Image 
BMOP/sound
1016
Recording Release Date 
April 2010
SACD Recording 
Recording Length 
Disc 1: 77:07
  • Boston Modern Orchestra Project
  • Gil Rose, conductor

“An exhilarating collection of magnetic, life-affirming music by one of America’s major composers.” (Fanfare)

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CD price: 16.99

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News and Press

[News Coverage] William Thomas McKinley, 1938-2015

The composer and New Kensington native William Thomas ("Tom") McKinley died on Feb. 3 at the age of 76. Born on Dec. 9, 1938, Mr. McKinley is best known for concert music composed in the jazz idiom but had forays into neo-classicism, atonality and electronic music. He attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1956, where he met his longtime friend and colleague David Stock, a local composer and the founder of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, who describes him as "one of our most important Pittsburgh artists of any kind."

post-gazette.com Full review
[CD Review] American Record Guide reviews William Thomas McKinley: R.A.P.

William Thomas McKinley (b. 1938) studied with Foss, Copland, and Schuller, and has performed as a jazz pianist with Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Eddie Gomez, and others. These three pieces owe a lot, in McKinley’s own words, to his love for Stravinsky, Ives, and Varese.

American Record Guide Full review
[Press Release] BMOP/sound releases William Thomas McKinley: R.A.P.

BMOP/sound, the nation's premiere label launched by an orchestra and dedicated exclusively to new music recordings, today announced its May 2010 release, William Thomas McKinley: R.A.P. With more than 350 works to his name and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the National Endowment for the Arts, McKinley has established himself as one of the most highly regarded and prolific composers of his generation.

Full review
[CD Review] Fanfare reviews William Thomas McKinley: R.A.P.

R.A.P., the title work of Thomas McKinley’s newest CD, is a hugely entertaining romp for clarinet and orchestra, jazz orchestra actually, which combines the exciting improvisatory abandon of jazz with the motivic concentration and rhythmic sophistication of classical composition. Although I haven’t listened to progressive big bands in a while, I remember hearing music that veered off in similar non-traditional, rhythmic directions while still retaining a tenuous link to what we think of as jazz.

Fanfare Full review
[Interview] William Thomas McKinley: searching for transcendence

William Thomas McKinley (Tom to his friends and family) is a protean personality, a composer of more than 300 works of great diversity, who embraces the classical and jazz worlds with equal proficiency and gusto. His is a restless, exploratory mind that ceaselessly seeks to expand the boundaries of musical form and substance without abandoning the essential building blocks of melody, rhythm, and harmony.

Fanfare Full review