Hello

[rick costello]

My name is Rick Costello and I am a retired musician and record company owner. The past 2 years I have developed a website offering my company's entire catalog of music free to the public in the form of Royalty Free Music.  Recently I have been expanding this catalog by accepting music from other artists who want to share their work. You can listen to and download my music at http://www.freemusicpublicdomain.com/ There are a number of Symphonic and Orchestral pieces along with Smooth Jazz, Blues, Rock, etc.

[Hollywood]

Howdy there Rick. Greetings from a SoCal gal living in Beethoven's Vienna. Welcome to the forum. 

[rick costello]

Greeting from sunny Arizona. I used to live in LA back in the 80's and 90's. For a time, I rented a small bungalow near MacArthur Park on Carondolet St. It was a little too 'busy' for me. I also lived in Manhattan Beach and Walteria, which were much more to my liking.
What are your interests in Classical Music?

[arpeggio]

Submitted following when I first joined:

I really do not have a favorite composer or genre.  I like all sorts of composers from Vivaldi to Carter.

According to my database program the top twenty composers in my library are:

Beethoven
Liszt
Britten
Stravinsky
Hindemith
Holst
Chopin
Barber
Elgar
Vivaldi
Carter (Until he passed away a few years ago he was my favorite living composer.  I got to meet him at Tanglewood.)
Prokofiev
Bax
Shostakovich
Mozart
Copeland
Sibelius
Martinu
Dvorak
Hovhaness

I have over 90 works of these composers in my library.  There are some duplicates.  Since I am a band junkie, I have several recordings of the Hindemith Symphony for Band.

My favorite living composers include:
John Corigliano
James MacMillan
David Maslanka
John Harbison
John Williams
Michael Daugherty
Frank Ticheli
Kalevi Aho
John Adams
Ned Rorem
Karel Husa (He is up there)
Leonardo Balada
Joan Tower
Eric Whitacre (I know there are many who do not care for him but his Ghost Train Trilogy is one of the finest band works I have ever performed.)
Richard Danielpour
Joseph Schwanter
Phillip Sparke
James Barnes
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
Christopher Rouse

It is actually easier for me to come up with composers I do not like.  Most of them you probably never heard of like Middendorff, Wigglesworth and Nigel Hess.

Among non-classical I am a big fan of:
Don Ellis
Stan Kenton
Modern Jazz Quartet
Willie Nelson
Reba McIntyre
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Dave Matthews
Phish
Beatles
Emerson, Palmer and Lake
Beach Boys
And my secret guilty pleasure ABBA 

My all time favorite is probably Mahler.

If the sound world of a piece of music appeals to me I really do not care when or where it was written.  Like there is this cool Baroque British composer I have just discovered: Thomas Arne.  He composed a series of great overtures.  His most famous song is "Rule Britannia".

This is what has gotten me into trouble in other forums.  People could not understand how I could like Beethoven and Carter.  Because of this and because I defend people who like Cage I have a reputation of being a crazed modernists.  Yet only about 7% of my library and my listening habits are directed toward atonal/avant-garde music.

I am always interested in discovering new composers, living or dead.

[Karl Henning]

Welcome, Rick.