Thomas Pfotenhauer & Vincent Fuh - Stories For Our Time - Music for Trumpet by Women Composers (2017)

Ida Gotkovsky is an award-winning French composer who has written extensively for brass and woodwind instruments throughout her long and rich career. This brief Concertino is typical for the style of the Paris Conservatory contest pieces from the mid-twentieth century. It begins with a brilliant fanfare introduction, followed by a haunting lyrical second movement. It ends with a technical display of fireworks for both the piano and trumpet in the last movement.

The American composer Elaine Fine is a multiinstrumentalist and prolific composer of chamber music. This Sonata, written in three movements, showcases the lyrical qualities of the trumpet. Interjections of brilliant flashes of technique are heard throughout the piece.

Anne Guzzo is Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Wyoming. Jazz Professor Glasses was written for Thomas Pfotenhauer and premiered at the International Congress of Women in Music in Beijing in 2008. This piece, for unaccompanied trumpet, consists of three movements. The first movement describes the hustle and bustle of daily activity in Beijing. The second movement is lyrical and expressive, using dramatic leaping gestures that depict the expansiveness of a winter in Wyoming. The last movement, which is strongly influenced by jazz, rounds out the work in a light-hearted manner.

The English composer Cecilia McDowall, a recipient of the British Composers Award, has written several works for trumpet and other brass instruments. Also a successful composer of choral music, she is composer-in-residence at Dulwich College in London. Framed consists of seven movements, each one a musical depiction of a work of art, in a range of styles. The artists represented are: Auguste Renoir, James McNeill Whistler, Alberto Giacometti, Hendrick Avercamp, Andy Warhol, Simon Marmion, and Alexander Rodchenko.

Welsh composer Hilary Tann, currently the John Howard Payne Professor of Music at Union College in Schenectady, New York, creates music that is influenced by her homeland and nature, as well as by traditional Japanese music. Look Little Low Heavens, commissioned by and dedicated to Cathy Leach, Professor of Trumpet at the University of Tennessee, is based on a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, entitled Spring. A dramatic fanfare lies at the center of Look Little Low Heavens and is surrounded by two serene, reflective sections.

Faye-Ellen Silverman is currently on the music faculty at Mannes College and has received numerous awards, commissions and artistic residencies. She is the first woman to receive a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from Columbia University. Stories for Our Time features an array of coloristic devices, including contrasting dynamics, articulations, trills, flutter tonguing and mutes. The first movement begins with a dramatic proclamation showcased by wide interval leaps. The second movement is more lyrical, although the interval structures from the opening movement return at the end. The final movement is lively in character and, this time, more consonant.