Elizabeth Chang Earlier this month, UMass professor of violin Elizabeth Chang released her new CD, “ Transformations ,” on Albany Records. The release features works by Leon Kirchner; Roger Sessions; and Arnold Schoenberg; and is rooted in the cross-generational connections between Chang and these composers. The CD was produced, engineered and mastered by Adam Abeshouse, a past GRAMMY-winner of Classical Producer of the Year, with David Schneider, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music at Amherst College, providing the liner notes. While at Harvard, Chang studied under Kirchner, who in turn studied with both Sessions and Schoenberg, two of the most influential composers of the twentieth century. According to Chang, “Both Sessions and Schoenberg were pioneers in seeking a new compositional language in the post-tonal world while being deeply rooted in the Germanic tradition.” She describes Kirchner as having had a “profound artistic and pedagogical influence” on her, and sees his music as reflecting “both the thorny complexity of modernism while palpably reaching for the sensuality of the musical language of a previous era.”