Echoes of the New World (Stephen Clark and Ashley Beauchamp)

Blue Griffin Recording announces the November 6, 2026 release of Echoes of the New World: Music for Flute and Piano by American Composers from Scottish flutist Stephen Clark and British pianist Ashley Beauchamp. The album presents four works by American composers ranging from the late-Romantic sonata tradition to Gershwin-inflected charm, to music rooted in Lakȟóta language and Indigenous performance practice.

Clark and Beauchamp have performed together for more than ten years, resulting in an ideal collaborative team. Recorded May 22–24, 2026, at Magale Recital Hall at Northwestern State University in Louisiana where Clark is a Flute Professor, the album pairs two of the most-performed modern flute sonatas with works deserving of wider attention.

Eric Ewazen’s (b. 1954) Sonata No. 1 for Flute and Piano was composed in the fall of 2010 as a gift for flutist Marya Martin, a longtime collaborator of Ewazen. The work wa tailored to her unique sylistic characteristics, especially her spectacular agility. The Sonata is in three movements, designed in the great tradition of late 19th century instrumental sonatas. It moves from a swirling, tuneful Allegro leggiero through a songful Andante teneramente, and ends in a dazzling finale Allegro giocoso.

William Linthicum-Blackhorse’s (b. 1989) Mnicakmun (Sounds of Water) uses the imagery of water using the language of the Lakȟóta tribe of South Dakota. Each of the three “movements” describe a concept of water: Mnicásniyanyanla (Rippling Water), Mnicáluza (Rapid Water), and Mnióhuta (The Shore). The first section deliberately avoids Western triadic harmony in a contrast to the second, which shifts compositional rules to evoke emotional responses, and resolves back into water imagery to represent an emotional grounding. The work makes a nod to honoring both tribal water rights and the sacred status of water in the Lakȟóta culture. The score uses both Wetern notation alongside indigenous graphic symbols.

Eugénie Ricau Rocherolle (1936–2025) was a New Orleans composer, lyricist, and pianist who studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Her Sonata No. 1 for Flute and Piano, written in 2009 for former New York Philharmonic principal flutist Jeanne Baxtresser, and combines American idioms with a Gershwin-inspired jazz harmonic language.

The album closes with Lowell Liebermann’s (b. 1961) Sonata for Flute and Piano, Op. 23, was commissioned by the Spoleto USA Festival for Paula Robison, and premiered in 1989. It is recognized as being one of the most technically and musically challenging pieces in the repertoire, while becoming one of the most frequently performed modern Sonatas.