McPhee: Tabuh-Tabuhan / Ung: Inner Voices / Harrison: Suite for Symphonic Strings

by American Composers Orchestra / Dennis Russell Davies

Colin McPhee once explained in a program note, 'was written after I had already spent four years in Bali engaged in musical research and is largely inspired, especially in its orchestration, by the various methods I had learned of Balinese gamelan technique'.

Lou Harrison, a composer of astonishing prolificacy and variety, has written a great many works based upon Indonesian and Korean music, sometimes utilizing the American Gamelan, sometimes employing Western instruments, and sometimes making various combinations of the two types .

While INNER VOICES contains no specific Cambodian music, listeners will immediately recognize the Asian voice. Inner Voices was commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra and premiered in 1986 under Dennis Russell Davies. Ung represents a new generation of composers for whom multiculturalism is not self-conscious, who not only don't need to defend their practices, nor even find them particularly worthy of attention.