Practice! Practice! Practice!

Speaking of the piano, I've been cleaning out my garage, and I found (among many, many other sentimental items you'd be grateful I'm sparing you) a cassette tape of the piano recital I gave as a high school senior, on May 18, 1973, at Skyline High School in Dallas. The program was ambitious, well over an hour, and, as you can see, studded with 20th-century American music, for which I was already a staunch advocate:

Johannes Brahms: Rhapsody in E-flat, Op. 119
Robert Muczynski: Solitude
" " : Night Rain
" " : Jubilee
George Rochberg: "Prologue" from Sonata-Fantasia (1956)
Kent Kennan: Three Preludes (1938)
John Cage: 4'33" (1952)
Kyle Gann: Commentary on Hope and Meaninglessness (1973)
" " : Impacts (1973)
William Swafford: "Ah, Ja! Ein Kleiderschrank" (1973)
Marcus McDaniel: Four Pieces (1973)
Alexander Scriabin: Etude in D# Minor, Op. 8, No.12
Aaron Copland: Piano Sonata (1939-41)
Frederick Chopin: Polonaise in A-flat Major, Op. 53

Yes, that's right, at the age of 17 I played 4'33" for my bewildered friends and their parents, though with a lengthy explanation of Cage's philosophy preceeding it, so the audience sat obediently quiet. Marcus McDaniel and William Swafford were friends of mine; Marcus subsequently went into computers for a living, but we're still in touch. Kennan and Muczynski were middle-of-the-road composers better known then than they are today. I must say, I played pretty damn well, which I no longer do today, and I won't ask you to take my word for it - out of pure vanity I've temporarily put the Copland Sonata performance on my web site, at kylegann.com (scroll down to the bottom if you're really intrigued). The thing I regret most about my life is that I didn't maintain my pianistic skills, because I get tremendous pleasure from playing: but around 1983 I started typing instead of practicing, and it took over my life. The moral here, kids, is Practice! Practice, practice, practice, and never stop!

November 26, 2003 11:57 PM | | Comments (0)

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Sites To See

Postclassic Radio! - Kyle Gann's internet radio station that accompanies the blog; see the playlist at kylegann.com

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer

Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by PostClassic published on November 26, 2003 11:57 PM.

On (Not) Buying into the Illusion of Transparency was the previous entry in this blog.

Responses to the Postclassical Dilemma is the next entry in this blog.

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