Fire and Blood / MotorCity Triptych / Raise the Roof

"Michael Daugherty is a wonderful composer, and these three pieces make splendid listening. Fire and Blood is a violin concerto, and a damn fine one. Violin concertos are exceptionally difficult to write, especially in balancing the soloist against a large modern orchestra. Daugherty handles the challenge with aplomb....Great sonics too." (10/10 ClassicsToday.com)

This recording celebrates three exciting works commissioned and premiered by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra during Michael Daugherty's four years as Composer-in-Residence. Inspired by Diego Rivera's monumental fresco and Frida Kahlo's paintings created in Detroit, Michigan, Fire and Blood "rivets the ear with a bold palette of colors and the skillful elaboration of vibrant themes" (Detroit News). MotorCity Triptych, "striking both in its brilliance and in its technical rigor," is a road trip through the sounds of Detroit: the 1960s pulse of Motown, the motor rhythms of Michigan Avenue, and the legend of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Raise the Roof, composed for the opening of Detroit's Max M. Fisher Music Center, is a grand acoustic construction featuring the timpani in a tour de force of urban polyrhythms.