John Bruce Yeh, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s celebrated assistant principal clarinet and solo E flat clarinet for over 40 years, headlines a programme of lyrical and engaging chamber and solo works by noteworthy Windy City composers of the past and present, including three world-premiere recordings.

Yeh, with Patrick Godon, the Chicago Symphony’s principal keyboardist, and freelance clarinettist Teresa Reilly, who performs with the CSO at home and on tour, presents mid-20th-century works by Alexander Tcherepnin and Leo Sowerby, a late-century work by Robert Muczynski, and recent pieces by Stacy Garrop, Shulamit Ran, and clarinettist Reilly.

World-premiere recordings include the album’s centrepiece, Sowerby’s witty and inventive 1938 Sonata for Clarinet and Piano; Ran’s tender, heartfelt Spirit for solo B flat clarinet; and Reilly’s The Forgiveness Train for two clarinets, an insistently rhythmic, pandemic-fuelled dreamscape about personal peril amid natural beauty.

Garrop’s dramatic Phoenix Rising – a world-premiere recording of the version for clarinet – depicts the fiery death and triumphant rebirth of the Phoenix of Greek and Egyptian myth. The album opens with Tcherepnin’s vivacious Sonata in one movement for clarinet and piano. Muczynski’s Time Pieces for clarinet and piano, a popular repertoire staple, brings the programme to a brilliant close.

Chicago Clarinet Classics was recorded by the Grammy Award-winning Cedille team of producer James Ginsburg and engineer Bill Maylone

Yeh’s previous Cedille Records release was the critically acclaimed, Grammy-nominated Liquid Melancholy: Clarinet Music of James M. Stephenson. The Clarinet proclaimed, “Yeh’s performances deserve special mention for his exquisite interpretations. Yeh demonstrates exceptional facility, an even, beautiful sound throughout the registers of the instrument, and a dynamic range that retains focus and resonance from the softest whisper to the loudest outbursts.” Audiophile Audition declared it “a whopping stunner of an album,” adding, “John Bruce Yeh proves the marvel here, surely as talented as any clarinet player in the world today.”

The longest-serving clarinettist in Chicago Symphony Orchestra history, Yeh joined the CSO in 1977 as bass clarinet by invitation of Georg Solti. Two years later, he was named assistant principal and E flat clarinet. He has performed as guest principal clarinet of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, and Guangzhou Symphony and as guest bass clarinet of the Mariinsky Orchestra and Hong Kong Philharmonic. He is director and co-founder of Chicago Pro Musica, which received the 1985 Grammy Award for Best New Classical Artist.