1993 release ** "When the founders of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) set out to develop a Department of Music, they decided to start with composers and leave it to them to attract performers and scholars to an environment that could be a home for exploration and invention, unceasing challenge and debate. The intention was to have musicians as committed to new perspectives and discoveries as, say, UCSD's physicists. Even before the department was established, Harry Partch was invited for a stay as visiting artist, and in a matter of days he had undergraduates happily clanging away on his singular instruments to the dismay of those who had anticipated string quartets. Then in 1966 things really began with the arrival of the first faculty members, Will Ogdon and Robert Erickson, who promptly recruited Kenneth Gaburo, Pauline Oliveros, and, a little later, Roger Reynolds. To test their ideas the composers added top-flight instrumentalists, several of whom were themselves composers. Together, in a dilapidated building that had once been a Marine Corps mess hall and still smelled of mutton, they made music that often confounded the physicists. And more was to come. In 1975 after the department moved into decent quarters Bernard Rands organized the ensemble SONOR to present not only the music of the UCSD vanguard but also that of contemporaries such as Crumb, Foss, and Wuorinen. Since then the ensemble has hosted an annual festival, bringing to the campus-figures as diverse as Krenek and Cage, Nancarrow and Xenakis. The spirit of the department, the promise (now fulfilled) of exceptional facilities, the opportunity to associate with invigorating colleagues have helped to bring in Joji Yuasa, Brian Ferneyhough, Rand Steiger, and Harvey Sollberger. Over time the department talent has been extended to include research and instruction in music humanities, psychoacoustics, and the most advanced electronic and computer technology. But, as in the beginning, it is the composers such as those represented here who, most of all, have established and maintained its definitive character and development."