Paradise Found: Music For Cello And Piano By Bruce Wolosoff

Description

The distinguished New York-based composer-pianist Bruce Wolosoff synthesizes traditional tonal idioms with lifelong enthusiasms for jazz, blues, and rock music, creating a distinct musical language that speaks to the heart, but is unmistakably contemporary. His soaring, soulful melodies are strikingly suited to the cello, "in some ways my favourite instrument," admits Bruce, "after my own of course." For Paradise Found, Bruce reunites with Grammy Award-winning cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio – the pair previously collaborated on Bruce's Cello Concerto, a Top 10 Billboard Classical chart hit – for the first recordings of his two Cello Sonatas, and two miniatures Circe and The Woods.

Paradise Found is indelibly inspired by the splendours of the natural world. The title track – Bruce's first cello sonata – was composed under the shadow of 2020's first COVID lockdown and serves as an affirmation of lasting beauty when the world was plunged into a very dark place. "In composing this piece," Wolosoff reveals, "I wanted to remind myself, and future listeners, that the world is still beautiful."

Bruce's second cello sonata, "Requiem for the Planet," is a musical response to climate change. With movements titled 'Song of the Earth,' 'Requiem Aeternum,' 'The Great Waters' and 'Epilogue: I have loved this world so dearly,' the work is a sort of musical requiem in sonata form. But it is not without hope. Bruce acknowledges, "It is my most fervent wish that this beautiful, ephemeral world will endure throughout my children's lifetimes."

The album concludes with two "encores" – Circe inspired by the sorceress in Homer's The Odyssey, and The Woods, after a drawing by Bruce's friend April Gornik, whose beautiful paintings adorn the album's booklet.

Grammy-Award winning American cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio has performed all over the world, with everyone from Sting to Rudolf Serkin and in every imaginable venue from the Hollywood Bowl to Carnegie Hall. Her passionate playing has thrilled and intrigued audiences from Austin to Amsterdam and from Beijing to Boston, and she has performed in intimate clubs and for crowds of 15,000. Sant'Ambrogio has recorded six albums on EMI as the cellist of the Eroica Trio, garnering multiple Grammy nominations, and five solo albums on Sebastian Records. The most recent of these, a recording of the music by Elgar, Bruce Wolosoff and Piazzolla with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, debuted on Billboard Magazine's Top Ten list, where it stayed for many weeks. Her solo recordings have featured on numerous soundtracks, most recently as the opening track of the HBO documentary A Matter of Taste. She has appeared on broadcasts for networks including CBS, ABC, PBS and CNN and in publications such as Vanity Fair, Strad, Glamour, Fanfare, Elle, Strings, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, bon appétit and Travel and Leisure. Her recording with pianist Robert Koenig, The Chopin Collection, was included in The Washington Post's annual list of Notable Recordings. Gramophone Magazine has described Sara Sant'Ambrogio's interpretations as 'Technically formidable and intensely communicative, these performances grab you by the ears and refuse to let you go!'

Bruce Wolosoff is a pianist and an internationally performed composer of solo, chamber, and orchestral music. Lauded as 'an authentic American voice' by critic Thomas Bohlert for his integration of classical, jazz, blues, and contemporary influences, Wolosoff often composes in response to visual art and through collaborations with leading artists across a variety of disciplines. Recent projects include a recording of his Lacrymae for cello choir, commissioned for cellist Inbal Segev's 20 for 2020 project on Avie Records, and his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, featuring Sara Sant'Ambrogio as soloist and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Grzegorz Nowak, which critic Jerry Dubins of Fanfare Magazine hailed as a work of 'compelling beauty', one that 'can be declared an instant masterpiece'.

Critical acclaim for Bruce Wolosoff

"Bruce Wolosoff is a formidable pianist and composer" "The performances are all excellent. Sara Sant'Ambrogio plays with warm tone and a natural feeling for Wolosoff's lyric style." - Gramophone

"an artist with ideas" - The New York Times

""Bruce Wolosoff's music is beautiful, very musical, independent-minded stylistically, and comes from a very warm and terrific person."" – William Bolcom