(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Leaf Music announces the distribution of a new debut digital recording, Retro Style (WM2024), available August 23, featuring organist Wendy Markosky. Retro Style showcases the “retro style” sounds of the neo-baroque Ahrend organ at the University of Calgary. Dating from 2006, this instrument authentically evokes the tone colours of seventeenth-century North German organs, along with a unique temperament based on a restored instrument from 1692.
Organist Wendy Markosky explores a diverse group of composers having personal, professional, or historical connections to one other, within a broader context of seventeenth-century North German organ traditions that includes one modern work. Mixing less to more familiar works, the album highlights a wealth of genres and compositional styles from the music of Tunder, Weckmann, Froberger, Böhm, Bruhns, Buxtehude, Scheidt, Distler, Scheidemann, and Lübeck. The repertoire reflects the community of connections between many of the composers, historically and personally.
Get your CD copy of Retro Style by contacting Wendy Markosky at wmarkosk@burmanu.ca, or listen to it on your favourite streaming platform. Retro Style is available on all streaming platforms: https://leaf-music.lnk.to/wm2024.
Retro Style was recorded at the Rozsa Centre, University of Calgary in 2021 and 2022 and engineered and mastered by Zana Warner. The artist thanks the Faculty Development and Research Committee, Burman University for major financial assistance of this project.
For more information, please visit wendymarkosky.com.
Wendy Markosky is Professor of Music and Music Department Chair at Burman University in Lacombe, Alberta, and organist of the university church. She is an active recitalist, chamber musician and adjudicator. She’s been a panel judge of three national organ playing competitions of the Royal Canadian College of Organists (RCCO) and is an RCCO travelling clinician and examiner. Markosky has performed with Early Music Voices, Early Music Alberta, and Luminous Voices, and is a founding member of the early music ensemble Rosa Barocca. Their album with cellist Elinor Frey won Canada’s 2022 JUNO Award for Classical Album of the Year: Small Ensemble. A native of Ottawa, Markosky holds a bachelor’s degree in organ form Union College, (Lincoln, Nebraska), and earned master’s and doctoral degrees in organ from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University-Bloomington, where she also studied harpsichord and carillon.
Leaf Music is an independent recording label based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, making and distributing high-quality classical music recordings by artists and composers from across Canada. Our growing catalogue of solo, orchestral, and chamber music is distributed by Naxos of America to the world’s most important music retailers, download providers, and streaming services. Leaf is also a provider of professional audio and video production, post-production services and integrated music marketing and distribution in Canada.
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MEDIA CONTACT:
For more information/photos or to arrange interviews, please contact Peggy Walt, peggy@leaf-music.ca (902) 422-5403 (office) or (902) 476-1096 (cell).