Born in China in 1924, Benjamin Lees is one of the senior figures in American music. The works on this CD span almost sixty years of compositional activity but are unified by a number of consistent stylistic features: a wiry and muscular athleticism with its distant roots in Prokofiev and Bartók, a quasi-Impressionist awareness of piano sonority, a tough, non-nonsense sense of humour and an exhilarating onward drive. Pianist Mirian Conti

says: “There is a personal and defining style to Lees’ music: it is driven, intense, solid and passionate”.

The composer himself provides commentary on the music here: “In France I met the pillars of the Surrealist movement: Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Magritte, Max Ernst, Tristan Tzara, Salvador Dalí et al. […] It opened new avenues of thought as regards my music. The elements of the bizarre, the unexpected, the disturbing, the transference of images, humour, the ridiculous, the provocative and sexual – all these I felt could be relevant in my own approach to composition”.