SHORT STORIES IN LONDON

with London Symphony Orchestra

Joseph Young, conductor

Sean Jones, trumpet

Avie Records

ABOUT THE ALBUM

Creative collaboration is central to American composer Joel Puckett’s career, a spirit that unites the three works on this recording. Each work represents a partnership between Puckett’s vibrant creative imagination and a particular musician, or group of musicians.

Puckett’s new Trumpet Concerto (2024), his second for the instrument, was written for the distinguished jazz trumpeter Sean Jones. It’s a homage of sorts to another American classic conceived for a great jazz musician, Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, which was commissioned and premiered by Benny Goodman. The work is a personal response to Jones’s artistry, showcasing his dazzling high register and individual articulations and inflections that are unique to his playing.

The orchestral song cycle There Was a Child Went Forth was created for Grammy Award winning tenor Nicholas Phan. The music is accessible and inward, much like the verses by Walt Whitman. It’s a work of celebration, composed in 2023 for the 225th anniversary of the United States President’s Own Marine Band. Inspiration came from Phan’s love of Whitman, and synergy from Whitman’s written reviews of the Marine Band.’

The album’s title track Short Stories is a string quartet concerto, which has been widely performed since its 2013 premiere. Principal players of the London Symphony Orchestra shine as the soloists, at times playing as individuals, at others as a unit with their orchestral colleagues providing a resplendent accompaniment.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

TIM SMITH

“[Phan] confidently negotiates the elegant, if often challenging, melodic lines, using his flair for producing exquisite pianissimi to particularly haunting effect…. Enhancing the performance is the glowing sound that Young coaxes from the LSO…In our increasingly scary world, an album filled with music of such sincerity, personality and poetic impulse couldn’t be more welcome.” 

MARK ESTREN

“Phan is fully comfortable with the varied elements of these settings and the vocal techniques required – his unaccompanied opening of the fourth song comes across especially well – he presents the cycle as engagingly as possible. And Joseph Young is suitably engaged and sensitive in leading the accompaniment…”