Album, Book, and Composition Releases

"Island Gospel: Pentecostal Music and Identity in Jamaica and the United States" – Published October 2019 by the University of Illinois Press.

• Pentecostals throughout Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora use music to declare what they believe and where they stand in relation to religious and cultural outsiders. Yet the inclusion of secular music forms like ska, reggae, and dancehall complicated music's place in social and ritual practice, challenging Jamaican Pentecostals to reconcile their religious and cultural identities. Melvin Butler journeys into this crossing of boundaries and its impact on Jamaican congregations and the music they make. Using the concept of flow, Butler's ethnography evokes both the experience of Spirit-influenced performance and the transmigrations that fuel the controversial sharing of musical and ritual resources between Jamaica and the United States. Highlighting constructions of religious and cultural identity, Butler illuminates music's vital place in how the devout regulate spiritual and cultural flow while striving to maintain both the sanctity and fluidity of their evolving tradition. Insightful and original, Island Gospel tells the many stories of how music and religious experience unite to create a sense of belonging among Jamaican people of faith.

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 technique 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.

"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.

Rhythmic Synchronicity

• Coming Soon! 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. 

 

 

 

 

 

"Let's Meet at the Horizon."

• Brian Powell and Karen Lord-Powell released an album via Centaur Records titled "Let's Meet at the Horizon." 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. First commercially available solo music for double bass by this composer.  

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"The Heart Already Knows" 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. 

• 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.