This disc was nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (with Orchestra)." Joseph Schwantner's early years were devoted to jazz guitar and arranging for small jazz ensembles. But on receiving his doctorate in composition in 1968, Schwantner shifted musical gears and has proven to be a precocious and adventurous composer. This disc, representing Leonard Slatkin's debut with the National Symphony Orchestra, consists of three works by Schwantner, all of which feature the percussionist Evelyn Glennie. The brief opening piece, appropriately titled "Velocities," consists of a dazzling, nonstop "Moto perpetuo" for marimba. The Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra is an extravagant and colorful work which not only recalls Schwantner's Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Aftertones of Infinity' from 1969 but also has faint echoes of Bartók's classic work, 'Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta' because of its wide range of colors and effects, especially the moody second movement. 'New Morning for the World was not-so-coincidentally premiered on January 15, 1983, the day and year in which Martin Luther King Day was declared a national holiday. It is a searing and explosive work and one that is made all the more stirring by the recitation of King's words by Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.
