BOSTON, MA (For Immediate Release) — “Continuing to shine in overlooked music from the last century (Gramophone),” the forward-thinking Boston Modern Orchestra Project, led by acclaimed conductor Gil Rose, today announced the release of its latest recording, Eric Sawyer: Civil Disobedience. Written by American composer Eric Sawyer, Civil Disobedience comprises four orchestral works: the eponymous piece set to Henry David Thoreau’s writings, Fantasy Concerto: Concord Conversations, and two mystical songs, Violin Concerto and Ways of Being. Together they combine the playfulness of Sawyer’s mixed-genre songs to his own lyrics with the moral core of his operas, the setting of texts by American writers, and his long-standing interest in American Transcendentalism.
Eric Sawyer (b.1962) is a composer whose musical language views Americanism through a lens of modernity. His musical vocabulary is known for bringing together traditions in American music springing from American history and literature. This unifying feature of Sawyer’s oeuvre is showcased in this latest recording Civil Disobedience, named for the title track of this album. By setting Thoreau’s infamous essay Civil Disobedience, Sawyer recontextualizes the writer’s most prescient work as it fits into the 21st century. “Thoreau’s essay has always challenged by own civic mindedness,” says Sawyer. “Civil Disobedience’s investigation of the relationship of the individual and the state feels relevant to this chaotic moment in America, perhaps to every moment.”
The recording also features the acclaimed Claremont Trio in Sawyer's symphonic poem for piano trio and orchestra Fantasy Concerto: Concord Conversations, with each solo instrument loosely representing a figure central to the development of Transcendentalism: the violin, Margaret Fuller; the cello, Bronson Alcott; and the piano, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Rounding out the album is Sawyer’s Violin Concerto as well as his foray into the world of singer-songwriter, Ways of Being with guest vocalists Krista River and Kristen Watson.
This marks the second Sawyer recording on the BMOP/sound label, once again revisiting the lives and legacies of American icons. Our American Cousin (2008), a 2-CD set opera that explored Abraham Lincoln’s final evening.
About Eric Sawyer
Eric Sawyer is the composer of an extensive catalog ranging from opera and orchestral music to chamber music and songs. His musical vocabulary integrates a variety of traditions in American music, with an emphasis on rich and expressive harmonies. Sawyer grew up in Southern California, received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, and after several forays between the coasts returned to New England to stay. A committed teacher, he has taught music at UC Santa Cruz, MIT and Wellesley, and headed the Composition and Theory Program at Longy School of Music from 1998 to 2002. In 2002 Sawyer accepted a faculty position at Amherst College, where he currently chairs the music department.
Sawyer’s orchestral music has received performances since his days as a college student, when his mentor Leon Kirchner introduced two of his works with the Harvard Chamber Orchestra. He has a long history of writing for soloist with orchestra, stretching from an early cello concerto to Chamber Concerto for Tenor Saxophone, premiered in 2025. In addition to Leon Kirchner, Sawyer studied composition with Ross Bauer, Tison Street, Andrew Imbrie, Thomas Benjamin, and George Edwards. Sawyer has been honored with the Joseph Bearns Prize, The American Prize for The Scarlet Professor (best opera, 2018), and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Tanglewood, and Harvard University Society of Fellows.
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.”
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 has championed 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.
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.
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