Michael C Keith

Twenty years into his career, the inevitable happened: Toby Keith started to slide down the charts. He'd had slow patches before – when he moved from A&M to Dreamworks at the end of the '90s, he had trouble getting into the Top 10 – but the success of 2011's Clancy's Tavern and its accompanying hits "Made in America," "Red Solo Cup," and "Beers Ago" wound up seeming like a fluke once 2012's Hope on the Rocks stalled on the charts. Confronted with a possible decline in his fortune, Keith takes action on Drinks After Work, his 17th album in 20 years.

Reference Recordings proudly presents a unique album of one movement symphonies composed by Barber, Sibelius and Scriabin, in an outstanding interpretation from Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony. This album, the ninth in our series with the orchestra, was produced by David Frost, seven-time winner of the Classical Producer of the Year GRAMMY® award. It was recorded by RR’s own engineering team of GRAMMY®-winning engineer and Technical Director Keith O. Johnson, and multi-GRAMMY® nominated engineer Sean Martin. Music Director Michael Stern is in his second decade with the Kansas City Symphony, hailed for its remarkable artistic ascent, original programming, organizational development and stability, as well as the extraordinary growth of its varied audiences since his tenure began. The Kansas City Symphony has a vision to transform hearts, minds and its community through the power of symphonic music.

The three Copland classics on this disc–Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring and Rodeo–are all ballet scores, and from the very first bars of Billy, with its evocative depiction of the wide-open prairies, you are firmly in the territory of music that tells a story. But you don't need to follow all the ins and outs of each story to enjoy music which paints as vivid a picture of rural America as you could hope for. If the sprightly "Hoe Down" from Rodeo brings a splash of colour to concert programmes, the remarkable thing about so much of the music in these three pieces is how quietly sensitive it is. And while Michael Tilson Thomas does not hold back in wringing every last ounce of splashy razzmatazz, he is equally the master of introspective music which clearly demonstrates that you don't need to be loud to be a populist. The recordings were made in the San Francisco Symphony's home, Davies Symphony Hall. You couldn't hope for more authentic performances than this–more than 76 minutes of dyed-in-the-wool Americana.