Media

At the 48th Annual Grammy ® Award presentations typically overpowered by rap millionaires, rock idols and country music mega-stars, one of the most dominant shakers and movers at the 2006 ceremony was (are you ready?), a classical music composer (!), Carlin America's own WILLIAM BOLCOM, the Pulitzer Prize winning American composer whose masterwork - and a best-selling 3-CD set on the Naxos label - SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE won a commanding 4 awards: Best Classical Album, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Choral Performance and (for producer Tim Handley) Classical Producer of the Year.  (While the superstar U2 group won 5 Grammys ® in various rock/pop classifications, no one in any category matched Maestro Bolcom's achievement of a 4 prize total for the year.)

With more classical music nominations (6) than anyone else in this year's Grammy  ®  race, the world-acclaimed composer definitely and definitively made a big score at the annual record industry competition - the result, in large part, by his composing one of the biggest scores in musical history that has scored as enormously with retail record sales and major music critics everywhere.   WILLIAM BOLCOM's monumental song cycle SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE is a continuously best selling 3-disc Naxos Records set (and called by the chief Boston Globe music critic "The greatest work to date by a major American composer" as just one example of the unanimous critical enthusiasm the composition has garnered), and is a colossal multi-genre and multi-ensemble 55-movement masterpiece based on the poetry of William Blake for vocal and instrumental soloists, several choirs and full symphony and chamber orchestras.  The April, 2004 Naxos recording of the work is conducted by Leonard Slatkin and features the University of Michigan University Symphony Orchestra, Contemporary Directions Ensemble, University Choir and Orpheus Singers, Michigan State University Children's Choir, the University Musical Society Choral Union and University of Michigan Chamber Choir, along with many star soloists including sopranos Christine Brewer, Measha Brueggergosman, Ilana Davidson, Linda Hohenfeld and Carmen Pelton, contralto Marietta Simpson and Joan Morris (the famed mezzo-soprano and Bolcom's wife), tenor Thomas Young, baritone Nmon Ford and actor/singer Nathan Lee Graham.  Also featured are harmonica virtuosos Tommy Morgan and Peter "Madcat" Ruth, the midwest progressive rock/folk/blues
legend, and new Country fiddle wizard Jeremy Kittel.

In a comment released after the Grammy ® Awards were announced, WILLIAM BOLCOM stated, "I am very grateful for the honor, and I accept it on behalf of a wonderful group of collaborators; Maestro Slatkin, all the conducting staff of the University of Michigan who prepared the work for Maestro Slatkin, and finally the roster of premier soloists sponsored by the University Musical Society."