CD "Desert Roads" (David Maslanka) David Maslanka

This renowned composer for wind ensemble offers two recent works in authoritative performances.

Born in Massachusetts in 1943, a pupil of Joseph Wood and H. Owen Reed, David Maslanka has become especially well known for his works for winds in many combinations solo sonatas, chamber works and substantial works for wind ensemble including five Symphonies. Of these two recent works, he writes The title Desert Roads suggests an interior journey, a time of inner searching, of not knowing, of creative incubation. I have chosen to call these four movements songs for clarinet and wind ensemble. This connects them directly to the romantic idea of songs without words'because of my longtime and persistent use of chorale melodies, it has been suggested that I am somehow proselytizing for the Christian faith. This is not the case. My attraction to these melodies is that they are the product of countless generations of human seeking, and have about them an aura of depth and power. The word book' gives the feeling of a larger collection of material, something extensive and varied, and something that may have a story to tell.

CONTENTS:
David Maslanka, composer
Desert Roads
Illinois State University Wind Symphony, Stephen Steele, conductor, David Gresham, clarinet

David Maslanka, composer
David's Book
Illinois State University Wind Symphony, Stephen Steele, conductor, David Collier, percussion

REVIEW:
"David Maslanka...writes immediately attractive, widely popular, easily assimilable and entirely tonal music that is full of original touches that repay many hearings...This CD is one to which I know I'll be returning again and again." (Scott Morrison)