CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A Chicago music professor’s new classical album is spotlighting forgotten works by a composer with Chicago ties.
Andy Baker, clinical assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, spoke to WBBM about his album, “Leo Sowerby: Paul Whiteman Commissions and Other Early Works.”
"It fills in a really interesting part of the early 20th Century music, a time when classical composers were really just beginning to hear jazz and trying to integrate those sounds into their own work," Baker said.
"Leo Sowerby was a composer during the 20th century, active almost entirely in Chicago, and the pieces on this album were works that were commissioned by Paul Whiteman in the 1920s, in the Jazz Age."
"Sowerby was very well known at the time and had many of his works for orchestra premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and is still very widely performed in church music and organ music in particular, but these two pieces were really fascinating because of the unique circumstances in which they came about and the fact that the had never been recorded or really professionally performed since the 1920s."
And Baker said Chicago, inspired in part by Sowerby all those years ago, can still carry a tune.
"It (Chicago) is still an incredibly important and creative Jazz hub, although most people would say New York City is the center of Jazz internationally, Chicago is actually a place that is able to nurture creative music and creative Jazz in particular in a different kind of environment," he said.
"It's a place that seems to welcome innovation and experimentation and support the idea that you can try things and sometimes they're not going to work out how you hoped, and that's OK."
“Leo Sowerby: Paul Whiteman Commissions and Other Early Works,” is getting glowing reviews, including debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard Traditional Albums chart and No. 10 on the Amazon Classical list, according to UIC.
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