"New York Counterpoint"

Although the actual story of working with Steve Reich for the recording (CD#13) I have already talked about in the booklet accompanying the box set, I have a few more comments I'd like to share with you. Most embarrassing is the mistake printed for track seven. The composer of G song is not Tony Bennett but rather FRANK Bennett!

Frank and I were classmates at Yale and I got to know him pretty well when we shared the composer Donald Martino's home one summer while we drove back and forth to the Shakespeare Festival (which I seem to remember was in Stamford, Connecticut). We were both members of a small ensemble of doubling musicians (I played flute, bassoon, and oboe as well as clarinet) put together to perform interludes and other appropriately atmospheric music for the Shakespearean evenings. Frank was a multi-talented percussionist/composer who was also a serious student of one of India's great masters of drumming. He married a gifted musician/vocalist, Gita, and became immersed in the expressive lines of Indian ragas. He wrote G song for me and I first performed it at Cal Arts where I recorded it on my first (and, at the time, I figured, my only) record. Everyone played for free. There was my eclectic mix of music by Schubert and Alban Berg performed exquisitely by Peter Serkin, Bill Douglas' Improvisation Three and Vajra, and Frank's G Song. I paid Givian Cornfield to roll the tape machine and we made the whole thing in one day. I gave the disc to friends calling it "A Gift of Music." Frank Bennett's arranging gifts are on brilliant display in CD #26 "West Side -- Variants" with the London Symphony Orchestra.

© Richard Stoltzman

Released February 1987
Eddie Gomez appears courtesy of Stretch / GRP Records
Recording: New York, Suffern, BearTracks Recording Studio, July 1986
Producer: Jeremy Wall
Recording Engineer: Larry Swist
Publishers: Ziji Music [1/3]; Universal PolyGram International Publishing [2]; Ev-Web Music [4]; Copyright Control [5/7/8]; Universal MCA Music Publishing [6]; Associated Music Publishers [10]; Hendon Music [11]
℗ 1987 Sony Music Entertainment