Various Artists - Jon Deak: Symphonic Tales (Live) (2019)

Jon Deak is a composer who ‘has more fun with music than anyone I know’ (New York Newsday), and all of the pieces on this album of symphonic stories for young and old alike involve the performers as narrators. These tales include the wolves of Canada and Alaska in B.B. Wolf (An Apologia), a loving tribute to the immigrants of America in Bye-Bye!, and a dramatic and virtuoso version of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen Finale. The Legend of Spuyten Duyvil is a tale of old New Amsterdam that invokes the heroic spirit of trumpeter Anthony Van Corlaer.

Jon Deak’s lighthearted and superbly crafted music uniquely combines colorful scores with narrations by the musicians, the text of each story embedded into the music and forming an essential part of its fabric. This is his Naxos debut recording.