Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Concerto For Clarinet & Chamber Orchestra Recording Inducted Into The National Recording Registry

A 2012 Delos recording of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra performed by David Shifrin and the Northwest Chamber Orchestra has been inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. Others among the 25 recordings included in the class of 2023 are "The Very First Mariachi Recordings," "St. Louis Blues" by Handy's Memphis Blues Band, Madonna's "Like a Virgin," and John Lennon's "Imagine." This year's selections, announced on April 12, bring the number of titles on the registry to 625, a small portion of the national library's vast recorded sound collection of nearly four million items.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in music and the very first holder of the Carnegie Hall Composer's Chair, helped blaze a 20th-century trail in a classical music world that seems only recently to have become truly equal-opportunity. She turns 84 on April 30, 2023.

As the Library of Congress announcement describes: "Composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich had already written the first movement of this work when the terrorist attacks of 9/11 took place. Clarinetist David Shifrin leads the Northwest Chamber Orchestra on this live recording made in Portland, Oregon, in 2004. He and several members of the ensemble had performed its premiere a year earlier, and their feeling for it comes through in the buoyancy of the first movement, suggesting the hustle and bustle of a normal working day in New York City, and in the violence, anger and sorrow of the rest of the day expressed in the subsequent movements. The 2012 CD release of this performance, and its enduring impact and reputation, are singular for a 21st century classical recording."

Later this spring, Zwilich's latest orchestral work, Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, will have its world premiere in performances by the Santa Rosa Symphony, which commissioned the work, led by the orchestra's music director, Francesco Lecce-Chong, and featuring as soloists sisters Christina Naughton and Michelle Naughton, the first piano duo to receive Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Career Grant (2019). There will be three performances: May 6, 7, and 8, 2023.

The latest recording of Ellen's music features her newest major orchestral work, her Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, on the 2022 Delos disc Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Cello Concerto & Other Works performed by cellist Zuill Bailey and the Santa Rosa Symphony led by Francesco Lecce-Chong. The Strad magazine praised "this sassy, jazzy work [with] Zwilich's hallmark propulsive energy," and MusicWeb International's review calls it "exceptionally enjoyable, rich in diverse moods, glorious melodies, and catchy rhythms," saying of the entire disc, "performances by soloists and orchestra are all one could wish for, and the sound quality is good."

At a time when the musical offerings of the world are more varied than ever before, few composers have emerged with the unique personality of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Her music is widely known because it is performed, recorded, broadcast, and - above all - listened to and liked by all sorts of audiences the

A prolific composer in virtually all media, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's works have been performed by most of the leading American orchestras and by major ensembles abroad. Her works include five Symphonies and a string of concertos commissioned and performed over the past two decades by the nation's top orchestras.

Zwilich is the recipient of numerous prizes and honors, including the 1983 Pulitzer Prize in Music (the first woman ever to receive this coveted award), the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Chamber Music Prize, the Arturo Toscanini Music Critics Award, the Ernst von Dohnányi Citation, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, four Grammy nominations, the Alfred I. Dupont Award, Miami Performing Arts Center Award, the Medaglia d'oro in the G.B. Viotti Competition, and the NPR and WNYC Gotham Award for her contributions to the musical life of New York City. Among other distinctions, Ms. Zwilich has been elected to the American Classical Music Hall of Fame, the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1995, she was named to the first Composer's Chair in the history of Carnegie Hall, and she was designated Musical America's Composer of the Year for 1999. Ms. Zwilich, who holds a doctorate from The Juilliard School, currently holds the Krafft Distinguished Professorship at Florida State University. www.zwilich.com

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