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AMHERST, Mass. - Lewis Spratlan, the Peter R. Pouncey Professor of Music at Amherst College and recipient of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Music, has just released a new recording on Albany Records. The disc, titled "When Crows Gather and Other Works," contains four pieces performed by the New York ensemble Sequitur. Spratlan's piece Streaming: Quartet for Piano and Strings, commissioned by Chicago's Ravinia Festival, will also be performed by players from Ravinia at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 20.
Other pieces on the new CD are When Crows Gather (1986); Concertino for Violin and Chamber Ensemble (1995), Mark Kaplan, soloist; Of Time and the Seasons - seven songs on Finnish texts (2001), Lucy Shelton, soprano; and Zoom (2003) for chamber orchestra. Paul Hostetter is the conductor of Sequitur.
In addition to its performance in Boston, Streaming: Quartet for Piano and Strings will also be played in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and at the Library of Congress in Washington in March. The Manatees of Blue Springs, based on a text by Lewis Hyde, will be performed by the choir of Washington University in St. Louis on Saturday, April 16.
Spratlan has taught at Amherst College since 1970, when he founded and conducted the Amherst-Mount Holyoke Orchestra. He was educated at Yale University and the Yale School of Music. His compositions have won numerous awards and prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize for Life Is a Dream, Opera in Three Acts: Act Two, Concert Version, which had its world premiere at Amherst in 2000. His recordings include Two Pieces for Orchestra, available on Opus One Records, and Night Music on Gasparo.
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