Meridian Arts Ensemble - Awards and Albums

Awards and Albums

In the late 1980s, the group won a string of four competitions: Artists International, Chamber Music Chicago, New York Brass Conference, and finally, in 1990, Concert Artists Guild. The prize for the latter was extremely important to the ensemble - not just the cachet of winning, and not just the prize money, but management by Concert Artists Guild's booking department, a commission from a composer of the ensemble's choice (Stephen Barber's work Semahane, for brass quintet, percussion, and piano), and a recording for Channel Classics Records. In 1990, Meridian traveled to Holland to record its first compact disc, part of Channel's Winning Artists Series. That CD contained works by Alvin Etler, Taxin, Alexander Arutiunian, Jan Bach, and Paul Hindemith, and was released in 1991.

The group's second CD was released in 1992. Entitled Smart Went Crazy (from a poem by Allen Ginsberg), this disc established Meridian's reputation as an innovator in the field of brass chamber music and new music in general. There was substantial interest in this disc, leading to an interview with the group on NPR's Weekend Edition program. Brisk sales of the disc helped to cement Meridian's relationship with its recording label. Seven more discs have now been released, all to critical acclaim. The most recent, Brink (released in 2006), and Timbrando (released in 2008) were recorded in the Super Audio CD (SACD) format.