Henry Cowell, Aaron Copland, Miriam Gideon, Louise Talma

condition (record/cover): NM / VG (humidity stains)

The New World Records survey of American song extends here to a programme that pairs Henry Cowell's vocal work with songs by Aaron Copland, Miriam Gideon, and Louise Talma. Cowell's songs are among the less familiar parts of his output - he is better known for his piano innovations and his role as editor, publisher, and advocate - but they display the same democratic curiosity that animated everything he did. Gideon and Talma, both represented here, belong to the generation of American women composers for whom New World's documentation project was particularly important: composers whose work had been systematically underrecorded and whose presence on a dedicated commercial release was itself an act of cultural restitution.