Arnold Rosner (1945–2013) was a New Yorker through and through, but his musical language reached across time and culture, clothing the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony in rich Romantic colours, thus producing a style that is instantly recognisable and immediately appealing.

Having written his Eighth Symphony for symphonic wind band, he took a liking to the idiom, composing seven more works for this archetypical formation of American university life, none of them recorded before now. Their inspiration is eclectic – they range from descriptive tone-poems via the recreation of an Indian raga and other folk-based pieces to more formal structures – but Rosner’s unerring balance of dignity and energy is common to all of them and stamps them with a sound that is uniquely his.