BMOP/Sound Celebrates 57th Release with PETER CHILD: SHANTI

Known as the nation's foremost label launched by an orchestra and devoted exclusively to new music, BMOP/sound today announced the release of Peter Child: Shanti (released 05.01.18), thefirst recording of this composer's orchestral music. Performed by the intrepid musiciansof the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and led by conductor Gil Rose, thealbum's compositions span a decade from the concert overture Jubal (2001) and the symphonic triptych Adirondack Voices (2006) to the 40-minute Shanti (2011).

MIT-based composer Peter Child has an extensive international resume, from a year
spent studying Karnatic music in Madras, India (now Chennai), to performances by the
national symphonies of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. According to Child, his own travels
influenced all three of the album's works. "As these pieces illustrate, the nature of musical emotion-what it is, the role that it plays for composer, performer, and listener-is a puzzle that I have returned to frequently in my music and my teaching. In between Jubal and Shanti came Adirondack Voices, a piece that, like several others from this period ofmy work, incorporates folk materials."

Headlining the recording is Shanti, commissioned and premiered by BMOP in 2011. The
first of Child's major works to engage in such an integrated fashion with his interest in
Karnatic music, Shanti centers on India and the intersection of its musical traditions with western ones. Influenced by Indian stories, myths, and philosophy, Child explored
Indian scales, adapted from the Melakarta, a 17th Century Indian scale-generation system, yet used traditional western techniques (inversion, retrogression) to build the harmonic foundations of the piece. The title Shanti refers to the Sanskrit word for the elusive grasp of inner peace, mental and spiritual equilibrium-poet T.S. Eliot famously translated shanti as "the Peace which passeth understanding." Shanti's eight movement titlespoint to emotional meanings in music and arts, and "the indefinable, compelling quality in our experience of music that transcends and underlies its specific, narrower moods and characters," explains Child. "While in the west we tend to characterize that larger,transcendent emotion in terms of 'awe' and 'sublimity,' in Indian aesthetics it is shanti: peace and tranquility." According to The Boston Globe, "much of this was lucidly depicted: a chorale for wonder, scurrying flutes for fear, Prokofiev-like clarinets for humor, trumpet fanfares for valor, the celesta for peace before the troubled benediction."

About BMOP/sound
BMOP/sound, BMOP's independent record label, was created in 2008 to provide a
platform for BMOP's extensive archive of music, as well as to provide widespread, topquality, permanent access to both classics of the 20th century and the music of today's most innovative composers. BMOP/sound has garnered praise from the national and international press; it is the recipient of six Grammy Award nominations and its releases have appeared on the year-end "Best of" lists of The New York Times,The Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Time Out New York, American Record Guide, Downbeat Magazine, WBUR, NewMusicBox, and others. Admired, praised, and sought after by artists, presenters, critics, and audiophiles, BMOP and BMOP/sound are uniquely positioned to redefine the new music concert and recording experience. BMOPsound.org

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