Premiere Recording Of Nancy Galbraith's Three Concertos Released Today

Approaching its landmark 100th album, BMOP/sound today released Nancy Galbraith: Everything Flows, the premiere recording of three concerti by Pittsburgh-native composer Nancy Galbraith. 

All premiered by conductors and musicians with whom she worked while serving as the Chair of Composition at Carnegie Mellon University, these three pieces affirm why Galbraith plays a leading role in defining the sound of American contemporary music. Joining conductor Gil Rose and his celebrated ensemble the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) are three women who are all dynamic performers.

“This collaboration with Gil Rose/BMOP family of musicians has lived in my imagination for over two decades. It is so rewarding to unite them with these three great solo artists, and to share their tremendous talents with music lovers.” – Nancy Galbraith (b.1951) 

Galbraith's rich harmonic textures, rhythmic vitality, emotional depth, and wide range of expression have been described by critics as “impressive,” “reflective,” “formidable,” “rewarding,” and “masterly.” This latest BMOP/sound recording accurately demonstrates her compositional style and virtuosic ability to showcase soloists. 

Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (2019) explores what the flute is capable of with the help of amplified echoes, winds, whistles, and pops by Lindsey Goodman, principal flutist of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. Written for flute, four percussion, piano, harp and strings, this exuberant three movement work was inspired by Goodman's outgoing personality. 

Violin Concerto No. 1 (2016) was composed for CMU Alyssa Wang, currently a violinist of the Boston Chamber Music Society and the Assistant Conductor of the Boston Ballet. According to the composer, this piece “celebrates Wang's tremendous virtuosity, her deep musical sensitivity, and her fiery artistic temperament” all prominently displayed in the lively outer movements that present a colorful, dynamic collaboration between soloist and orchestra. 

The album ends with Everything Flows: Concerto for Solo Percussion and Orchestra (2019) performed with strength, combined with an intriguing air of quiet poise by Abby Langhorst, percussionist of The Brass Roots. Known for her writing for percussion, Galbraith was, in her own words, “excited to create a work that features its abundance of possibilities, both overt and subtle, but with an overarching feeling of rhythmic power and excitement.” 

About BMOP

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is the premier orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A unique institution of crucial artistic importance to today's musical world, BMOP exists to disseminate exceptional orchestral music of the present and recent past via performances and recordings of the highest caliber.

Founded by Artistic Director Gil Rose in 1996, BMOP has championed composers whose careers span nine decades. Each season, Rose brings BMOP's award-winning orchestra, renowned soloists, and influential composers to the stage of New England Conservatory's historic Jordan Hall in a series that offers orchestral programming of unrivaled eclecticism.

Musical America's 2016 Ensemble of the Year, BMOP was awarded the 2021 Special Achievement Award from Gramophone Magazine as “an organization that has championed American music of the 20th and 21st century with passion and panache.” The musicians of BMOP are consistently lauded for the energy, imagination, and passion with which they infuse the music of the present era. BMOP.org

About Gil Rose       

Gil Rose is one of today's most trailblazing conductors, praised as “amazingly versatile” (The Boston Globe) with “a sense of style and sophistication” (Opera News). Equally at home performing core repertoire, new music, and lesser-known historic symphonic and operative works, “Gil Rose is not just a fine conductor, but a peerless curator, sniffing out—and commissioning—off-trend, unheralded, and otherwise underplayed repertoire, that nevertheless holds to unfailingly high standards of quality.

In doing so, he's built an indefinable, but unmistakable, personal aesthetic” (WQXR). A global leader in American contemporary music, Grammy Award-winner Rose is the founder of the performing and recording ensemble the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), who “bring an endlessly curious and almost archaeological mind to programming…with each concert, each recording, an essential step in a better direction” (The New York Times), as well as the founder of Odyssey Opera, praised by The New York Times as “bold and intriguing.”

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, 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 a 2020 Grammy Award for Tobias Picker: Fantastic Mr. Fox as well as nine 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, 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. Launched in 2019, BMOP's digital radio station, BMOP/radio, streams BMOP/sound's entire catalog and airs special programming.

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