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Press Releases
Bmop/sound Releases Two Lukas Foss Recordings of His Chamber Operas and Orchestral Works
BMOP/sound Releases Two Lukas Foss Recordings: Chamber Operas in The Jumping Frog of Calavares County and Orchestral Works in Night Music for John Lennon
Performances by the GRAMMY Award-Winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Thomas Meglioranza (baritone), Neal Ferreira (tenor), and more, led by Conductor Gil Rose
DIGITAL PHYSICAL RELEASES
TBR January 28, 2025
Available at BandCamp
“A leader in contemporary opera and classical music in America (Opera News), the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), led by conductor Gil Rose, today announced the addition of two more Lukas Foss recordings to its catalog: The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (#1102) and Night Music for John Lennon (#1103). Contributing to the discography of 20th-century American classics, these seminal albums beautifully capture the elegant and equally imaginative language of the polymathic Lukas Foss. BMOP, Gil Rose, and their proprietary label BMOP/sound have been longtime champions of Foss. They have previously released the debut recording of Foss’s Complete Symphonies (2015) as well as his oratorio, The Prairie (2008).
“Lukas Foss has a long, varied, and largely overlooked career. His was a definitive voice in the mid-century evolution of American art music. It is imperative that we continue to keep his music and legacy alive. These latest recordings are remarkable and significant gifts to American music.” — GIL ROSE
Lukas Foss: The Jumping Frog of Calavares County comprises two of Foss’s one-act operas: the nine-minute Introductions and Good-Byes – a humorous yet virtuosic commentary on convention and etiquette – followed by the album’s title track. The Jumping Frog is based on Mark Twain’s earliest and most famous short story, “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog.” Foss’s operatic adaptation successfully bridges the gap between a European classical music tradition and American folklore style, setting the tale at the geographical and cultural epicenter of the California Gold Rush era. By capturing the essence of regional American storytelling, Foss married local folk narratives with his aesthetic amalgamation of neo-classicism and eclectic modernism.
Lukas Foss: Night Music for John Lennon showcases an experimental “middle age” period (1967-1981) of Foss’s career, when he served as music director of both the Buffalo and Brooklyn Philharmonics. The eponymous work was written on the day John Lennon was killed: December 8, 1980. Though the piece does not directly reference any of John Lennon’s music, there are definite rock and pop attributes throughout. Foss was cited as being attracted to the youthfulness of the Beatles’ music.
From the same period of Foss’s venture in aleatory come the other two pieces on this album: Cello Concert is a musical statement (not a concerto), a piece about the cello and the virtuoso idea. The piece was composed for Mstislav Rostropovich and brings the listener from off-stage amplified sounds, to bafflingly difficult cadenzas, to a Bach Sarabande, and everything in between. Unique to this album is the supplication of all possible permutations of this pieces’ assemblages of accompaniment parts for the second and third movements (a sort of “bonus features” section of alternate renditions). As such, the album truly supplies a conclusive documentation of the composition.
And to complete the aleatoric adventure, Concerto for Solo Percussion and Large or Small Orchestratakes us to the limits of performative chance. Scored for a list of percussion instruments that one might mistake for a hardware store inventory catalogue, the piece is not only impressive and entertaining but also a thought-provoking issue of 20th Century experimentalism. Originally commissioned and performed by percussionist Jan Williams, this recording features Williams’ student, Robert Schulz in a unique and stimulating realization of the score.
“I feel that the way to advance into new musical territory is to advance rear first waving to the disappearing past. Unlike the perpetually youthful music of the Beatles, of John Lennon, our classical (or modern classical) music is at best ageless: it is never young. I would agree that my curiosity has led me absolutely everywhere, but I make one qualification: I’ve never been a bandwagon jumper. I’ve never belonged to any school. I’ve never written a 12-tone piece when it was fashionable to do so. I make things my own.” — adapted from the writings and words of LUKAS FOSS
About Lukas Foss
Lukas Foss (1922-2009) was a German-American composer, conductor, pianist, and professor who in 1945 was the youngest composer ever to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. Foss succeeded Arnold Schoenberg as Professor of Composition at the University of California at Los Angeles and in 1957 founded the Improvisational Chamber Ensemble, a foursome that improvised music in concert. The essential feature of his music is the tension, so typical of the 20th Century, between tradition and new modes of musical expression. He was at the forefront of the American musical avant-garde of the 1960s and 70s. Many of his works—Time Cycle (1960) for soprano and orchestra (which received the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award), Baroque Variations (1960) for orchestra, 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1978) for soprano and small ensemble, Tashi (1986), for piano, clarinet and string quartet, and Renaissance Concerto (1985), for flute and orchestra—are landmarks of 20th-century repertoire.
His ideas—and his compelling way of expressing them—garnered for Foss considerable respect as not only a composer but a conductor and educator as well. He taught at Tanglewood and was composer-in-residence at Harvard, the Manhattan School of Music, Carnegie Melon University, Yale University, and Boston University. In 1983 he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in May 2000 received the Academy’s Gold Medal in honor of his distinguished career in music. The holder of eight honorary doctorates (including a 1991 Doctor of Music degree from Yale), he was in constant demand as a lecturer and delivered the prestigious Mellon Lectures (1986) at Washington’s National Gallery of Art.
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 operatic works, “Gil Rose is not just a fine conductor, but a peerless curator, sniffing out—and commissioning—off-trend, unheralded, and otherwise underplayed repertoire who 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.” GilRoseConductor.com
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, GRAMMY Award-winning BMOP haschampioned the works of 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 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 nominations, and its releases have appeared on the year-end “Best of” lists of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio, 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. BMOP.org
Track Listings:
Lukas Foss: The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
1-2. Introductions and Good-Byes (A 9-Minute Opera) (1959)
Thomas Meglioranza/Host, baritone
3-11. The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1949)
Felicia Gavilanes/Lulu, mezzo-soprano
Neal Ferreira/Smiley, tenor
David Salsbery Fry/The Stranger, bass
Isaac Bray/Uncle Henry, baritone
James Demler/Guitar Player, bass-baritone
Jonathan Boyd/1st Crapshooter, tenor
John Paul Huckle/2nd Crapshooter, bass
TRT: 49:51
Lukas Foss: Night Music for John Lennon
1-2. Night Music for John Lennon (1981)
3-10. Cello Concert (1966)
David Russell, cello
11-14. Concerto for Solo Percussion and Large or Small Orchestra (1974)
Robert Schulz, percussion
TRT: 81:08
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