Fitz

This recording of music by John Harbison and James Primosch contrasts their piano music with compositions for voice, with a major work for each by each of these esteemed composers. Harbison, a faculty member at MIT, has enjoyed a long and distinguished career. His more than 300 compositions have been performer around the world by premiere musical organizations and soloists. James Primosch serves on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, and his discography includes more than 25 recordings of his compositions. Noted for her "dazzling, virtuoso singing" Lucy Fitz Gibbon is a dynamic musician whose repertoire spans the Renaissance to the present. She has performed at prestigious venues in the United States, Canada, and England and is on the faculty at Bard College.

Shostakovich's film music, and before that his incidental music for the stage, has gotten a bad rap as unadventurous music he wrote when he needed to ingratiate himself with the Communist regime. For some of it, the characterization rings true, but not for all of it, and these early works – one a set of stage incidental music and one a film score of 1935 – are delightful. Both are world premieres, although a suite from The Bedbug, Op. 19 was performed by Gennady Rozhdestvensky and the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra many years ago. It's a biting, bumptious, satirical work straight out of the highly creative early Soviet scene that Stalin brutally stamped out.

Jazzaggression and Plastic Strip Press are proud to present the rare recordings of Jamaican born saxophone player Fitz Gore and his group The Talismen recorded between the years 1975-1979. The selection is carefully picked by Gore’s wife Gisela together with Johan Fredrik Lavik, Lars Moerch Finborud and the material is sourced from three extremely rare private pressed LP’s Soundmagnificat (1975), Soundnitia (1975), Soundmusication (1976), and the EP Soundnova (1979), all originally released by Gisela’s and Fitz’s private label GORBRA RECORDS, based in Bonn, Germany. Fitz Gore came from Jamaica to Europe in the early 50s and learned to play the tenor saxophone by himself. He travelled to various locations in Europe looking for musicians to play with and developed his unique spiritual ideas in music. For Gore the spiritual meanings – to be for real and authenticity – to play a meaning – was more important than to play licks.