Album Notes

THE CD
Roger Sessions SYMPHONIES 6, 7 and 9 - PHCD172

THE COMPOSER:
Roger Huntington Sessions (28 December 1896 16 March 1985) was an American composer, critic and teacher of music. Born in Brooklyn, New York to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution, Sessions studied music at Harvard University from the age of 14. There, he wrote for and subsequently edited the Harvard Musical Review. Graduating at age 18, he went on to study at Yale University under Horatio Parker and Ernest Bloch before teaching at Smith College. His first major compositions were made while traveling Europe in his mid twenties and early thirties with his wife. Returning to the United States in 1933, he taught first at Princeton University, moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1946 to 1954, and then returned to Princeton until retiring in 1965, although he continued to teach on a part-time basis at the Juilliard School until 1983. He died at the age of 88 in Princeton, New Jersey.


THE ORCHESTRA
American Composers Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies, conductor.
American Composers Orchestra is the world\'s only orchestra dedicated to the infinite variety of American music. ACO performs at Carnegie Hall. Founded in 1977 by composers Francis Thorne and Nicholas Roussakis, Music Director Dennis Russell Davies, and Resident Conductor Paul Lustig Dunkel, ACO has played works by 500 composers, including over 100 world premieres and commissions, generating more new American symphonic works than any other orchestra. Among the notable artists who have collaborated with the American Composers Orchestra are: Leonard Bernstein, Keith Jarrett, André Watts, Emanuel Ax and Itzhak Perlman. The ACO discography includes 22 recordings on the ARGO, ECM, MusicMasters, CRI, Point, Tzadik, New World and Nonesuch labels. ACO concerts are broadcast on Public Radio International, National Public Radio, and Voice of America. Among the honors the Orchestra has received are special awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Broadcast Music, Inc. The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers has awarded ACO its prize for adventuresome programming in each of the last 26 years, recognizing ACO as \"the orchestra that has done the most for new American music in the United States.\" In addition to its concerts, commissions, recordings, and reading sessions, ACO has offered Sonidos de las Américas, an annual festival of Latin American music; Coming to America, examining music of immigrant composers; and Orchestra Tech, an initiative to develop new works employing new technologies. ACO also offers Music Factory, an education program that places composers in New York City schools to explore the process of creating music.

THE CONDUCTOR
A masterful and innovative force in classical music, Dennis Russell Davies is considered among todays most inventive conductors at the forefront of the orchestral, chamber and operatic worlds. A modern, articulate and versatile artist revered for his command of both traditional and contemporary music, Mr. Davies is also recognized as an accomplished pianist and as an acclaimed collaborator, sought out by orchestras, composers and artists alike for his interpretive skills.

American-born Mr. Davies has lived abroad since 1980, but maintains an active presence on the North American music scene as a regular guest conductor with the major orchestras and opera houses of New York and Chicago. In addition to his ongoing duties as Chief Conductor of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and Professor of Orchestral Conducting at the Salzburg Mozarteum, Mr. Davies is Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and Chief Conductor of the Linz Opera. In January 2002, he was appointed to a 5-year term to the Board of Directors of the esteemed Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University.

A champion of contemporary music, his support of modern works, particularly American, is legendary. His close personal friendships with some of the 21st centurys greatest composers, including Luciano Berio, William Bolcom, John Cage, Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, Hans Werner Henze, and Francis Thorne (with whom he formed American Composers Orchestra), have been an important catalyst for enriching concert and operatic repertory around the globe. Recently, Mr. Davies concluded his tenures as Chief Conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (1996-2002), and as Music Director of the pre-eminent American Composers Orchestra (1975-2002). He continues his affiliation with American Composers Orchestra, which he co-founded 26 years ago, as Conductor Laureate. Mr. Davies has had successful tenures as the General Music Director of the City of Bonn (Germany), Principal Conductor/Classical Music Program Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Principal Conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Music Director of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Music Director of the Cabrillo Music Festival in Santa Cruz, California. In addition to his North American orchestral guest conducting appearances, Davies has guest conducted some of the most prestigious orchestras in Europe including the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Dennis Russell Davies was born in Toledo, Ohio, and graduated from The Juilliard School where he studied piano with Lonny Epstein and Sasha Gorodnitski and conducting with Jean Morel and Jorge Mester.

NOTES:
This disc includes the first recording of the Sixth and Ninth Symphonies by Roger Sessions, whom critic Leighton Kerner called \"the greatest symphonist since Mahler\".
Superstitious about writing more symphonies than Beethoven\'s nine, Mahler died during the composition of his Tenth.
Sessions, like many other composers, also wrote nine symphonies. When commissioned to write another, the composer disclaimed superstition, but called it Concerto for Orchestra. His nine symphonies plus the Concerto, a Violin Concerto, a Piano Concerto, Double Concerto, Rhapsody, Concertino, Divertimento and Suite from The Black Maskers contribute mightily to the American orchestral canon.