It was such a great pleasure to work with the Deutsches Symphony Orchestre, clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, conductor Manuel Nawari and engineer Florian Schmidt to bring my Clarinet Concerto: Adrift on the Wine-dark Sea to life. We recorded at the legendary Jesus Christe Kirche in Dahlem, Berlin. ‘Legendery’ because the great conductor Herbert Von Karajan used to record the Berlin Philharmonic there because he loved the acoustics. Indeed, the acoustics are terrific but the isolation is not so isolated. We often had to stop recording when children were playing outside or the guy across the street decided to hop on his John Deer mini-tractor and haul random objects around his lawn. All in all, it will be a terrific recording that also features music by Kinan Azmeh, Zaid Jabri, and the late Dia Succari. It should be out in November on the Dreyer-Gaido Label.
