This Land Sings
(Inspired by the Life and Times of Woody Guthrie)

Michael Daugherty: This Land Sings
(Inspired by the Life and Times of Woody Guthrie)

ARTISTS: Dogs of Desire, David Alan Miller (GRAMMY® winning conductor), Annika Socolofsky, John Daugherty
COMPOSER: Michael Daugherty (GRAMMY® winning composer)
LABEL: Naxos   | 636943988923

FOR YOUR GRAMMY® CONSIDERATION

In ‘This Land Sings,’ GRAMMY® Award-winning composer Michael Daugherty has created an original musical tribute to the singer-songwriter and political activist Woody Guthrie (1912-1967). Traveling the backroads of America from coast to coast with a guitar and harmonica, Woody Guthrie performed folk songs of love, wandering and social justice during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Daugherty has composed his own original songs and instrumental interludes that give haunting expression, ironic wit and contemporary relevance to political, social and environmental themes from Guthrie’s era. Under the baton of GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor David Alan Miller, the Albany Symphony’s new music ensemble Dogs of Desire, joined by soprano Annika Socolofsky and baritone John Daugherty, give a poignant and rousing performance.

Michael Daugherty

Multiple GRAMMY® Award-winning composer Michael Daugherty has achieved international recognition as one of the ten most performed American composers of concert music, according to the League of American Orchestras. His orchestral music, recorded by Naxos over the last two decades, has received six GRAMMY® Awards, including Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2011 for Deus ex Machina for piano and orchestra and in 2017 for Tales of Hemingway for cello and orchestra. Current commissions for 2020 include new orchestral works for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Omaha Symphony and a concerto for violinist Anne Akiko Meyers who will give the world premiere with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center in 2021.

Michael Daugherty was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1954 and is the son of a dance-band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. As a young man, Daugherty studied composition with many of the preeminent composers of the 20th century including Pierre Boulez at IRCAM in Paris (1979), Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, Bernard Rands and Roger Reynolds at Yale (1980-82), and György Ligeti in Hamburg (1982-84). Daugherty was also an assistant to jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York from 1980-82. In 1991, Daugherty joined the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance as Professor of Composition, where he is a mentor to many of today’s most talented young composers. He is also a frequent guest of professional orchestras, festivals, universities and conservatories around the world.

https://michaeldaugherty.net

David Alan Miller

GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor David Alan Miller has established a reputation as one of the leading American conductors of his generation. Music director of the Albany Symphony since 1992, through exploration of unusual repertoire, educational programming, community outreach and recording initiatives, he has reaffirmed the ensemble’s reputation as the nation’s leading champion of American symphonic music and one of its most innovative orchestras. A native of Los Angeles, Miller studied at the University of California, Berkeley and The Juilliard School. From 1988 until 1992, he served as associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and from 1982 to 1988 was music director of the New York Youth Symphony. Miller won the 2001 ASCAP Morton Gould Award for Innovative Programming and, in 1999, ASCAP’s first-ever Leonard Bernstein Award for Educational Programming. The ground-breaking contemporary music ensemble Dogs of Desire, formed by Miller in 1994 and made up of members of the Albany Symphony, has commissioned hundreds of new works from emerging American composers and gained a national reputation among young composers as a proving ground for emerging talent.

http://www.albanysymphony.com/musicdirector

Dogs of Desire

Dedicated to exploring and celebrating the intersection between popular culture and traditional orchestral music, to bending and blending genres, the Albany Symphony’s contemporary new music ensemble, Dogs of Desire, has commissioned more than 150 new works from America’s most exciting composers. GRAMMY Award-winning conductor David Alan Miller founded Dogs of Desire in 1994 with members of the Albany Symphony. Since that time, Dogs of Desire has gained a national reputation as an incubator for the most inventive musical creators of our time, extending to collaborations with Broadway stars, filmmakers, horeographers, Ghanaian percussionists, and even a robot builder.

http://www.albanysymphony.com/upcomingconcerts/dogsofdesire

Annika Socolofsky

Annika Socolofsky is a US composer and avant-folk vocalist. Her music erupts from the power and nuance of the human voice and is communicated through mediums ranging from orchestral and operatic works to unaccompanied folk ballads. She writes extensively for her own voice. As a composer, Socolofsky has collaborated with artists such as the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Dogs of Desire, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, and sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird. As a vocalist, she has worked with composers such as Michael Daugherty, Gemma Peacocke, and Alex Dowling. Socolofsky is a recipient of a Fromm Foundation Commission, the Cortona Prize, numerous honors from BMI and ASCAP, and has been awarded fellowships from the Blackbird Creative Lab, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. Her research focuses on vocal technique and physiology in the music of Dolly Parton. Socolofsky is a doctoral candidate in composition at Princeton University. She plays a Norwegian Hardanger d’amore fiddle made by Salve Håkedal.

http://www.aksocolofsky.com

John Daugherty

Baritone John Daugherty (no relation to the composer) pursues a busy schedule of opera, song recitals and oratorio, performing repertoire drawn from a wide array of genres and styles. His recent stage roles include Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro and Joseph de Rocher in Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. In the concert hall, Daugherty has appeared with the Albany Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Michigan Opera Theater. Recital credits include performances of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel in collaboration with pianist Martin Katz and Brahms’ Die schöne Magelone with frequent collaborator César Cañón. Daugherty has worked with numerous distinguished artists such as Andrew West, Roderick Williams, Timothy Cheek, and Michael Daugherty. An avid proponent of new music, Daugherty appeared in the world premieres of Jules Pegram’s award-winning opera Higher Ground, and Michael Daugherty’s This Land Sings. Daugherty holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Texas Tech University, and is a graduate of the Santa Fe Opera’s inaugural class of the Young Voices Program.

http://johnrdaugherty.com