King of Prussia, PA – Theodore Presser Company is pleased to release Thomas Pasatieri’s Album Leaves, Volume 1 (111-40238 — $16.99) for voice and piano. America’s most beloved and prolific composer of operas and song cycles, Pasatieri offers 12 songs of diverse mood and text, launching a series of Album Leaves songbooks. In this mixture of old and new songs, texts range from Shakespeare and Walt Whitman to scripture and Sheila Nadler’s “Overweight, Overwrought, Over You.”

Thomas Pasatieri was born October 20, 1945 in New York. By the age of ten Pasatieri had established himself as an accomplished performing pianist, and at fifteen he began his work as a composer. As a teenager, he studied with the renowned French teacher Nadia Boulanger. He entered The Juilliard School at age sixteen and went on to become the school's first recipient of a doctoral degree. In addition to his sizeable opera catalogue, Mr. Pasatieri has composed hundreds of songs, which have been performed and recorded by such artists as Janet Baker, Jane Eaglen, Sheri Greenawald, Thomas Hampson, Evelyn Lear, Catherine Malfitano, Ashley Putnam, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Stewart and Shirley Verrett. Mr. Pasatieri has taught composition at Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music and Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. From 1980 through 1984, he held the post of Artistic Director at Atlanta Opera. In 1984, he moved to Los Angeles, where he formed his film music production company, Topaz Productions. His film orchestrations can be heard in Road to Perdition, American Beauty, The Little Mermaid, The Shawshank Redemption, Fried Green Tomatoes, Legends of the Fall, Scent of a Woman, and Angels in America, among many others.

Offering music by today’s greatest composers and teachers, Theodore Presser Company is the leader in publishing educational and recital music. Theodore Presser Company is a full-range music publisher and distributes the music of over 30 publishers from around the globe, with a combined sales catalog that features over 60,000 available works. For more information about new publications from Theodore Presser Company or to locate a dealer near you, log on to www.presser.com or e-mail us at sales@presser.com. For review copies of the publication listed in this release, please contact Heidi Vanderlee at (212) 777-0900, ext. 230 or send an e-mail to hvanderlee@presser.com.