Joan Tower: Island Rhythms (The Louisville Orchestra, Lawrence Leighton Smith), Silver Ladders, Island Prelude for Oboe and String Orchestra (Peter Bowman oboe), Music for Cello and Orchestra (Lynn Harrell cello), Sequoia (St. Louis Symphony, Leonard Slatkin). First Edition Music FECD-0025 (2004) barcode 809157000259
Sequoia recorded 25.XI.84, Powell Symphony Hall
Island Rhythms recorded 28.XI.90, Memorial Auditorium, Louisville
Saint Louis recordings previously released to CD on Elektra / Nonesuch “Meet The Composer Orchestra Residency Series” 9 79245-2 (1990) barcode 075597924527
Louisville recording previously reissued to CD on First Edition Recordings LCD006 (1991) barcode 034063000622 with Otto Luening’s Kentucky Concerto and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Pro et Contra:
An augmented reissue of a 1990 CD from Elektra / Nonesuch – I don’t know how the sonics compare
26 July 2025
A note of warning: I do not have and haven’t heard this CD from First Edition Music, FECD-0025, released in 2004. It is an augmented reissue of the 1990 Elektra / Nonesuch CD from their “Meet The Composer Orchestra Residency Series”, 9 79245-2, which I have and have reviewed, and is a fine compendium of Tower’s early orchestral compositions from the 1980s. Note that “Sequoia” had been recorded on 25 November 1984 and published earlier, on a Nonesuch LP, 79118, with works of Christopher Rouse and Donal Erb not reissued to CD to the best of my knowledge. Elektra / Nonesuch didn’t provide the recording dates of the other orchestral compositions.
To the already generous contents of that CD (67 minutes), the First Edition Music reissue adds the short “Island Rhythms”, recorded on 28 November 1990 by the Louisville Orchestra under Lawrence Leighton Smith and originally published on Louisville’s short-lived First Edition Recordings CD label, LCD006 (link will open new tab to my review), for now an even more generous TT of 75 minutes. First Edition Music was a label created by The Santa Fe Music Group, which had acquired the rights to the Louisville recordings in the early 2000s and launched into the entreprise of reissuing to CD the complete Louisville catalog – a mission that they left unacomplished upon their demise and disappearance from the CD market after 2006 (although, for a short while in the early 2010s, they published more, but only as downloads or on streaming, and even there they left some recordings un-reissued).
By publishing this augmented Tower collection, as in a few other of their releases, First Edition Music then departed from its main hallmark of reissuing exclusively Louisville recordings. A small number of their publications were even straight reissues of other of those Elektra / Nonesuch “Meet the Composer” CDs, with no Louisville addition at all. For the details on this and on everything about the CD reissues of the famed Louisville recordings, see my Louisville CD-discography.
Anyway, it would seem that, for those who do not have the earlier First Edition Recordings release of “Island Rhythms” on LCD006, the augmented reissue from First Edition Music is the one to buy. That said, a note of caution. I’ve had some disappointing experiences with some of the transfers of Louisville recordings by First Edition Music. I don’t have their Tower reissue so I can’t tell if those sonic glitches extend to their “Meet the Composer” reissues.