COMPOSER - CONDUCTOR
VICTORIA BOND
Instruments of Revelation:
Frescoes and Ash - Leopold Bloom's Homecoming - Binary
FOR YOUR GRAMMY® CONSIDERATION
Instruments of Revelation
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ARTISTS: Victoria Bond, Conductor; Performing Ensemble Chicago Pro Musica; Rufus Mueller; Jenny Lin; Olga Vinokur
COMPOSER: Victoria Bond
LABEL: Naxos | 8.559864
FOR YOUR GRAMMY® CONSIDERATION
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Victoria Bond is a distinguished force in contemporary music. She is known for her melodic and dramatic flair, and her orchestral works, chamber pieces and operas have been lauded by The New York Times as “powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding.” This collection of world premiere recordings by GRAMMY®Award-winning ensemble Chicago Pro Musica provides an essential overview of Bond’s multi-faceted inventiveness—from a musical interpretation of tarot cards in Instruments of Revelation, to descriptive and dramatic images of the tragic city of Pompeii in Frescoes and Ash. Leopold Bloom’s Homecoming expresses in music what is left to our imagination in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and the mathematics of Binary turn the digits 0 and 1 into variations on a Brazilian samba.
Composer - Conductor
Victoria Bond
Victoria Bond’s passion for chamber music is evident in each of the more than 100 works she has composed in that genre. She founded Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival in 1998 to showcase living composers and their chamber works, and she continues to serve as artistic director of the annual festival in New York City.
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A prolific composer, Bond has written operas, oratorios, ballets, concertos and orchestral works, as well as vocal works and keyboard compositions. She is also renowned for her operas, including Clara (about Clara Schumann, premiered at the Berlin Philharmonic Easter Festival), and Mrs. President (about an 1872 candidate), as well as The Miracle of Light, The Adventures of Gulliver, and several others.
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Bond has received commissions from the Houston and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, American Opera Projects, the Young Peoples’ Chorus of New York City, American Ballet Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and many others. Her awards include the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Victor Herbert Award, the Perry F. Kendig Award and the Miriam Gideon Prize.
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Bond is principal guest conductor of Chamber Opera Chicago, and has served as Exxon/Arts Endowment conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, artistic director of the Opera Roanoke, Harrisburg Opera and the Bel Canto Opera, music director of the Roanoke and New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestras and assistant conductor of the New York City Opera. She is a frequent lecturer for the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center.
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Bond holds Master’s and Doctorate degrees from The Juilliard School and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California. She is the first woman awarded a Doctorate in orchestral conducting from The Juilliard School.
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Victoria Bond’s compositions are published by G. Schirmer, Theodore Presser, C.F. Peters, Subito Music and Protone Music.
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Chicago Pro Musica
Chicago Pro Musica
Chicago Pro Musica was founded in 1979 by composer/pianist Easley Blackwood and Chicago Symphony Orchestra clarinetist John Bruce Yeh. Honored with the 1986 Grammy Award for "Best New Classical Artist", Chicago Pro Musica has earned an international reputation for its dynamic performances of a widely varied repertory. The ensemble comprises several virtuoso musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Chicago Tribune has called them "one of the most versatile and artistically accomplished [ensembles] on the American chamber music scene."
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PRESS
"Overall, this is an important collection of music by a composer who is steadily gaining visibility in the American music scene. With committed and highly accomplished performances and clean recorded sound, it is an easy recommendation."
- Henry Fogel, Fanfare
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"Four works dating from 2005 to 2011 display some of the wide expressive range of American Victoria Bond."
- The Whole Note 6.3.19
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"The music has a whimsical quality throughout, whether by means of mildly sarcastic quasi-march-gallops or a shade here and there of the burlesque…. The chamber ensemble sounds quite full thanks to Ms. Bond's artful scoring… one feels refreshed and in the presence of a lively musical mind… It is enchanted music nonetheless. Listen."
- Gapplegate 6.3.19
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"Since the minor second is the smallest interval in traditional Western music, and may be represented by the pitch set, 0,1—the two numbers that generate binary number theory—Bond has based her work (Binary) on this interval. Harmonically, of course, a vertical stacking of seconds produces a tone cluster, referred to previously. In other places, the seconds are heard ad seriatimin scalar-like fashion. The concatenation of various forms of this interval produce a work that is both novel and gripping, and one worthy of repeated listening."
- Fanfare Magazine
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"(Bond) is also skilled in managing the sounds of this small instrumental complement, whether in the virtuoso requirements of “The Sybil Speaks” or in the intriguing violin-and-bass duet in “Chiron Teaches Achilles to Play the Lyre” – a case in which the instruments particularly neatly encapsulate the characters."
- Infodad.com
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"There is good variety in this release which provides some appeal for those interested in chamber music, song cycles, or works for piano. But really, it lends itself to an exploration of Bond’s more intimate writing for these forces and her sense of dramatic shape to her thematic inspirations for these works."
- Cinemusical
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