Created to celebrate MTT’s 80th birthday, GRACE honors his lifetime of contributions as a composer. This four-disc set spans more than five decades of his compositional career and features 18 works, from premiere recordings to remastered archival recordings available for the first time.
The collection also includes an extensive booklet containing composer’s notes, original essays, and a timeline of archival photos chronicling MTT’s life as a pianist, conductor, composer, recording artist, and teacher.
For listeners whose musical lives have been inexorably shaped by MTT the conductor (and I count myself as one of those), perhaps it's high time we should be giving MTT the composer the respect and consideration that he deserves.Gramophone
REPERTOIRE:
Agnegram | Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind | From the Diary of Anne Frank | Grace | I’m Nobody! Who Are You? | Island Music | Lope | Meditations on Rilke | Not Everyone Thinks That I’m Beautiful | Notturno | Poems of Emily Dickinson | Sentimental Again | Snappy Patter | Street Song | Symphony Cowgirl | Upon Further Reflection | Urban Legend | Whitman Songs
PERFORMERS:
Audra McDonald | Bay Brass | Carrie VanSlyke | Edwin Outwater | Ian Bousfield | Isabel Leonard | Jack Van Germ | Jean-Yves Thibaudet | Jeremy VanSlyke | John Wilson | Larry Moore | Lisa Vroman | Measha Brueggergosman-Lee | Nancy Zeltsman | New World Symphony | Pat Posey | Paula Robison | Renée Fleming | Ryan McKinny | San Francisco Symphony | Sasha Cooke | Thomas Hampson
BOX SET CONTAINS:
4 CDs (featuring 18 works)
Both premiere recordings and remastered archival recordings available for the first time
Extensive booklet including composer’s notes, original essays, timeline of archival photos chronicling MTT’s life as a pianist, conductor, composer, recording artist, and teacher
All net proceeds from GRACE: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas will be donated to brain cancer research at the UCSF Brain Tumor Center.
There are two key times in an artist’s life. The first is inventing yourself. The second, the harder part, is going the distance. How do you sustain the vision, make it grow, and share it? To be an artist means to have the courage for rebirth and growth. It’s never-ending."Michael Tilson Thomas