Anderson's ideas about variation come from Goethe's discussions of the Urpflanze, here with specific attention to the rose. Each sound in the piece gets its own 4-part array, which all unfold in counterpoint. (The manner of working is unthinkable without the precedent of Milton Babbitt.) When Anderson lands somewhere, he is landing on little fragments of known tunes--recognizable fragments of familiar tunes-- Es ist ein Ros Entsprungen, Heidenroslein, and Honky Tonk Woman. The piece keeps adding arrays as it goes forward, so one can hear how the aggregates become ever more embellished as the piece proceeds. Various Roses was composed for, and is dedicated to David Fulmer, the celebrated composer, conductor and violinist. Still in his twenties, composer, violinist, and conductor David Fulmer is quickly emerging as one of the most unique musicians of his generation - his bold compositional aesthetic combined with his thrilling performing abilities have garnered him numerous international accolades. The success of his award-winning Violin Concerto at Lincoln Center in 2010 earned international attention and resulted in immediate engagement to perform the work with major orchestras and at festivals in the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, Scandinavia, and Australia. Fulmer made his European debut performing and recording the Violin Concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Matthias Pintscher in February 2011. A surge in Fulmer’s compositional activity has resulted from a series of distinctive commissions from major international orchestras, a new violin concerto for virtuoso Stefan Jackiw, and several new works for notable contemporary ensembles throughout Europe, China, Japan, and North America. His hour-long cycle for saxophone and ensemble, On Night, composed for saxophonist Eliot Gattegno, has been featured in numerous music festivals worldwide, and will be commercially released on the Tzadik label in 2012 with the Argento Ensemble with the composer conducting. Fulmer is the first American ever to receive Grand Prize at the International Edvard Grieg Competition for Composers, which he was awarded in 2010. He also has received the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the BMI Composer Award, and the Charles Ives Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Other honors and awards include a special citation from the Minister of Education of Brazil for Fulmer’s series of lectures on music, the Hannah Komanoff Scholarship in Composition (2006-07), the Dorothy Hill Klotzman Grant from The Juilliard School (2005), and the highly coveted George Whitefield Chadwick Gold Medal from the New England Conservatory (2004). Fulmer recently graduated from The Juilliard School where he received his doctorate, having studied composition with Milton Babbitt and violin with Robert Mann. In 2009, he was appointed to the faculty of Columbia University. Fulmer appears regularly and records often with the premiere new music ensembles including the Argento New Music Project, Speculum Musicae, the Group for Contemporary Music, the New York New Music Ensemble, and also with the Second Instrumental Unit, an ensemble that he co-founded and directs. He has appeared recently on the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center, Live from Lincoln Center broadcasts, and the Center’s annual festivals; performing concerti, chamber music, and solo works. He is a founding member of the Axiom Ensemble, an ensemble at Juilliard. William Anderson plays solo recitals at guitar festivals and new music festivals in the US and abroad. He has been heard on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show, and on NPR's All Things Considered (discussing Sounding Beckett, a show he produced with Director Joy Zinoman). Anderson is dedicated to the work of living composers, and is thinking hard about how to shape the tone of 21st C. American music. --Anderson has performed with many of New York City's finest ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera Chamber Players, Sequitur, the Group for Contemporary Music, the Da Capo Chamber Players. --He founded the Cygnus Ensemble in 1985. Cygnus has built a substantial repertoire of chamber music with plucked strings. --As a composer and arranger Anderson was the first to use a multiply-partitioned array as an accompaniment to a 3-chord pop song (My Morphine--Welch/Anderson), This and other experiments in adapting modernist techniques to subversive, even populous ends, led Paul Griffiths, in the NY Times, to say: “The mindful voice of Ives, of Stravinsky and of Mr. Wuorinen’s music would not seem to be implied much by such a song as “Night and Day,” but Mr. Anderson’s extraordinary arrangements of this and other numbers by Jerome Kern and Richard Rogers set them squarely and astonishingly in the same tradition...” --Anderson is now working on the first in-depth critical study of Western plucked string music, entitled Einegezupfteweltanschauung (A Plucked Worldview). Portions of this work evolve gradually in connection with specific performances. At age 19 he began playing chamber music at the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he performed from 1981 through 1988. In 1982 he began studying with America's premiere guitar pioneer David Starobin, who introduced him to the music community in New York City. His first solo recital was presented by the League of Composers/ISCM at Weill Hall, New York City (1990). He was also presented in recital by Music From Japan at the Asia Society (1993). He regularly appeared in Washinton D.C.with the Theater Chamber Players at the Kennedy Center, performing both solo guitar and chamber music repertoire. Mr. Anderson has been a soloist in festivals and ensembles such as the Bang on a Can Festival, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and Modern Works! He has been heard on radio broadcasts on WNYC, WKCR, WGBH, and National Public Radio, Polish National Radio, Radio Bremen, and others. Mr. Anderson appears on numerous recordings, and has given recitals and radio broadcasts in Europe, Mexico, Japan and the U.S. With Cygnus, he has performed in Denmark, Holland, Poland, Russia, Mexico and California. Cygnus also offers a series of three concerts each season at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, presenting important new works by America’s best composers. In the New Music Connoisseur, Leo Kraft wrote a review of a Cygnus performance in New York, saying, “If Mr. Anderson’s aim was to show how the guitar can play a significant role in chamber music, he certainly succeeded.” Anderson teaches guitar at Sarah Lawrence College and Queens College. Recorded at Dreamflower Studios, Bronxville, NY. Sound engineering, editing, mixing, and mastering by Jeremy Tressler.