Ohio’s ‘Outsider Composer’ Rick Sowash To Release ‘Voyageurs’ CD of Clarinet Trios (April 19)

New album offers world-premiere recordings
of final three works in his 13-part cycle
for clarinet, cello, and piano

'Sowash’s music cannot be pigeon-holed. At times neo-classical,
romantic, neo-romantic, or impressionist, the music is always original
and never hackneyed or low-brow.' — The Chamber Music Journal

CINCINNATI, Ohio — Cincinnati’s Rick Sowash, a prolific, self-described “outsider composer” with some 500 published scores to his credit, will release world-premiere recordings of the final three of his 13 clarinet trios on the CD Voyageurs, available April 19, 2024, from Kickshaw Records (Kickshaw 1003). The album was released digitally earlier this year.

Performed by the Upland Trio, a group of professional musicians from the Midwest assembled specifically for the project, Voyageurs comprises Sowash’s Trio No. 11 for Clarinet, Cello & Piano, “We Sang, We Danced” (2003); Trio No. 12, “Voyageurs” (2003); and Trio No. 13, “Passacaglia & Fugue” (2004).

"The complete cycle represents a substantial addition to the clarinet repertoire,” Sowash says. “Few composers have written more than one clarinet trio, much less 13.”

‘Tonal, melodic, and accessible’

In the album’s program notes, Sowash describes the Trio No. 11, “We Sang, We Danced,” as a personal, nostalgic, and “mostly joyful” reflection on childhood innocence and carefree play. A longtime, outspoken critic of atonal, modernist music, Sowash says the Trio No. 11 also recalls “a happier time for the art of composing . . . a long-ago time when it was a given that serious music would be tonal, melodic, and accessible.”

Sowash wrote Trio No. 12, “Voyageurs,” the album’s centerpiece, as an homage to Canada. It honors the early French-Canadian voyageurs who transported furs and other goods across the continent on canoes — and on their backs. Sowash says he wanted the work to be “expansive and majestic,” evoking his own outdoor adventures in Quebec, the Canadian Rockies, and British Columbia.

The four-movement, 30-minute work is highly unusual for the prominent role it affords the piano. It is “almost a piano concerto, with the clarinet and cello sitting in for the orchestra,” Sowash writes.

Sowash discusses the Trio No. 12 in his eighth and newest self-published book, How Music Means (2023), which mixes memoir with music theory: “The piano part is bold and splashy and is given episodes of heroic dash,” he writes. With this composition, he feels he “changed the model” for how instruments in a clarinet trio interact.

Cast in the dark, intense, rarely used key of E-flat minor, his Trio No. 13, “Passacaglia & Fugue,” was a response to the violent events and ensuing wars of the early 2000s. The Passacaglia “explores the relationship between sorrow and beauty,” Sowash says, while the Fugue “is an expression of the energy that is generated by outrage.”

Writing in The Clarinet, clarinetist Joe Rosen recounted learning all Sowash’s Clarinet Trios with cellist and pianist friends. He called it “an extraordinary journey” in which they were “thrilled to find memorable tunes, rich tonal harmonies, intricate counterpoint, and an astonishing variety of moods, ranging from humor to tragedy.”

In a Classical Net review of a pair of Sowash albums, including a disc of clarinet trios, Steve Schwartz wrote: “Sowash’s clarity seems to me harder to pull off than many an obscurantist’s murk in that he has no notes to hide behind or to disguise a lack of basic invention. Fortunately, invention is one of Sowash’s strong suits.”

Sowash has written more for clarinet and cello than any other instruments. He finds each to be “an extraordinary echo of the human voice.”

Production and Engineering

Voyageurs was produced by Greg Kostraba and co-produced and engineered by David Lau at The Brookwood Studio, Plymouth, Michigan, August 12-13, 2022, and March 4, 2023.

Rick Sowash, 'Renaissance man'

Born in Mansfield, Ohio, in 1950, Sowash (an Americanization of his French ancestral family name ’Sauvage’) first learned music from his mother, who sang with prominent Midwest big band jazz ensembles. Although he learned piano fundamentals, he decided early on, “I wanted to create music, not perform it.”

He has been composing since age 12 and says he “found his voice” at age 24.

He was the subject of a 2004 Cincinnati Enquirer profile, written by the newspaper’s classical music critic and headlined “Rick Sowash: Renaissance man, composer, Ohioan.”

Sowash, who earns his living outside the music establishment, gives away PDF files of his scores to all who ask. “All of my musical ideas came to me for free. It just seems right to pass along the music, at no cost, to anyone interested in my life’s work.”

Sowash earned a bachelor’s degree in composition from a prestigious music school at a major American university, which he resolutely declines to name. He says he bristled at the atonalism and modernist dogma that ruled academia during his college years in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He persevered nevertheless, graduating with a double major in music composition and comparative literature. “I give the music school no credit whatsoever for anything I’ve accomplished,” he said in an interview for the release of Voyageurs. “My Comp Lit major was far more worthwhile.”

His role model is early 20^th-century composer Charles Ives, who made his living in the business world and whose music reflects a regional American character. For Ives, the inspiration was New England, for Sowash, the Midwest. Ives’ source of income was his insurance practice. Sowash makes his living as a self-published author, public speaker, and storyteller, often recounting the history and culture of his beloved Ohio.

He has also been a public radio broadcaster, high-school teacher, full-time church music director, theater manager, innkeeper, house painter, art museum guard, and an elected public official in Richland County, Ohio. “All my life,” he says, “I’ve only done work that interested me and helped create a nourishing environment for others.”

Sowash was the subject of two doctoral dissertations, one by Susan Olson, a graduate student at The Ohio State University who went on to earn a D.M.A. degree, the other by Yoonie Choi, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kentucky.

His music has been performed across the U.S. and in Europe by groups ranging from the Cincinnati Ballet and Chicago’s Folks Operetta to France’s Trio les Gavottes. He composed the music for the PBS documentary “Ohio: 200 Years.”

His Concerto for Cello with Strings and Clarinet received its world premiere in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, performed by cellist Kalin Ivanov, clarinetist Todd Brunel, and the Bulgarian Virtuosi, conducted by Stefan Linev.

The world-premiere recording of Sowash’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra shared billing with works by Paul Ben-Haim and John Williams on the album Portals, with David Drosinos, clarinet, and the St. Petersburg Symphony, conducted by Vladimir Lande on the Marquis Classics label. An American Record Guide review proclaimed, “If Aaron Copland wrote the definitive American clarinet concerto, Sowash may have [written] a close second.”

Sowash is a member of ASCAP as a composer and publisher and a member of the Society for American Music.

Music As Metaphor

“While other budding composers of my generation were required to study the serial techniques of Arnold Schoenberg and the polyrhythms of Stravinsky, I was trying to figure out, on my own, what it was about ‘She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain’ and ‘Amazing Grace’ that makes them so instantly appealing to people,” Sowash writes in How Music Means.

The answer, Sowash discovered, is that music captivates, engages the emotions, and satisfies when it’s a “metaphor of the reconciling of opposing elements.” That’s when the listener experiences “a brief foray into a perfect world.”

“This awareness of what happens to listeners when stark contrasts are pleasingly aligned,” he writes, “has inspired my best works.”

Upland Trio

The Upland Trio comprises clarinetist Christopher Bade, cellist Josh Aerie, and pianist Greg Kostraba. All are accomplished musicians and have performed together outside the trio. Voyageurs is the trio’s debut recording.

Bade (pronounced BAY-dee) is professor of music at Taylor University, Upland, Indiana, where he conducts the university’s symphony orchestra and wind ensemble. He plays utility clarinet in Orchestra Indiana.

Aerie (AIR-ee) is director of the annual Woodland Chamber Workshop and executive director of The Music Village, a musical arts center and school in South Bend, Indiana.

Kostraba (kuh-STRAH-bah) was a finalist at the Fourth Van Cliburn International Competition for Outstanding Amateurs and has been heard many times on American Public Media’s “Performance Today.”

“The Upland Trio is just superb,” Sowash says. “They play with depth, wit, and verve. They show me aspects of myself that I only dimly knew were there.”

Sowash discography

With the new release Voyageurs, Sowash’s currently available discography includes 17 albums devoted in whole or in part to his music. In addition to clarinet trios, works include a quintet for clarinet and strings, piano trios, a fantasia for string quartet, a quartet for flute and strings, and much more. For the complete CD list, visit https://sowash.com/recordings/index.html.

Promotional copies of Sowash’s CD releases are available, on request, to record reviewers and classical radio broadcasters. Email nat [at] njscompany [dot] com.

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Voyageurs: Three Trios for Clarinet,
Cello & Piano by Rick Sowash
(Kickshaw Records 1003)

Upland Trio: Christopher Bade, clarinet;
Josh Aerie, cello; Greg Kostraba, piano

Trio No. 11 for Clarinet, Cello & Piano, “We Sang, We Danced” (2003) (18:01)
1.  I. Prelude (4:03)
2.  II. Bells of Morn (4:38)
3.  III. A Pretty Air (2:36)
4.  IV. Tango Finale (6:44)

Trio No. 12 for Clarinet, Cello & Piano, “Voyageurs” (2003) (30:45)
5.  I. Geese in Flight (Les Oies en volent) (8:02)
6.  II. Night Songs of the Voyageurs (Chansons des voyageurs) (7:48)
7.  III. Starshadows on the Snow (Les Ombres des etoiles sur la neige) (4:26)
8.  IV. A Majestic Land (Une Terre majestique) (10:29)

Trio No. 13 for Clarinet, Cello & Piano, “Passacaglia & Fugue” (2004) (16:45)
9.   I. Passacaglia (12:25)
10. II. Fugue (4:20)