy of dizzyingly varied American music that reverberates to this day.