New Orleans Composer William Horne's Newest Chamber Works Featured On Album Out Now

New Orleans-based composer William Horne, an award-winning educator who studied with avant-garde icon Krzysztof Penderecki and Pulitzer Prize recipient Yehudi Wyner, has released world-premiere recordings of three intimate new chamber works, written in his latter-day lyrical style, on Chamber Music of William Horne, Volume Three, available now (Blue Griffin Recording BGR669).

The album comprises Horne's Sonata for French Horn and Piano (2021), with hornist Mollie Pate and pianist Xiting Yang; Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano (2022), with saxophonist Walter Puyear and pianist Joonghun Cho; and Trio for Flute, Alto Saxophone, and Piano (2023), with flutist Brandon LePage, saxophonist Puyear, and pianist Cho.

In the album's program notes, Horne writes that the music is "couched in traditional forms and embraces forthright lyricism. The clear textures and tonal organization . . . recall the Classical style, while their broadly expressive harmonic language and generous melodic gestures embrace, with restraint, more modern idioms."

The Sonata for French Horn and Piano was originally written for horn player Mary Garza. Horne revised it in collaboration with Pate, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra's principal horn, who performs it on this recording. "I think of the horn as a lyrical instrument," he says, and points to the proclamation-like opening of the first movement. The serene second movement contrasts with the turbulence of the first. The final movement presents "the clash of dark and turbulent music with heroic and high-spirited elements."

Horne wrote his George Gershwin-influenced Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano out of a longstanding desire to feature the alto sax, with "its beautiful singing tone." He caught "Gershwin fever," he says, from his friend, the noted pianist and composer Logan Skelton, professor of music at the University of Michigan. The saxophone sonata, Horne says, "has the flavor of Gershwin's language, the scent of his music about it, in the context of a classical sonata."

The Trio for Flute, Alto Saxophone, and Piano heard on this album is follow-up to a piece for the same instrumentation Horne had written for a flutist from the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and her chamber group. "The expressive heart of this new trio," Horne says, is the second movement. It opens with lyrical solo for the alto saxophone, which is quietly joined by the piano, which then assumes the lead role. The flute enters with "a new, warmer theme," with gentle piano accompaniment. The theme is traded between wind instruments, leading to an increasingly complicated duet. The movement concludes with "an extended coda of glowing warmth."

Horne credits the impetus for the new album and its predecessors in the series to Skelton, who was eager to have Horne's music heard by a wider audience and to give his prize piano students, including the pianists on this album, a chance to appear on professionally produced, commercially distributed recordings.

In an interview for the album's release, Horne, professor emeritus of theory and composition at Loyola University New Orleans, says he spent his early career composing in a style he describes as "a marriage of Bela Bartok's and Arnold Schoenberg's sound worlds," reflecting the prevailing atonal aesthetic in university composition departments during his student years in the 1970s.

Horne says he pivoted from "free atonalism" after a decade-long hiatus from composing to focus on teaching and child raising. Beginning with his 2006 flute sonata, he began composing works "much more melodic and tonal in conception than I had written before that time."

Album production and distribution

Chamber Music of William Horne, Volume Three was produced and engineered by Sergei Kvitko of Blue Griffin Recording, at the label's studio, The Ballroom, in Lansing, Michigan, May 29-30, 2023.

Kvitko, a concert pianist and recording artist, says, "I'm first and foremost a musician and a performer, and as a producer and sound engineer, I approach every session individually and attempt to create the soundscape that I, as a performer, would want to hear coming back from speakers or headphones."

Available digitally and on CD, the album is distributed globally by The Orchard and Albany Music Distributors.

William Horne

"Horne's music is immediately appealing yet sophisticated," wrote Colin Clarke in a CD review for Fanfare magazine, an opinion he reiterated several years later, adding "inventiveness" and "unalloyed joy" to his assessment.

Horn is an emeritus faculty member at Loyola University New Orleans, where he held the Francisco M. Gonzalez, M.D. Endowed Professorship. In 2016, he received the university's Dux Academicus award, the highest honor the university confers on a faculty member.

His music has been performed by the NOVA Chorale, Musaica Chamber Ensemble, members of the JACK Quartet, and members of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, among many others. His works have been premiered at National Flute Association and North American Saxophone Alliance conferences, among other venues. He is also a music scholar who was written primarily about the works of Johannes Brahms.

Born in Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1952, Horn earned a bachelor of music degree at Florida State University, a master's at Yale University, where his teachers included Krzysztof Penderecki and Yehudi Wyner, and a doctor of musical arts at the University of North Texas.

Performing artists

Pianist Joonghun (pronounced JOONG-HOON) Cho has concertized in Canada, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. He has performed as soloist with the Brescia Master Orchestra and Michigan's Ann Arbor and Flint Symphony orchestras and Kalamazoo Philharmonic. Currently based in Toronto, he is a faculty member at the Palmetto International Piano Festival, and Yike Academy of Music, and serves as artistic director for the Gibson Centre Classical Concert Series and Toronto Spring Classical Concerts.

Michigan-based flutist Brandon LePage, an instructor at Michigan's Oakland University, serves as principal flute of both the Flint Symphony Orchestra and Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and performs with other orchestras across the Midwest. He founded the Chamber Artists of Southeast Michigan in 2013, which has commissioned new works and produces a summer concert series in his hometown of Wyandotte, Michigan.

Mollie Pate has served as the principal hornist of the Louisiana Philharmonic since 1996 and has been on the Loyola University New Orleans faculty since 2007. She is also principal hornist of Alabama's Mobile Symphony Orchestra. She is a founding member of the French Horn Quartet, Mollie Pate and The LPO Horn Sound, and frequently tours with Cleveland's Burning River Brass.

Walter Puyear (POOH-yer) is the lecturer of saxophone at Eastern Michigan University. As a soloist, he was 1st Prize winner in Vandoren's 2021 Emerging Artist Competition and was a finalist and prize winner in the 2022 Walter W. Naumburg International Saxophone Competition. As alto saxophonist with the Aero Quartet, he received a Gold Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

Pianist Xiting (shee-TING) Yang's engagements have included, among others, Tampa, Florida's Steinway Piano Concert Series, Tutunov Piano Series in Oregon, Resonance Masters's Series in Washington state, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts in Chicago, and Gibson Centre Classical Concert Series in Ontario, Canada. She currently is teaching assistant professor of piano at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

Composer's discography

With his newest release, Horne's discography includes five albums devoted to his music:

• Chamber Music of William Horne, Volume Three, with the Sonata for French Horn and Piano; Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano; and Trio for Flute, Alto Saxophone, and Piano (Blue Griffin Recording BGR669)
• Chamber Music of William Horne, Volume Two, with the Sextet for Piano and Wind Quintet, Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, Sonata for Bassoon and Piano, and Three Bagatelle's for Alto Saxophone and Piano (Blue Griffin Recording BGR589)
• Songs by William Horne, with Seascape, Six Songs for Philip Frohnmayer, Songs of Passage, Books I and II, and Songs of Remembrance (Blue Griffin Recording BGR 477)
• Chamber Music of William Horne, Volume One, with the Sonata for Cello and Piano, Sonata for Flute and Piano, and Bagatelles for Cello and Piano (Blue Griffin Recording BGR357)
• The Music of William Horne, with the Sonata for Viola and Piano, Songs for Ellen, Psalm in April, and Intermezzo (Centaur Records CRC 2845)

In addition, Horne's Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano appears on violinist William Scobie's Musical Visions (DBH Productions 0191-2).

Chamber Music of William Horne, Volume Three

(Blue Griffin Recording BGR669)

Sonata for French Horn and Piano (2021)
Mollie Pate, French horn; Xiting Yang, piano
1. 1. Passionately (5:36)
2. 2. Gently (6:35)
3. 3. Quick, energetic (6:18)

Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano (2022)
Walter Puyear, alto saxophone; Joonghun Cho, piano
4. 1. Not too fast (7:04)
5. 2. Slowly and gently (8:08)
6. 3. Moderately (5:34)

Trio for Flute, Alto Saxophone, and Piano (2023)
Brandon LePage, flute; Walter Puyear, alto saxophone;
Joonghun Cho, piano
7. 1. Not too fast, amiably (4:27)
8. 2. Simply and reflectively (7:08)
9. 3. Playfully, but not too fast (4:42)

Total time: 55:37