I live in Louisville, and Abrams is constantly pushing his cheesy Kapellmeiter Musik onto LO programs (usually paired with a far superior piece from core repertoire - such as Beethoven's 9th - which ensures big ticket sales for the overall program, but certainly does his palid work no favors by the juxtaposition). This piece of warmed-over "big band" jazz is one of his worst efforts (even worse than his Muhammad Ali cantata "The Greatest"). And $11.99 for mp3 downloads of a pretty short piece? Yikes. Yuja Wang must have been paid very well to agree to waste time on this scholck.

Wonderful! She and the two composers have clearly done their homework for these Classical/jazz/blues/fusion genre crossing compositions. There are elements of Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, Manhattan jazz from the 1920’s, big bands from the 30’s and 40’s, Chick Corea (jazz), Miles Davis with Bill Evans, Bill Payne (rock, New Orleans jazz, fusion), the blues and much more in the mix. And it works. The Abrams moves lithely from genre to genre, for example dropping from 21st century classical into the blues and back up again as easily as if people did that every day. Yuja Wang is up to the task, showing herself the equal or better than all the other players whose genres and technical skills she borrows. They tried something new, and it is enormous fun.

Why would DG waste the time and effort of foremost virtuoso in the world today on mediocre tripe like the works of Teddy Abrams. Who is managing A&R at DG? I'm sure there are many of us who anxiously await Yuja to record the great piano works of Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt,Chopin, Scriabin,Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Schubert etc. Please don't waste her prodigious technique and intellect on insipid music.