Composer Rick Sowash To Debut A PIRATE'S CHRISTMAS For Flute, Cello, and Piano on Digital EP Next Month

For holiday listening, Cincinnati's Rick Sowash, a prolific, self-described "outsider composer" with some 500 published scores to his credit, will release the world-premiere recording of the whimsical "A Pirate's Christmas," his newest trio for flute, cello, and piano, as part of a digital-only seasonal EP available November 8, 2024.

The digital EP, A Pirate's Christmas and Other Holiday Selections by Rick Sowash, includes reissues of three other single-movement seasonal instrumental chamber works by the unapologetically tonal composer and lifelong Ohio resident: "King Arthur's Court at Christmas," "A Christmas Rondo," and "Variations on the Boar's Head Carol."

The EP (RSP Records RSP-14) will be internationally distributed by Kickshaw Records and available on major digital download and streaming platforms.

Sowash describes "A Pirate's Christmas," his Trio No. 5 for flute, cello, and piano, as "a lighthearted piece, comical in its own way."

The six-minute novelty, performed by the Sylvan Trio, blends what Sowash calls "swashbuckling, pirate-sounding tunes" with traditional carol melodies from "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "What Child Is This?" (also known as "Greensleeves"), "Good King Wenceslas," and "Come, All Ye Faithful."

"There's a funny thing about certain Christmas carols," Sowash writes in the recording's program notes. "Change the meter, and they sound like pirate songs!"

The "pirate" tunes are Sowash originals, except for "Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest" (Yo, Ho, Ho and a Bottle of Rum). If they sound familiar to fans of classic films, that's no accident. Sowash says he intended to evoke soundtrack scores from old pirate movies.

"As a composer," Sowash says, in an interview about the new release, "I examine musical gestures of many varieties and ask myself how they might be altered to make something new and maybe more intriguing."

Old hands at performing and recording Sowash's music, the Sylvan Trio is flutist Suzanne Bona, cellist Josh Aerie, and pianist Greg Kostraba.

Based in Connecticut, Bona is known to radio listeners worldwide as host and originator of the syndicated "Sunday Baroque" program. The classically trained flutist earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Connecticut.

In addition to performing and guest conducting, Aerie is director of the annual Woodland Chamber Workshop and executive director of The Music Village, a musical arts center and school in South Bend, Indiana. He holds music degrees from the University of Colorado and Oberlin Conservatory. He was featured performer on the cello-focused album Seasonal Breezes: Five Chamber Works by Rick Sowash.

Kostraba, a finalist at the Fourth Van Cliburn International Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, holds a doctorate in piano from the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. His playing has been heard many times on American Public Media's "Performance Today." He is a weekday radio host and music programmer at classical KBACH 89.5 FM, Phoenix, Arizona.

Sowash's "King Arthur's Court at Christmas" for violin, trumpet, cello, and piano is from a larger work, "Christmas Legend: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," found on the composer's 2012 album A Christmas Gift (RSP Records RSP-11).

Conjuring a mythic king and his court, the piece opens with a fanfare followed by a series of dance-like tunes and concludes with the opening fanfare.

Performers are violinist Cheryl Trace, trumpeter Thaddeus Archer, cellist Robert Clemens, and pianist Greg Kostraba.

An original theme and rarely heard carols

"A Christmas Rondo" for string trio also comes from Sowash's aforementioned A Christmas Gift album. Written as a prelude to a Christmas Eve worship service, the piece opens with Sowash's original carol, "The King Shall Come." It returns in variations, the last one being the work's finale. Heard between variations are Sowash's treatments of some lesser-known traditional carols: "Wondrous Love," "A Virgin Most Pure," The Holly and the Ivy," and the stark, mournful shape-note tune "Fiducia," over which, Sowash says, the violin "renders incongruously" the carol "Good King Wenceslas."

"I deliberately chose carols which, though not often heard, are very beautiful and familiar sounding, if not exactly familiar, and somewhat mysterious in character," Sowash says.

"A Christmas Rondo" is played by violinist Kris Frankenfeld, violist Belinda Burge, and cellist Ellen Shertzer.

The "Boar's Head Carol" is a 15th-century English carol that describes the ancient ritual of serving a boar's head at a Yuletide feast.

Sowash wrote his "Variations on the Boar's Head Carol" for piano trio as a tribute to Cincinnati's Christ Church Cathedral, which stages an annual costumed pageant where an imitation boar's head with an apple in its mouth is carried into a banquet hall on a silver dish to the sounds of trumpets, strings, and choristers. A local tradition since 1939, the event is part of the church's "Boar's Head and Yule Log Festival" held the weekend after Christmas.

The piece is the seventh movement of Sowash's Piano Trio No. 3, "A Christmas Divertimento," originally released on the album Rick Sowash: The Four Piano Trios (Gasparo Records GSCD-254).

Performers are the Grammy-nominated Mirecourt Trio: Violinist Kenneth Goldsmith, cellist Terry King, and pianist John Jensen.

Born in Mansfield, Ohio, in 1950, Sowash (an Americanization of his French ancestral family name 'Sauvage'), has been composing since age 12 and says he "found his voice" at age 24.

Sowash, who earns his living outside the music establishment, gives away PDF files of his scores to all who ask. "All of my musical ideas came to me for free. It just seems right to pass along the music, at no cost, to anyone interested in my life's work."

Sowash earned a bachelor's degree in composition from a prestigious music school at a major American university, which he resolutely declines to name. He says he bristled at the atonalism and modernist dogma that ruled academia during his college years in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He persevered nevertheless, graduating with a double major in music composition and comparative literature. "I give the music school no credit whatsoever for anything I've accomplished," he says. "My Comp Lit major was far more worthwhile."

His role model is early 20th-century composer Charles Ives, who made his living in the business world and whose music reflects a regional American character. For Ives, the inspiration was New England, for Sowash, the Midwest. Ives' source of income was his insurance practice. Sowash makes his living as a self-published author, public speaker, and storyteller, often recounting the history and culture of his beloved Ohio.

He was the subject of a 2004 Cincinnati Enquirer profile, written by the newspaper's classical music critic and headlined "Rick Sowash: Renaissance man, composer, Ohioan."

Sowash was the subject of two doctoral dissertations, one by Susan Olson, a graduate student at The Ohio State University who went on to earn a D.M.A. degree, the other by Yoonie Choi, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kentucky.

His music has been performed across the U.S. and in Europe by groups ranging from the Cincinnati Ballet and Chicago's Orion Ensemble to France's Trio les Gavottes. He composed the music for the PBS documentary "Ohio: 200 Years."

His Concerto for Cello with Strings and Clarinet received its world premiere in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, performed by cellist Kalin Ivanov, clarinetist Todd Brunel, and the Bulgarian Virtuosi, conducted by Stefan Linev.

The world-premiere recording of Sowash's Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra shared billing with works by Paul Ben-Haim and John Williams on the album Portals, with David Drosinos, clarinet, and the St. Petersburg Symphony, conducted by Vladimir Lande on the Marquis Classics label. An American Record Guide review proclaimed, "If Aaron Copland wrote the definitive American clarinet concerto, Sowash may have [written] a close second."

Sowash is a member of ASCAP as a composer and publisher.

Sowash discography

In addition to the new digital EP release, Sowash's currently available discography includes 17 CD albums devoted in whole or in part to his music. For the complete list, visit https://sowash.com/recordings/index.html.

His CDs can be purchased at https://kickshawrecords.com.