Rick Sowash: Checkerboard (RSP-16): NEW RELEASE – NOW AVAILABLE
Welcome to Kickshaw Records, the online home of the new release Rick Sowash: Checkerboard, which features recently-composed chamber music by living American composer Rick Sowash. We also feature all of Rick’s recordings on RSP Classics, including Ronstadt Plays Sowash, Vol. 1, featuring cellist Michael G. Ronstadt, and Voyageurs, the Upland Trio’s release of the final three Trios for clarinet, cello & piano. We are also proud to offer the Sylvan Trio’s recordings “A Pirate’s Christmas” and Music for Flute, Cello & Piano by Women Composers, as well as the debut recording by Trio Quelque Chose of works for violin, horn, & piano by Johannes Brahms, Charles Koechlin, Johann Friedrich Nisle, Harry Bulow, and Astor Piazzolla.
Rick Sowash: Checkerboard
“[Sowash] draws on many sources from the past without losing a sense of his own identity. His music is exclusively tonal, but the approach to harmony is different in each work, and he is never sentimentally nostalgic.” — James Manheim, AllMusic.com
A checkerboard consists of a pattern of contrasting squares of white and black. Taking its cue from this, each movement of Rick Sowash’s Checkerboard Suite offers two starkly contrasting musical elements. The third and final movement opposes the style of Baroque music with the style we call Ragtime, namely the styles of J.S. Bach and Scott Joplin. Checkerboard is also the title of this album of recently-composed pieces for two through seven instruments by Rick Sowash. Also included are a swashbuckling tribute to the adventure film scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a Vocalise in the tradition of Rachmaninoff and Villa-Lobos, and The Loveliest of Tunes, a beautiful meditation on Shenandoah, a tune that has found its way into many of Sowash’s chamber works over a span of sixty years of composing.
Ronstadt Plays Sowash, Vol. 1
Cellist and multi-instrumentalist Michael G. Ronstadt, a member of the multi-generational Ronstadt musical dynasty, shows off his classical chops, on a new release of works for cello by Cincinnati composer Rick Sowash. This CD includes pieces for solo cello, two cellos, cello & piano, cello & French horn, and piano trio by the unapologetically tonal composer and lifelong Ohio resident, who has more than 600 published scores to his credit.
Sylvan Trio: Music for Flute, Cello & Piano By Women Composers
“Three fine musicians, and three fascinating people.” — Fred Child, Performance Today
The Sylvan Trio (flutist Suzanne Bona, cellist Josh Aerie, and pianist Greg Kostraba) presents a recording of music by women composers spanning three centuries. Enjoy a Flute Sonata by Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, plus trios by the trailblazing composer Mel Bonis, whose music caused a stir in fashionable Parisian salons, and one of the 19th-century’s greatest pianists, Clara Schumann. The recording also features works for flute and piano, including a Nocturne, Five Bagatelles, and a Reflective Rag.
