This is the third recording in a multi-year partnership between the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic and Naxos to release one album of American music each year. A study in dramatic contrasts, Carl Ruggles Sun-Treader is an overwhelming, granite-hued tone poem by one of New England s most original and uncompromising composers. Steven Stucky s luminous Pulitzer Prize-winning Second Concerto for Orchestra is a riveting exploration of sonority and sound-painting while John Harbison s Fourth Symphony is a big, bold, jazz-imbued work by one of America s most important living symphonists. These three American orchestral masterpieces comprise a program that will impress and delight in equal measure. Grammy Award-winning conductor David Alan Miller has established a reputation as one of the leading American conductors of his generation. His work with the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic has resulted in several critically-acclaimed recordings. Conductor David Alan Miller s tempos are broad, letting the music breathe and allowing the composer s clear textures and melodic warmth to be fully revealed. The NOIP plays magnificently. (Audiophile Audition)