BMOP/sound Releases New Album, 'David Sanford: Black Noise'

Known as the nation's foremost label launched by an orchestra and devoted exclusively to new music, BMOP/sound today announced the release of a new album: David Sanford: Black Noise (TBR 02.05.19) performed by the intrepid musicians of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and led by conductor Gil Rose.

Marking the debut recording of David Sanford's orchestral works, Black Noise will, in Sanford's words, "promote and normalize the contribution and participation of Blacks in classical music." Spanning 20 years of the composer's career, the album features three pieces that have significantly contributed to the expansion of Sanford's career and reputation: Black Noise, commissioned and premiered by BMOP in 2017; Prayer: In Memoriam Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; and the orchestral version of the genre-bending cello concerto, Scherzo Grosso, with soloist Matt Haimovitz.

"I started on trombone when I was about 10 and liked big band music early," said Sanford."I wanted to be a jazz musician. Charles Mingus inspired me to be a composer later on." Sanford was also influenced by rhythm and blues/funk groups like Parliament, the Isley Brothers, and Sly and the Family Stone and, later, by orchestral and more mainstream popular music. After completing undergraduate music studies at the University of Northern Colorado, he earned a master's degree in theory and composition from the New England Conservatory of Music and an MFA and PhD at Princeton University. Sanford has won many awards and honors, including a BMI Student Composer Award, a Koussevitzky Commission and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Recently, Sanford won the Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellowship, allowing him to stay at the American Academy in Rome. One of the referees wrote: "David Sanford is the real thing, a composer in the American tradition of brash, open-eared exploration: no material is too exalted or too debased for him to transform into his living art."

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, top-quality, 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