The new face of contemporary choral music. Featuring works by Davidson and McKinley performed by the Slovak Radio Symphony Choir

This album is the new face of contempory choral music. It's a tapestry of sounds, traditions, and history that spans centuries, interpreted in the language of today. In this music, stylistic barriers don't exist.

Few modern composers are as eclectic as Roger Davidson, whose rapidly growing body of work ranges of symphonic, chamber, and choral music to jazz and tango pieces that feature his own piano playing. A voracious student of these and many other forms, Davidson has traveled the world with open ears and studied with masters.

With its startling range of textures and tonalities and its theatrical flair, MAUERN captures the essence of William Thomas McKinley, a composer-pianist who has straddled jazz, serial, atonal, electronic, and classical romantic forms. Since the 1960s he has written over 40 works that make dynamic use of the clarinet playing of his friend Richard Stoltzman. As usual, the clarinetist delivers a fiercely emotional, virtuosic performance in MAUERN.