Album, Book, and Composition Releases

Blow by Blow showcases new works for winds and percussion by one of today’s most energetic composers, Dorothy Hindman.

The double-album, one-two punch traversing three decades of musical territory, features the Frost Flute Ensemble, Frost Saxophone Ensemble, and other top-notch groups. The track includes: "Mechanisms," "Big Fun," "Contents Under Pressure," "Trembling," "Lost in Translation," and more.

Trumpet master John Daversa released his album, ALL WITHOUT WORDS: Variations Inspired by Loren. It's a lush, orchestral jazz trumpet concerto composed by his lifelong friend and collaborator Justin Morell. Daversa is a prolific performing and recording artist whose projects often reflect important social themes, like his three-time Grammy-winning release, American Dreamers, Voices of Hope, Music of Freedom (2019), which gave voice to young undocumented people known as “Dreamers,” or his most recent project, Cuarentena: With Family at Home (2020), an homage to familial love and the healing power of music during the pandemic.

Brian Powell and Karen Lord-Powell released an album via Centaur Records titled Let's Meet at the Horizon in 2019. It features Frost composers, such as Thomas Sleeper (Professor Emeritus), Lucas Drew (Professor Emeritus), and Matthew Evan Taylor (M.M. '11).

"Suite Italienne for Double Bass and Piano" composed by Igor Stravinsky.  It's the first commercially available solo music for double bass by this composer.

The Heart Already Knows (2020) is self-produced by Kate Reid.

Track Listing:

"Something To Live For"; "Confessin'"; "No More"; "Two Grey Rooms"; "Stars"; "Busy Being Blue"; "Just A Lucky So And So"; "Secret Of Life"; "If I Should Lose You"; "Minds Of Their Own"; "Lazin' Around With You." 

The Regions is made up of core members Steve Rucker, Jon Gilutin, Steve Watson, and Jeff Carswell, along with John Lovell and David Fernandez. Also featured are Murph Aucamp, Wendy Pedersen, Brian Potts, John Daversa, and Gary Keller.

Take a listen to these exciting new arrangements and experience the musicianship, creativity, groove, and expression that is… The Regions!

For more information, click here.

Designing Audio Effects Plugins in C++, 2nd Edition

Published in May 2019 by Routledge Press

Designing Audio Effect Plugins in C++ presents everything you need to know about digital signal processing in an accessible way. Not just another theory-heavy digital signal processing book, nor another dull build-a-generic-database programming book, this book includes fully worked, downloadable code for dozens of professional audio effect plugins and practically presented algorithms.

Sections include the basics of audio signal processing, the anatomy of a plugin, AAX, AU, and VST3 programming guides; implementation details; and actual projects and code. More than 50 fully coded C++ audio signal-processing objects are included. Start with an intuitive and practical introduction to the digital signal processing (DSP) theory behind audio plug-ins, and quickly move on to plugin implementation, gain knowledge of algorithms on classical, virtual analog, and wave digital filters, delay, reverb, modulated effects, dynamics processing, pitch shifting, nonlinear processing, sample rate conversion and more. You will then be ready to design and implement your own unique plugins on any platform and within almost any host program.

This new edition is fully updated and improved and presents a plugin core that allows readers to move freely between application programming interfaces and platforms. Readers are expected to have some knowledge of C++ and high school math.

Digital Audio Theory: A Practical Guide

1st Edition – Published December 2020 by Focal Press

Digital Audio Theory: A Practical Guide bridges the fundamental concepts and equations of digital audio with their real-world implementation in an accessible introduction, with dozens of programming examples and projects.

Starting with digital audio conversion, then segueing into filtering, and finally real-time spectral processing, Digital Audio Theory introduces the uninitiated reader to signal processing principles and techniques used in audio effects and virtual instruments that are found in digital audio workstations. Every chapter includes programming snippets for the reader to hear, explore, and experiment with digital audio concepts. Practical projects challenge the reader, providing hands-on experience in designing real-time audio effects, building FIR and IIR filters, applying noise reduction and feedback control, measuring impulse responses, software synthesis, and much more.

Music technologists, recording engineers, and students of these fields will welcome Bennett’s approach, which targets readers with a background in music, sound, and recording. This guide is suitable for all levels of knowledge in mathematics, signals and systems, and linear circuits. Code for the programming examples and accompanying videos made by the author can be found on the companion website, DigitalAudioTheory.com.

Island Gospel: Pentecostal Music and Identity in Jamaica and the United States

Published October 2019 by the University of Illinois Press.

Rhythmic Synchronicity

Published in March 2020 by Dafnison Music

The title refers to the ability to play with rhythmic accuracy and synchronization in any situation (individually and collectively), from keeping a strong “groove” (steady pattern) by yourself to playing a synchronized rhythmic sequence with others.

A Singer's Compass: A Journey Exploring the Internal Power of Your Singing 

Published June 2020 by Newman Springs Publishing

Exclusively specializing in diverse vocal techniques for optimal versatility and longevity, Cassandra Claude works with singers to achieve a voice that can move healthily and easily through a variety of genres. Her students consist of professional singers, committed young performers, professional voice users (actors, radio personalities, public speakers), as well as dedicated therapeutic singers (voice lessons to release daily fears, anxieties, or trauma). Through her specialty, she produces singers that mesmerize audiences through pure tonal ability and skill of the vocal instrument. Yet beyond that, her goal with these singers is to produce a confident and honest vocalist with a timeless voice that stands out and where proper technique is a mere seamless and invisible force of their foundation. Her philosophy of teaching singing involves the "whole self" where she invites them to explore beyond technique and into the depths of their mind and soul as a singer. An accomplished and in-demand voice teacher, Cassandra has become a staple and representation of fine vocal technique to emerging singers today.

Threads of Joy, a new choral composition co-written with Tim Brent, published and released in the Amanda Quist Choral Series with Walton Music, 2020.