Richard Pennycuick wrote: >I heard on the radio Ewazen's Violin Concerto, a most beautiful work >apparently influenced by Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia and Dives and >Lazarus. I tracked down the contents of the rest of the Albany CD, and >there was information about Ewazen's career at his website. There are >a number of CDs of his music available but I hadn't heard of him before >and Classical Net's search engine hadn't either. I'm interested to know >if the violin concerto is typical of his style or, if not, which other >composers he might be compared to. I don't know his Violin Concerto. I do know his Trombone Sonata, along with a few other works for bass trombone (actually, I've listened to only half that disc) and I recently played his Symphony for Brass. He's got a lot of Hollywood in him, sort of along the lines of Elmer Bernstein. His music combines a feel for open spaces and a lot of syncopation but not really that much jazz. A lot of it sounds alike and I've heard some complain that, while it's attractive, it's not all that deep. I haven't made that decision yet, though I suspect that's true of the Symphony, though I still like it, especially the often hymnlike slow movement. I keep fooling with the Trombone Sonata but have not really taken it up--that's one work I have not come to grips with, and that's after hearing the Joe Alessi recording. But I do like what I've heard of that bass trombone disc. Some of it sounds like the Symphony, but there's a bit of pseudo-impressionism in one of the pieces that I really find attractive. The Violin Concerto sounds interesting. I don't hear much VW in the Ewazen works I know, but given the modal nature of some of his scale writing, I'm not surprised to hear that description applied to a concerto for a string instrument and orchestra, as opposed to works for brass. For what it's worth, the concerto sounds as if it is a deeper work, with less Hollywood, than the brass pieces. Come to think of it, I've played a few more Ewazen works. A trombone octet and another work for trombones. (He can't be all bad.) Those I have to admit I didn't care for much, but we were just reading them--he can be vapid at times, though that judgment may be unfair, given the brief acquaintance I had with those two works. Roger Hecht