The Whittier Concerts, John La Montaine, Polly Jo Baker, Thomas Tatton SEALED LP

$

24

Up for sale is a vintage but BRAND NEW, SEALED 33 RPM LP vinyl record featuring some great modern classical vocal and instrumental music.  This LP is exceptionally hard to find and completely out of print.  It was released on the composer's own private label.

Title:  The Whittier Concerts, Volume 1, under the direction of Pulitzer Prize composer John La Montaine

Artists:  Polly Jo Baker, soprano and Thomas Tatton, violist

Label:  Fredonia Discs, FD-8, 3947 Fredonia Drive, Hollywood, California, 90068

Side one (15:25)  Six Sonnets of Shakespeare, Opus 12

• Let not my love be call'd idolatry
• From you have I been absent
• Take all my loves
• No longer mourn
• Shall I compare thee
• Not from the stars

Side two (14:44)  Conversations for Viola and Piano, Opus 42

• Encounter
• Dispute
• Affections
• Word Games

John La Montaine (1920 - 2013) was an important, Pulitzer Prize winning American composer.  He was born in Oak Park, Illinois.  He graduated from the Eastman School of Music (Rochester, New York) where he studied under composer Howard Hanson.  He also studied composition at the Julliard under Nadia Boulanger.  Early on, he was an accomplished pianist and held the piano seat at the NBC Orchestra (New York), under Arturo Toscanini.  His breakthrough came when soprano Leontyne Price premiered his song cycle, "Songs of the Rose of Sharon" with the National Symphony (NSO) in 1957.  He received the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Piano Concerto No. 1 ("In Time of War") , which was premiered by Jorge Bolet and the NSO.  In 1961, he composed an overture for the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.  His series of three Christmas season "pageant operas" was a great success.  La Montaine composed for a wide variety of classical genre.  His work has been likened to American composers Samuel Barber and Ned Rorem and has been described as having a neo-Romantic quality, with lush harmonies, rhapsodic melodies and jazzy rhythms.  He eventually moved to California and, in 1977, he was named the Nixon Distinguished Scholar and holder of the Nixon chair at Whittier College.  (Future President Richard Nixon had graduated from this liberal arts college in 1934.)   The Whittier Concerts, which were the basis for this LP, took place on October 22, 1977.  In 1975, John La Montaine and Paul J. Sifler founded the Fredonia Press, for the purpose of publishing exclusively the works of the two composers.  (The label was named after the street in Hollywood on which La Montaine lived.)

When soprano Polly Jo Baker made her European debut in Austria, the Tagespost in Graz commented:  "She is a singer whose voice is not only of great beauty and strength, but is also trained to a certain perfection.  She possesses a soprano of radiant high range, and has a special sensitivity for the subtlety of modern song lyrics."  Prior to the release of this record, she had performed with the NSO (under Paul Callaway), with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (at the Hollywood Bowl), with the Master Chorale (under both Roger Wagner and Robert Shaw), and at the Ojai Festival (under Michael Tilson Thomas and Aaron Copland).

Dr. Thomas Tatton received a D.M.A degree from the University of Illinois.  He trained under Manuel Compinsky, Myron Sandler, and Guillermo Perich.  A master violist and teacher, Tatton received the Outstanding Educator of America Award in 1975.  He joined the staff of Whittier College in 1971.  He would later teach at the University of the Pacific (Stockton, California) and at the Lincoln Unified School District in Stockton.  He is currently listed as on the faculty at California State University, Stanislaus.  From 1994 to 1998, he was President of the American Viola Society; from 2006 to 2009, he was Vice President of the International Viola Society.