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PianoMorphosis

Bruce Brubaker on all things piano

A Way Forward

February 28, 2022 by Bruce Brubaker

My opening remarks in the discussion "A Way Forward: Toward Greater Musical Diversity," at New England Conservatory, in conjunction with three concerts of piano music by musicians who studied or taught at the Conservatory. Those of us educated in conservatories and schools of music in the United States must recognize and acknowledge our privilege. In the 19th and 20th centuries, conservatory communities did not provide cultural equity, or … [Read more...]

Evidence

June 7, 2021 by Bruce Brubaker

My introduction of Emanuel Ax in May in Boston, as he received an honorary doctorate from New England Conservatory. "For a long time the listeners of the world have admired -- for a long time, the listeners in the world have loved Emanuel Ax. Hearing him play Century Rolls, the piano concerto written in 1997 by John Adams for him, first played by Mr. Ax and the Cleveland Orchestra, I was thrilled. As I was thrilled hearing him play Brahms’ … [Read more...]

Filtered

April 12, 2021 by Bruce Brubaker

As I hear my student playing the piano through Zoom, just for a moment, I think I am hearing Paderewski in 1912. The sound is imperfect. At moments it drops out. There are distortions of speed and rhythm. Yet, my ear, my mind is hearing music: completing and linking together the aural information that is there.   As an adolescent, and thanks to the public library, I listened to a lot of recordings made by pianists of the early 20th … [Read more...]

All in

February 8, 2021 by Bruce Brubaker

During 2020, at New England Conservatory, it happened -- every piano piece by Ludwig van Beethoven was performed. There was a series of 12 concerts involving 73 different NEC students. All 36 piano sonatas were played, 21 sets of variations, and every other piano piece! Six of the concerts were played live during February and March. After the pandemic arrived, the rest of the programs were streamed during the fall. Studying remotely, many … [Read more...]

Everest

July 6, 2020 by Bruce Brubaker

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climb Mount Everest, 1953 excerpts from my remarks as part of the webinar “ResiliArt: Classical Music’s New World” presented by the Global Foundation for the Performing Arts and UNESCO, June 22, 2020 “…Now, we need to be living music so that it matters, so that it’s useful. We are in an intense period of artistic interaction — technologically enabled. Music is a group activity.  "Music and … [Read more...]

Stand-Up Guy

March 9, 2020 by Bruce Brubaker

My remarks at the beginning of the second of 13 concerts of Beethoven’s complete piano music played by New England Conservatory students during 2020.  Let me tell you... I almost never do stand-up comedy on a Thursday night.  Friday is better. Sometimes even Tuesday can be good.  I mean not a Thursday though... tonight is a Thursday right — and you see what I mean. You can see how this is going, … [Read more...]

Raggin’ the Classics

April 22, 2019 by Bruce Brubaker

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet..."William Shakespeare: King John Electronica artist Max Cooper and I launch a new project this spring, a collaboration called “Glassforms.” It’s a commission from the Philharmonie de Paris and we will play it as part of their Philip Glass weekend in May. Shows follow in London, Barcelona, and Bordeaux.  We overlay electronic sounds — onto … [Read more...]

“I have cap and bells”

November 26, 2018 by Bruce Brubaker

After a prospective student played Maurice Ravel's "Alborada del gracioso," I asked the not-so-simple question: "What's the melody? Ravel: "Alborada del gracioso," (1905) from Miroirs The student did not have a ready answer; after a moment suggesting the opening melody might be the music played by the pianist's left hand: It seems to me that "Alborada" utilizes the technique (seen in Franz Liszt's piano music) of dividing a musical line between … [Read more...]

Dispatched

March 5, 2018 by Bruce Brubaker

Dispatched from the Audition Room (mit Bolzano auch dabei) After the third day of piano auditions at New England Conservatory, I attended an evening recital given at the school by one of my piano faculty colleagues. Backstage, he said that while he was playing he imagined my stern voice from the audition room. Making a fairly unpleasant face, he told me, "You know when you say, 'Mmmmm, not really good...'" The cold fact is that from about … [Read more...]

Piano Sonata as Video Game: Anomalies in My Reception of Beethoven’s Music

November 27, 2017 by Bruce Brubaker

A transcript of my spoken remarks at Boston University last week, as part of a symposium on piano sonatas by Beethoven. “I’d like to talk about what I would call anomalies in my own reception of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. “I can certainly remember -- as I’m sure many of you can remember -- a time when I first played through a piano sonata by Beethoven from beginning to end, in a kind of performance. It was in my living room, I think I was … [Read more...]

Digging to France

July 24, 2017 by Bruce Brubaker

When I tell a U.S. colleague about several concerts I'm playing in France he says: "You're Jerry Lewis!" The French, it's true, have a long tradition of appreciating U.S culture, and yes, that silly American comedian/auteur was highly venerated in France, perhaps more so than in the U.S. The French public have had a great love of jazz from America, and American movies. Earlier, there was a taste for ragtime, and minstrelsy. Today, American-style … [Read more...]

Conflict of Interest

March 20, 2017 by Bruce Brubaker

The character of a piece of music is strongly influenced (or sometimes distorted) by the technique necessary to play it. The physical motions of fingers and arm will color the music being made. There is always an interaction between a musical idea (perhaps written) and the movements of a human body that are necessary to realize the idea in sound. Delicate or fragile music that requires advanced virtuosity is especially challenging. As is any … [Read more...]

Rising Tide

December 27, 2016 by Bruce Brubaker

Patterns of rising and falling inflection are vital to a lot of music. Purely instrumental music often encodes emphasis-patterns that resemble speech, or song. (Linguists prefer the term "intonation" to signify these rises and falls.) In the notation of European classical music, at least since the 18th century, musicians have used "slurs" as a means of indicating phrase groupings and stress patterns. Describing two notes written under a slur, … [Read more...]

Misprision

February 22, 2016 by Bruce Brubaker

In performing Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," some singers deliver the subtle, and possibly difficult to pronounce word combination "distingué traces" as "distant gay traces." A British lawyer or Harold Bloom might call this a "misprision." We may willfully twist a text to achieve a particular meaning. Or perhaps we are always getting it wrong. Bloom writes definitively: "Every poem is the misreading of a parent poem... There are no … [Read more...]

Amplify

December 11, 2015 by Bruce Brubaker

During October, I gave four performances in France (Paris, Lyon, Orléans, Paris) in clubs or alternative, non-classical venues. For each of these shows, the piano was amplified (some engineers prefer the term "reinforced"). Mics were positioned fairly close to the strings of the piano, the sound processed, and piped through a PA system. In one instance, the resulting sound heard by the audience was louder than what the acoustic piano could … [Read more...]

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Bruce Brubaker

Recordings like the new American piano music albums I make for ECM, InFiné, Bedroom Community, and Arabesque reach millions of listeners, and break through some old divisions of high culture/pop, or art/entertainment. My fans are listening to Billie Eilish, The Weeknd — even the occasional Mozart track! Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube are allowing music lovers to discover music they could not have found so easily before. Live performances begin to reflect what’s happening online. My performances occur in classical venues like the Philharmonie in Paris, the Barbican in London, at La Roque d’Anthéron, at festivals such as Barcelona’s Sónar and Nuits Sonores in Brussels, and such nightclubs as New York’s (le) Poisson Rouge. Read More…

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PianoMorphosis

Music is changing. Society's changing. Pianists, and piano music, and piano playing are changing too. That's PianoMorphosis. But we're not only reacting... From the piano -- at the piano, around the piano -- we are agents of change. We affect … [Read More...]

Archives

More Me

BB on the web

“Glassforms” with Max Cooper at Sónar

“Glass Etude” on YouTube

demi-cadratin review of Brubaker solo concert at La Roque d’Anthéron

“Classical music dead? Nico Muhly proves it isn’t” — The Telegraph‘s Lucy Jones on my Drones & Piano EP

Bachtrack review of Brubaker all-Glass concert

“Brubaker recital proves eclectic, hypnotic, and timeless” — Harlow Robinson’s Boston Globe review of my Jordan Hall recital

“Simulcast” with Francesco Tristano on Arte

Bruce Brubaker hosts 4 weeks of “Hammered!” on WQXR — “Something Borrowed,” “Drone,” “Portal,” “The Raw and the Cooked”

“Onstage, a grand piano and an iPod” — David Weininger’s story with video by Dina Rudick

“Bruce Brubaker on Breaking Down Boundaries” — extensive audio interview at PittsburghNewMusicNet.com

“Heavy on the Ivories” — Andrea Shea’s story for WBUR about Bruce Brubaker’s performances and recording of “The Time Curve Preludes” by William Duckworth

“Feeding Those Young and Curious Listeners” — Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times on the first anniversary of the Poisson Rouge

“The Jewel in the Fish” — Harry Rolnick on Bruce Brubaker at the Poisson Rouge

“The Post-Postmodern Pianist” — Damian Da Costa profiles Bruce Brubaker in The New York Observer

Bruce Brubaker questioned at NewYorkPianist.net

“Finding the keys to the heart of Jordan Hall” — Joan Anderman in the Boston Globe on the search for a new concert grand piano

“Hearing and Seeing” — Philip Glass speaks with Bruce Brubaker and Jon Magnussen, Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study

Bruce Brubaker about Messiaen’s bird music, NPR, “Here and Now”

“I Hear America: Gunther Schuller at 80” — notes and programs for concert series, New England Conservatory, Harvard University, Boston Symphony Orchestra

“A Conversation That Never Occurred About the Irene Diamond Concert,” Juilliard Journal

Bruce Brubaker plays music by Alvin Curran at (le) Poisson Rouge

Bruce Brubaker

Recordings such the new American piano music albums I make for ECM, InFiné, and Arabesque reach many listeners, and seem to break through some old divisions of high culture/pop, or art/entertainment. My fans are listening to Cardi B, Childish Gambino, Ariana Grande — even the occasional Mozart track! Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube are allowing music lovers to discover music they could not have encountered so easily in the past. Live performances begin to reflect what’s happening online: this year I play at the International Piano Festival at La Roque d’Anthéron, traditional concert venues in Los Angeles, and Boston — as well as nightclubs in Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Lyon, Geneva, and New York’s (le) Poisson Rouge.

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