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The music of American composer Peter Boyer (b. 1970) is a tasty mix of theatrical Romanticism, colorful atmospherics, and some of the most confident writing to come along in quite a while. Witness the opening bars of Celebration Overture, written for the American Jazz Philharmonic. It's definitely a curtain-raiser. More diverse musical elements (though hardly less subdued) can be found in the tone poem Titanic (written, by the way, two years before the movie). The double-tonguing trombones and glissandi of the opening measures evoke the songs of deep-diving whales, which are then followed by water gongs and brassy bells straight out of Alan Hovhaness. Titanic is followed by Three Olympians for string orchestra. Olympians has more of a British flair than anything particularly American (Britten and Tippett come to mind), but the work is in no way derivative. All in all, this is an excellent introduction to the music of a promising composer. --Paul Cook, ISBN13: B00005J6ZP ISBN10: B00005J6ZP Material Type: audioCD