Craig Morris’s Grammy-nominated tribute to Philip Glass, who was honoured in December at the Kennedy Center alongside Cher, Reba McEntire and Wayne Shorter, features flugelhorn, trumpet and piccolo trumpet versions of music written originally for either saxophone or flutes. Principal of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and now professor at the Frost School of Music in Miami, Morris celebrates the half-century anniversaries of Gradus, written while Glass was studying with tabla master Allah Rakha, and the original flute version of Piece in the Shape of a Square, played at the premiere by Glass himself and Jon Gibson.

The disc’s highlight, however, is the only recording in any version of the composer’s uncharacteristically varied Melodies from 1995, whose moods encompass sentimental, wispy and tipsy before becoming downright eloquent. To this and the more minimalist music written 20 years before, Morris brings a bulletproof technique burnished with subtle nuances of colour and rhythm.

The 11 minutes of Gradus provides a thrilling, highly addictive overdubbing tour de force, recorded in what seems to be one impossibly long continuous breath; it was one of the first pieces Glass composed upon his return to New York under the influence of Nadia Boulanger and Ravi Shankar. And, as the booklet photograph shows (see above), Morris kept true to the disorientating spirit of Piece in the Shape of a Square, where in the original version two performers, one on the inside and one on the outside of a circle of 30 music stands, play while circling in opposite directions.

The audiophile sound was recorded at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, MA, and Morris himself provides the excellent booklet notes.