In addition to being a composer, you are also an accomplished pianist.  This Friday, April 5^th, you will perform a free solo recital at 7:00pm in Fulton Recital Hall.  Can you share some about your program and explain how you chose your repertoire?
The program for my recital, in a lot of ways, focuses around Paris in the early part of the 20^th century. There are works by French, Polish, and Russian composers that all relate to one another musically. Fauré, Debussy and Messiaen form the French center of the program, each with a distinct musical voice but all tapping into some form of veiling or blurring of boundaries, whether architectural, visual or spiritual. Scriabin does this as well, though he is Russian, but all the tempo and character indications in his ‘Black Mass’ sonata (which I will be performing) are in French and the music definitely holds some of that veiled smokiness. Then at the beginning of the program we have the two Poles: Chopin lived in France much of his life and one could arguably regard as equally French as Polish when it comes to his musical language, even in something as unmistakably Polish as the mazurka. Szymanowski finds a grittier, more dissonant approach in his mazurkas, but he was so tremendously influenced by Chopin (as were Fauré and Scriabin) that one can find consonance between the differing styles. Continue reading →