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TRACKLIST

1. Anonymous ~ Four Renaissance Lute Works - Drewrie's accordes [0:01:34.39]
2. John Dowland (1563-1626) ~ Four Renaissance Lute Works - Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home [0:02:31.61]
3. Anonymous ~ Four Renaissance Lute Works - Le Rossignol [0:03:41.39]
4. John Johnson (c. 1545-1594) ~ Four Renaissance Lute Works - Greensleeves [0:05:13.27]
5. Traditional (arranged by Edward Flower) ~ The Drunken Sailor [0:01:54.42]
6. Traditional (arranged by Edward Flower) ~ Wild Mountain Thyme [0:03:20.72]
7. Andrew York (b. 1958) ~ Andecy [0:04:29.72]
8. Traditional (arranged by Carlos Barbosa-Lima) ~ Wayfaring Stranger [0:05:01.59]
9. John Duarte (1919-2004) ~ Joan... - I. Fantasia: Once I had a Sweetheart; Rambler Gambler; Barbara Allen [0:02:31.41]
10. John Duarte (1919-2004) ~ Joan Baez Suite, Op. 144 (2002) - II. The House of the Rising Sun [0:02:13.67]
11. John Duarte (1919-2004) ~ Joan Baez Suite, Op. 144 (2002) - III. The Lily of the West [0:01:13.14]
12. John Duarte (1919-2004) ~ Joan Baez Suite, Op. 144 (2002) - IV. The Unquiet Grave [0:02:14.31]
13. John Duarte (1919-2004) ~ Joan Baez Suite, Op. 144 (2002) - V. Silkie [0:01:46.55]
14. John Duarte (1919-2004) ~ Joan Baez Suite, Op. 144 (2002) - VI. Where have all the Flowers Gone? [0:03:10.37]
15. John Duarte (1919-2004) ~ Joan... - VII. Finale: Rake and Rambling Boy; Wildwood Flower; The Trees they do Grow High [0:02:52.42]
16. John Jacob Niles (1892-1980) ~ Go'Way From My Window [0:02:18.24]
17. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - I. Fair Dancer Reel [0:01:14.01]
18. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - II. Sailor's Jig [0:00:54.59]
19. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - III. Captain's Jig [0:00:44.28]
20. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - IV. Off to Sea [0:00:55.00]
21. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - V. Pilgrim's Waltz [0:01:10.49]
22. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - VI. Road to Appalachia [0:01:03.39]
23. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - VII. Shine On [0:01:49.12]
24. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - VIII. Cotton Pickin' Blues [0:01:30.17]
25. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - IX. Pickin' Parlor Rag [0:01:18.54]
26. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - X. Queen of the Cumberland [0:01:13.67]
27. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - XI. Texas Dance Hall Blues [0:01:08.05]
28. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - XII. Swing [0:01:02.63]
29. Mark O'Connor (b. 1961) ~ Strings & Threads Suite - XIII. Sweet Suzanne [0:01:18.54]

Biography: by Zoran Minderovic
Described by the Boston Globe's Michael Manning as a musician who plays "beyond virtuosity," guitarist Sharon Isbin has been a consistent challenge for critics, who struggle to find the right superlative that would do justice to her exquisite playing. "In her hands," wrote Anne Midgette in The New York Times, "the guitar takes on the precision of a diamond, each note a clear, shining facet that catches, prism-like, a glimpse of the spectrum." In essence, a performance by Isbin is like a painting by Vermeer: a formally impeccable and inexhaustible work of art. A Renaissance woman of the guitar, Isbin performs worldwide at famous venues and commissions new work from distinguished American composers (more than any other guitarist) for her instruments, collaborates with a wide variety of musicians, and indefatigably searches for new music to play. As a child, Isbin wanted to be a scientist like her father. However, she started guitar lessons at the age of nine (the family was living in Italy at the time) and found her vocation. Her teachers included Andrés Segovia and harpsichordist Rosalyn Tureck. With Tureck, Isbin worked on the first performance edition, for guitar, of J.S. Bach's Lute Suites. This project eventually resulted in a critically acclaimed disc. In 1989, Isbin founded the guitar department at the Juilliard School of Music and became that institution's first professor of guitar. Isbin's recordings have consistently been assessed as groundbreaking musical events. In 1995, her disc was the first ever American guitar concert presented to a Russian cosmonaut during a rendezvous between the space shuttle Atlantis and the Russian spaceship Mir. Journey to the Amazon, performed with Brazilian percussionist Thiago de Mello and saxophonist Paul Winter, earned Isbin a Grammy nomination in 1999. She received a Grammy in 2001 for her Dreams of a World: Folk-Inspired Music for Guitar. Significantly, this was the first classical guitar Grammy in 28 years. In 2002, Isbin got another Grammy for her extraordinary performance of concerti by Christopher Rouse and Tan Dun. The concerti featured on this world-premiere disc were dedicated to Isbin. Spanning various styles, genres, and periods, Isbin's other recordings include Aaron Jay Kernis' Double Concerto (with violinist Cho-Liang Lin), Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjues, and Sharon Isbin Plays Baroque Favorites for Guitar. The last-named album features a truly astounding performance of a transcription of Bach's Violin Concerto in A minor.

Review: by Uncle Dave Lewis
The very early history of the folk music revival in America is peopled to some extent by classical musicians such as Ruth Crawford Seeger (Pete's stepmom) and Suzanne Bloch who acted as midwives, expert collectors of past folk material, sources of repertoire, and even as performers when there was no folk movement as such. Once the folk revival got going, however, the movement necessarily took its own direction, reaching out to the young, with some artists pursuing a distinct political agenda and all getting as far away from "art music" as they could. Although Peter, Paul & Mary have long moved out of the coffee houses and into the concert halls, the estrangement of American folk music -- as it was practiced in the 1950s and '60s -- and art music has more or less continued since; however, in her Sony Classical disc Journey to the New World, classical guitarist Sharon Isbin brings it all back together in a very beautiful way.

The centerpiece of Journey to the New World is the Joan Baez Suite, Op. 144, by late composer and critic John Duarte, and it was one of the last things Duarte completed and written specially for Isbin. It is a remarkable suite, which doesn't specifically focus on Baez so much as the musical world she represents, though she did at one time or another sing all of the songs Duarte uses as a springboard for his interpretive restatements of them. Particularly striking is "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" as a slight taste of bitterness creeps in behind Pete Seeger's sad and sweet melody, further interrupted by "Taps"; perhaps a meditation on the idea that, though the song captivated many, its lesson was not learnt. The other long work features Isbin and violinist Mark O'Connor in duo mode on O'Connor's Strings & Threads Suite, previously heard in its violin and string orchestra garb on O'Connor's Sony release The American Seasons. It is as dazzling and unserious as Duarte's suite is reflective and knowing, and these two works provide both food for thought and the need for sheer enjoyment.

Baez herself joins Isbin on two short cuts; while she shares with Isbin the lot of being regarded as an expert interpretive artist, these performances are heartfelt and personal. Baez is one of those institutions in American music of whom the "institution" part is seldom acknowledged; it is nice to see her receive her due here. Moreover, one would not want to miss out on Andrew York's lovely early composition Andecy, written by him while "limiting my harmonies in composition to this framework, but striving for strong emotional content within it." Perhaps this helps answer something about the gulf between folk music -- which has fed classical music for centuries -- at least in America, and classical; classical musicians find pure simplicity somewhat limiting, whereas folk musicians don't necessarily care for business that impedes communication and the vaunted historic baggage of the classics. Leave it to an extraordinary musician like Sharon Isbin to tie such disconsolate threads together into something like Sony's Journey to the New World, definitely a keeper and a disc to return to again and again.

SPOILER (EAC LOG)

SPOILER (Игра)