A Gannian Convergence

First, Kate Ryder reprises my Paris Intermezzo in a second concert for toy piano this Sunday, May 4, at the Space Enterprise Festival in London, England, 269 Westferry Road.

Next Tuesday, May 6, my good friend James Bagwell will conduct the Bard College Community Chorus and Chamber Singers in my Transcendental Sonnets (2001-2), at the famous Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center. James commissioned the piece for the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir years ago. For this performance, I’ve prepared a new version with an accompaniment of two pianos, which I believe captures the orchestral original well. There was always a version with piano for rehearsal purposes, but one piano really can’t do justice to the thick polyphonic textures. I think this new one – arranged mostly on trains around Europe and between Washington, D.C., and Montreal – will be effective. And the chorus has been working hard all semester and is singing beautifully. I’m grateful to James for his devotion to the work, which may be the best piece I’ve written. Also on the program are choral works by Bard students Ben Richter and Dan Whitener, and one by the chorus’s excellent accompanist James Fitzwilliam.

The following Friday, May 9, will see the American premiere of my piano concerto Sunken City, performed by the Symphonic Winds of Williams College, under the direction of Steven Bodner. Two very good student pianists are playing the respective movements, and the program also include Revueltas’s Sensemaya and music of Giya Kancheli and Michael Colgrass. In anticipation of the performance I’m giving a lecture on my music titled “The Music of the Spheres and Other Self-Defeating Paradigms” the previous day at 4:15 at the Bernhard Music Center on Williams College campus. 

In addition my profile of composer Alex Shapiro has just appeared in this month’s Chamber Music magazine. She’s posted it at her website here (PDF).