Boston, MA (For Release 01.25.22) — Known as the nation’s foremost label launched by an orchestra and devoted exclusively to new music, Grammy Award-winning BMOP/sound today announced the release of Gail Kubik: Symphony Concertante. Featuring four concert pieces having strong origins in his film music, this sophisticated recording displays Kubik’s gifts at their most appealing, including the large-scale Pulitzer Prize-winning Symphony Concertante. Led by conductor and producer Gil Rose, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is joined by soloists Vivian Choi (piano), Terry Everson (trumpet), Jing Peng (viola), Frank Kelley (narrator), and Robert Schulz (percussion).

The recipient of Gramophone Magazine’s 2021 Special Achievement Award, BMOP has been applauded for a 25-year commitment to resurrecting forgotten works and casting a spotlight on rarely performed composers such as Kubik. “Gail Kubik is a name mostly forgotten now, and yet he is an award-winning composer of both classical and film music,” explains BMOP Artistic Director Gil Rose. “BMOP is humbled and thrilled to be sharing the neglected yet revelatory music by this American master. This recording is a great glimpse into American concert music in the mid-20th century.”

Oklahoma-born Gail Kubik attended the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Bernard Rogers, and with Walter Piston at Harvard as well as with Nadia Boulanger. He developed a language notable for its directness, clarity, and stylistic variety. The album includes two of Kubik’s award-winning scores for film written in the 1950s. A collaborative project with Ted Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss) was the Academy Award-winning short animated film Gerald McBoing Boing, one of the most influential cartoons of the era. Kubik’s bright, clever score awarded him the Prix de Rome in 1950. He later turned Gerald McBoing Boing into a concert piece with narration heard here from the versatile American tenor Frank Kelley. Shortly thereafter, Kubik won the Pulitzer Prize for the Symphony Concertante, commissioned by New York City’s The Little Orchestra, which premiered it in 1952. The piece reuses material from the composer’s jazz-leaning score to C-Man, a 1949 thriller starring the well-traveled Dean Jagger as well as John Carradine. In 2016, BMOP revived the forgotten concertante in a spectacular performance with pianist Vivian Choi, violist Jing Peng, and trumpeter Terry Everson (who used two different trumpets with four different kinds of mutes), who may also be heard on this recording.