Anthony McGill, New York Philharmonic principal clarinet and 2020 Avery Fisher Prize winner, and the multiple Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet join forces on an album illuminating the diversity of the American experience through works by Richard Danielpour, James Lee III, Ben Shirley (all three world-premiere recordings), and Valerie Coleman. McGill describes it as a project driven by the desire to “expand the capacity for art and music to change the world.”

Danielpour’s Four Angels pays tribute to the four young Black girls killed in the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, church bombing and to civil rights advocates who refused to be intimidated by racial violence. Lee’s Quintet for Clarinet & String Quartet reflects on the Native American experience and echoes elements of Native music. Ben Shirley’s High Sierra Sonata, which inspired the album’s scenic cover art, evokes California’s Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains and the camaraderie and perseverance of runners in the region’s annual high-altitude marathon. Coleman’s Shotgun Houses celebrates the life of Muhammad Ali and the West Louisville, Kentucky, neighbourhood where she and the legendary prizefighter were raised.

Clarinetist McGill and the Pacific Quartet’s previous collaboration on Cedille Records, Mozart & Brahms Clarinet Quintets, garnered widespread critical acclaim and continues to be a staple of classical radio programming. “The pure, gorgeous tone and expressive musicianship of the clarinetist Anthony McGill meshes with the talents of the excellent Pacifica Quartet for thoroughly enjoyable readings” (The New York Times).

McGill’s Cedille discography also includes 2021’s widely admired Here With You, with pianist Gloria Chien; Winged Creatures, with his brother, flautist Demarre McGill, and the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Allen Tinkham; and Portraits – Works for Flute, Clarinet & Piano, with his brother Demarre and Irish pianist Michael McHale.

This is the Pacifica Quartet’s 13th Cedille Records album. Its Contemporary Voices, with works by Shulamit Ran, Jennifer Higdon, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (featuring renowned classical saxophonist Otis Murphy), won the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. The Pacifica’s collaboration with superstar classical guitarist Sharon Isbin on Cedille’s Souvenirs of Spain & Italy was hailed as “another triumph for Ms. Isbin and a feather in the caps of the Pacifica Quartet” (New Music Buff).