Charles Philip Daniels Torres: Across the seas towards the mystical (2021)

Charles Philip Daniels Torres (b. 1985) is a Mexican-British composer currently based in Mexico City. He has focused mainly on orchestral and chamber music. His orchestral works, characterized by expansive atmospheres and dense polyphonic textures, are regularly performed by the most relevant orchestras in Mexico, such as the Mexico City Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Aguascalientes Symphony, State of Mexico Symphony, and the Jalisco Philharmonic, among many others. His awards include First Prize at Future Symphony Competition, Lithuania 2020, Excellence Prize at “Artinno Awards”, Hangzhou, China 2021, First Prize at “Raíces” Competition, Jalisco, Mexico 2021, and First Prize in two separate occasions at Morelia Orchestral Competition, Mexico 2022 and 2025.

Inspired by a period of deep introspection during the 2020 worldwide pandemic, Charles Philip Daniels Torres wrote Across the seas towards the mystical as “a comment on the mystical as a state of mind, as self-knowledge.” The journey across the seas is therefore a symbolic journey rather than a literal one, in which the composer imagines a traveler in an invented world filled with strange, elusive magical creatures. The piece opens with an energetic and percussive theme led by the bassoon and bass clarinet that begins transporting the listener into this other world. Upon arrival, the magic and mysticism of this new place is unveiled through entrancing, expansive sonorities, creating a sense of timelessness, otherwordliness, and infinite space. Daniels Torres writes, “in this invented world, as the traveler seeks out these elusive magical creatures, he finds them, and knows himself.”

Jenni Brandon: The Wildflower Quintet (2004, 2021)

Jenni Brandon stands out as a distinguished composer and conductor, weaving memorable melodies inspired by collaborator stories, nature, and poetry. Her extensive catalogue of over 100 works spans solo pieces, chamber music, concertos, operas, and orchestral compositions, and over two dozen albums feature her music. She oversees the global publication and distribution of her works through Jenni Brandon Music, and her compositions are required repertoire for international music competitions and auditions at premier institutions. Beyond her compositions, Brandon champions music education and collaboration, presenting workshops on composition and the business of music. As a conductor, she directs performances of her works and others, notably her opera "3 PADEREWSKIS" at the Kennedy Center. Discover more about her journey at jennibrandon.com.

Originally written as “The Wildflower Trio” for oboe, bassoon, and piano, the Kalliope Reed Quintet commissioned Jenni Brandon to arrange her piece for reed quintet as “The Wildflower Quintet” in 2021. Commissioned in 2004 by the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas Austin to honor the environmental activism of Lady Bird Johnson, Jenni Brandon took inspiration from a collection of poems written by one of Lady Bird Johnson’s dear friends, Bette Woolsey Castro, whose book of poetry celebrates the wildlife and natural beauty of the Wildflower Research Center in Austin, named after Lady Bird Johnson herself. Each movement is inspired by a different poem, the texts of which are printed below: 

Wildflowers

They grow in random, scattered splendor,

A magical blending of the land’s bright hues,

Stretching across the hills and valleys

In never ending majesty.

We call these magic flowers wild

Wild because they scorn man’s power

And live and thrive without his care,

Wild because through draught and storm

They ride the winds to bring the seasons

That lift the heart.

A glorious tapestry,

God’s own needlepoint!

Forever brilliant,

Forever wondrous,

Forever wild! 

Wild rose, white butterfly

Silken petals, silken wings

A flutter of white.

Poignant, playful closeness.

Unexpected moments

Of the heart’s recall

Distant memories of joy

And happiness shared.

Miraculous matter

Within your gossamer wings,

Is the mystery of your message

The sweet foreverness of love?

The trumpet creeper and the hummingbird

I watched from my window

As the hummingbird came,

Swift as lightning, 

His wings a song in motion.

Dipping into the brilliant blossom,

His slender beak

Took the nectar once again

As man takes the beauty of the flower

To renew the joy of living.

Indian Paintbrush

Ragged plant whose vermillion bracts

Transform the desert drab.

You gather reflections of the sun,

Turning them to red-orange pigments

Tinged with nature’s gold.

Dipping your leaves into their magic, 

You paint the secrets of our landscape

With glowing, scarlet fervor

Dazzling the beholder, 

Enriching his senses

With the lasting gift of beauty. 

Midsummer in the garden

Shafts of sunlight filtering through

Paling the leaves of green,

Brighten the morn’s crisp awakening.

Bird song in dulcet tones

Colors the air with a message of hope.

The garden languishes in midsummer stillness.

Gone are the periwinkle, violet, and daffodil.

The day lily has turned to green-leaf slumber

And the wild geranium now commands the eye.

But oh, the rose!

How splendidly it rallies

To bloom again in soft, glorious abandon,

Giving its notice to all.

– Bette Woolsey Castro

Becky Turro: Thaw (2018)

Composer BECKY (Beck) TURRO is known for creating works that are “incredibly serene and so evocative.” (Kari Landry, CityBeat). Fascinated with how texture translates to emotion, their music weaves tuneful melodies within intricate timbres to create what they call “sonic collages,” fusing together ambience, minimalism, romanticism, and the avant-garde.

Beck’s orchestral and chamber music has been performed across the United States by renowned ensembles and performers such as the Akropolis Reed Quintet, Kalliope Reed Quintet, Pedro Lopes Baptista, Decoda, and the Denison Symphony Orchestra. They have works published under Akropolis Works and Trevco Music Publishing.

Since moving to Tucson, Arizona, Turro has been primarily focused on their experimental ambient piano project: Beck Rose. Their debut self-titled album was awarded a grant from Church of Noise, and their second album, IF I’M NOT A WOMAN WHY DO I ACHE LIKE ONE, is available on Harmonic Ooze Records.

About their piece, Thaw, commissioned by the Akropolis Reed Quintet, Turro writes:

Thaw was inspired by a trip with my girlfriend to Acadia National Park, Maine in early March. Each movement is about a specific part of Acadia we encountered during our time in the national park.

The first movement, "Hyperborea," was inspired by Cadillac Mountain, seen in the aftermath of a snowstorm that arrived on our first day there.The second movement is titled "Echo Lake," which is also a place within Acadia.This movement begins with

a smooth, frozen texture that slowly thaws and melts away as the sun comes out. The third movement, titled "Kaleidoscope Cove," is the most flowing and bright, and characterizes the ocean dancing and crashing against the orange cliffs.

Chronologically, the movements move from frozen to melted, thawing into the arrival of spring.

Mathieu Lussier: Laurentian Bolero (2020)

Artistic Director of Arion Baroque Orchestra and Artistic Director of Domaine Forget de Charlevoix, Mathieu Lussier has energetically and passionately promoted the modern and baroque bassoon as solo instruments for more than two decades throughout North America and Europe. He also devotes considerable time to chamber music as a member of Ensemble Pentaèdre de Montréal and is Professor at the Music Faculty of the Université de Montréal. His numerous solo recordings include over a dozen bassoon concertos (Mozart, Vivaldi, Fasch, Graupner, Telemann, and Corrette), a CD of bassoon sonatas by Boismortier, CDs of music for solo bassoon by François Devienne, Étienne Ozi, Eugène Jancourt and two CDs of wind music by Gossec and Méhul. Mathieu Lussier is also a respected composer, with a catalogue of over 60 titles heard regularly in the concert halls of North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. He composed the score for « La chute de l’empire américain » and “Testament” from Oscar winner Denys Arcand. His compositions are published by Trevco Music (USA), Accolade (Germany), June Emerson (UK) and Gérard Billaudot (France).

Subtitled “Freely Inspired by Quebec Folklores,” Laurentian Bolero takes inspiration from both Ravel’s famous Bolero melody and traditional folk music of Lussier’s native Québec, whose landscape is dominated by the Laurentian Mountains, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world. Some of the tunes featured in Laurentian Bolero are indeed actual Québécois folk melodies, which Lussier found in Olivier Demers’s 2020 publication 1000 airs du Québec et de l’Amérique francophone, a collection of over 1,000 Québécois folk songs that Demers lovingly collected and transcribed over many years. The folk music of Québec has clear roots in the traditional music of its European settlers, namely Ireland, Scotland, and France, and those musical traditions can be heard in both the quoted tunes and Lussier’s newly composed melodies featured in this work. 

Miguel del Águila: Transoceánica (2019, 2020)

Three-time Grammy-nominated Uruguayan-American composer Miguel del Águila is known for his distinctive modern classical music, deeply influenced by his Latin American roots. A leading figure in 20th and 21st-century music, his 140 compositions bring vibrant diversity to contemporary chamber and orchestral repertoires. His rhythm-driven, dramatic works blend tradition and modernity with echoes of his Latin heritage.

With 70 CDs and over 200 live performances annually, Miguel del Águila’s music has been praised as “brilliant and witty” (NY Times) and “sonically dazzling” (LA Times). His recordings have topped the Billboard Classical Charts with some nearing half a million streams. In 2010, his Salon Buenos Aires album earned two Latin Grammy nominations, and in 2015, Concierto en Tango earned him a third nomination. His works, performed by thousands of ensembles and by over 100 orchestras worldwide, have been conducted by Leonard Slatkin, Lukas Foss, JoAnn Falletta, Marin Alsop, Gerard Schwarz and Giancarlo Guerrero among others. Águila is the 2025 Composer in Residence at Lynn University and the Du Vert A L'Infini Festival in France. His accolades include the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, New Music USA’s Music Alive and Magnum Opus Awards. - www.migueldelaguila.com

Del Águila’s Transoceanica was originally written for clarinet quartet in 2019, with the reed quintet arrangement commissioned by the Kalliope Reed Quintet in 2021. The composer writes:

Transoceánica depicts an imaginary bus trip from Rio, Brazil to Lima, Peru along the Transoceanic route. The longest bus ride in the world, it cuts across the heart of South America connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts, passing through the Amazon forest, climbing up the Andes, through the Altiplano, and finally the coastal route to Lima. As the piece begins, we hear the destination theme played softly, vague and distant. This is the traveler imagining his destination as he waits to board the bus in a dark, foggy early morning. Soon the rhythmic engines theme let us know that the journey has begun. Throughout the trip several events happen often blurring the line between landscape, people, places, reality and magic. Soon the bus is forced to stop in the middle of the night as the road disappears and passengers are surrounded by magical lights and mystical forest creatures. As they dissipate the bus continues its journey, now climbing the Andes towards the Altiplano. The engine’s theme is now transformed into a Peruvian Huayno dance that grows in excitement as we approach the destination. Finally, the solo oboe, playing the destination theme in all its brightness, announces the arrival to Lima.

Daniel Cueto: Momentos Peruanos (2021)

Dr. Daniel Cueto is an accomplished composer and flutist whose artistic mission is to bring the diverse, deeply rooted sounds of Peru to the global concert stage. Classically trained in Germany and the United States, his compositions blend a full command of Western Classical techniques with a vibrant energy and deep-rooted nostalgia that is unmistakably Peruvian in flavor. He has written over 40 works of solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral music, commissioned by such institutions as Deutschlandradio, Azusa Pacific University, the International Double Reed Society, and the Sociedad Filarmónica de Lima. His works have been performed over 300 times across more than 20 countries, and he is a frequent performer of his own music — taking the stage as soloist, chamber musician, and lecturer-recitalist at festivals and conferences throughout North America and around the world. He currently serves as Adjunct Professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Momentos Peruanos is Kalliope’s second commission from Daniel Cueto, whose first piece for reed quintet, Amaru, is featured on Kalliope’s first album. Each of the piece’s four movements is inspired by a different genre of Peruvian folk music and dance. The first movement is based on the Peruvian landó, an Afro-Peruvian genre from the Peruvian coast, which takes its rhythmic patterns from the Angolan lundú, brought over to Peru by enslaved Africans. The distinctive landó rhythm is traditionally performed by the cajón drum, a square drum that is native to Peru, played while sat upon by the performer and struck in different places to get different sounds and pitches. Cueto entitled his first movement Landó Azulado, “Landó with a hint of blue.”

The second movement, Fantasía de Tijeras, is inspired by the danza tijeras of the Chanka people of the southern Peruvian Andes, an extremely acrobatic, intense, and fast-paced ritualistic dance. Translating to “scissor dance,” the danza tijeras is performed by dancers carrying large scissors who slice the air in rhythms that compliment the accompanying music, turning the scissors into percussion instruments. The ritual aspect of the danza tijeras is about overcoming physical limits and rising to meet challenges, and the intensity of the gymnastic feats performed in this dance are matched in the intense energy of this movement.

The third movement is inspired by another Andean-region folk song, the huayno, which has its roots dating back to the Incan Empire but is now performed in Peru with European instruments like the violin, saxophone, and guitar. The accompanying dance of the huayno is danced in pairs of two, featuring percussive foot stomping and stamping. Cueto’s Huayno de la Apasanka is inspired by a gigantic Peruvian spider, the apasanka, which stalks the Amazon jungle and is roughly the size of a dinner plate. 

Cueto’s final movement, Zamacueca encendida, takes us back to the Peruvian coast, and ends his work on a celebratory note, as the zamacueca is a folk dance that celebrates Peru’s independence from colonial rule. Characterised by bright, upbeat, and happy energy, Cueto’s Zamacueca encendida translates to “bright” or “ignited” zamacueca, highlighting the celebratory and uplifting character of the zamacueca dance.