SUNY Distinguished Professor and composer James Piorkowski’s newest recording, “NINE: The Guitar and Beyond,” has been released by Centaur Records.
The CD also features some of Piorkowski’s School of Music colleagues including Dr. Gerald Gray, Dr. Natasha Farny, Daniel Ihasz, and Drs. Angela Haas and Anne Kissell-Harper. In addition, it engineered by Fredonia Sound Recording Technology alumnus Chris Sclafani. The CD has international distribution via venues including iTunes, Amazon, Allmusic and Target.
The recording presents a collection of nine new works, predominantly featuring the classical guitar, by Piorkowski, who is known for having developed an individual and identifiable musical language. Most of the works are guitar based, which is unique, as it is uncommon for a composer to write in so many varied formats, styles and settings, and in this case, perform in every work, except one where the guitar isn’t present.
Two of the five solo classical guitar works are set as homages: “Hear My Train,” to Jimi Hendrix, the innovative and highly influential American rock/blues guitarist/songwriter, and “Rolando” to Roland Dyens, the esteemed Parisian composer/arranger/guitarist. The other solo guitar works are more recent compositions including “One Morning in Venice,” “Eucharisteo,” and “Eviania.”
Other songs on the CD include, “The Greatest of These,” a setting of the renowned Biblical love chapter - "love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud...;" “Hear, O Heavens, Listen, O Earth,” written in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. ; “El Camino a Oviedo,” an instrumental depiction of traveling through the majestic mountainous landscape of northern Spain, and the non-guitar work, "Toward the Light, Flight 3407," a setting of a poem of the same title by Jane Sadowsky, which was written following the tragic 2009 airplane crash of Continental Flight 3407 near Buffalo.
