Known as the Dean of Northwest Composers, George Frederick McKay became recognized over the span of four decades as an outstanding teacher and neoromantic, yet individual composer who remained true to his roots by drawing upon the vast musical resources of the region’s indigenous peoples. His Violin Concerto shares formal affinities with Max Bruch’s famous Violin Concerto No. 1 – a rather operatic first movement, an inward and poetic slow movement and rhythmically vigorous finale. The Suite on 16th Century Hymn Tunes pays homage to the music of French composer Louis Bourgeois, and appears here in its 1962 transcription for two string orchestras. Sinfonietta No. 4, with its angular motifs and rough-hewn spareness, is characteristic of McKay’s later style, and the Song Over the Great Plains is a gently evocative work, inspired by a meadowlark call noted down by the composer while in the Dakotas.