Argento
Dominick Argento is regarded as one of America’s leading composers and has created some of the most compelling art songs of the 20th century. His song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf awarded him the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1975 and his cycle The Andrée Expedition uses diaries and letters to tell the story of a failed voyage to the North Pole in 1897. As a longtime advocate for Argento’s writing, Brian Mulligan had always dreamt of recording these uniquely American song cycles.
Dominick Argento
Dominick Argento, considered to be America's preeminent composer of lyric opera, was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1927. At the Peabody Conservatory, where he earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees, his teachers included Nicholas Nabokov, Henry Cowell, and Hugo Weisgall. Argento received his Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Alan Hovhaness and Howard Hanson.
Read moreTimothy Long
Timothy Long has enjoyed a multi-faceted career as a pianist, conductor, opera coach, and educator. His early training as a pianist and violinist led to his work with singers and eventually to operatic engagements that have included companies such as the Boston Lyric Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, The Juilliard School, New York City Opera... {...}
Read moreThe Andrée Expedition
What was it the Austrian newspaper wrote? “Any man who says he will travel to the North Pole and back in a balloon is either a simpleton, a charlatan or a Swede.” How well we qualified! Young Strindberg, a latter day Don Quixote, risked his life to impress the blue eyed goddess of his dreams.
Read moreFrom the diary of Virginia Wolf
What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like… I should like it to resemble some deep, old desk… in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through.
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