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Lawrence Cherney, Founding Creative Director of Soundstreams has introduced Keyed Up! a three-day pageant that takes place in Toronto from April 18 to twenty as a showcase for distinctive artists and keyboard devices.
The works of composers from J.S. Bach to Steve Reich, Ann Southam, Terry Riley, Ana Sokolović, and extra will likely be featured, together with 4 world premieres. A variety of performers will play the piano, harpsichord, digital keyboards and digital organ.
We spoke to Australian composer and musician Paul Grabowsky about his work within the pageant, which is impressed by Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
Paul Grabowsky
Composer and pianist Paul Grabowsky is well-known in his dwelling base of Australia, the place he’s been a preferred musician throughout a number of genres for many years. He started to play the piano on the age of 5, and studied classical repertoire on the Conservatorium of Music on the College of Melbourne from age seven.
Later, finding out at Wesley School, he discovered jazz, which took him from Australia to New York Metropolis to review at Juilliard. After his research, he launched into a performing profession as a jazz pianist, including film rating composing to his résumé within the Nineteen Eighties.
He based the Australian Artwork Orchestra in 1994, an ensemble that started with a concentrate on jazz, however steadily blurred the traces between cultural traditions and genres. One in every of their tasks below his management revolved round Bach’s St. Matthew’s Ardour. Grabowsky left AAO in 2013 to pursue his solo work.
Paul Grabowsky: The Q&A
What’s it about Bach’s Goldberg Variations that we nonetheless discover so fascinating — and such fruitful territory for brand spanking new work — even at present?
The Goldbergs are fascinating in so some ways. They characterize a summa of late baroque keyboard music, demonstrating of their appreciable technical calls for what a beautiful keyboardist JSB should have been. They display exceptional playfulness all through, with the total array of contrapuntal wizardry and harmonic sophistication, all realised throughout the restrictions of the Aria’s elegant construction.
As an improviser, utilizing this theme as a springboard, even a provocation, is an exhilarating problem. The Goldbergs are a distillation of JSB’s genius, and proceed to encourage composers and performers throughout many fields. They converse, like all nice artwork, throughout time and area.
Maybe alongside the identical traces — your music apply may be very broad in scope. What led you to create a bit primarily based on Bach?
As an improviser, I draw inspiration from any and each supply. The jazz custom taught me a language of kinesis, a ahead movement of equal elements in a relentless interrelationship. JSB was a famend improviser, so I regard the act of performing this live performance as an homage.
How do you see the fusion of jazz and classical music idioms — that are, as they’ve advanced at present, very totally different in method? Would you say that, in some respects, it truly goes again to the roots of the music that Bach himself performed?
Jazz might be seen from quite a lot of totally different views. I perceive the phrase as offering a world of chance during which the improvisational second is a continuing, ephemeral actuality. In classical music (an expression, like jazz, which isn’t essentially a twenty first Century one), the textual facet of music, its skill to be reproduced in line with units of rigorously ordered directions, is paramount. After all, improvisation is current within the efficiency of any piece of music if the performer is open to spontaneous choices. It’s a query of intention, diploma and aesthetic context.
What are you hoping the viewers takes out of your work and your efficiency?
I by no means attempt to second-guess my listeners. I can solely hope they’re happy.
Being a pageant with keyboards as its theme, I’m questioning about your personal keyboard assortment — what number of do you could have? Which is your favorite?
I actually solely carry out on piano. I’ve a Bösendorfer at dwelling, barely shorter than an Imperial, however with a 92 word keyboard. It was in-built 1980 and I’ve had it since 1991. I like it. I’ve keyboards, however they’re largely used for composing.
The Competition in Temporary
A Prelude to Keyed Up! | April 3: Piano Works of Unsung Masters
This prelude to the three foremost live shows places the work of little recognized masters of the twentieth and twenty first centuries below the highlight.
Rising stars of The Royal Conservatory of Music’s Glenn Gould Faculty and Taylor Academy in Toronto and McGill College’s Schulich Faculty of Music in Montreal will carry out a program of latest music. That features: Fantasie Négre by Florence Value, and In The Bottoms – IV: Barcarolle by R. Nathaniel Dett, each carried out by Elijah Stevens; Frozen Highway by Ian Cusson carried out by Jesse Plessis; and Troubled Water by Margaret Bonds carried out by Irene Huang. Extra data, and register to your free ticket right here.
The three pageant live shows happen on the Jane Mallett Theatre with resident ensemble: Gregory Oh (digital keyboard), Wesley Shen (harpsichord), Jackie Leung (piano), and John Paul Farahat (digital organ).
Keyed Up! Opening Night time | April 18: Variations on Goldberg Variations
The pageant opener presents the world premieres of 4 variations on J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations by Canadian composers Taylor Brook, Dorothy Chang, Emily Doolittle and André Ristic, every preceded by Bach’s authentic aria. The opposite half of this system is the North American premiere of Australian composer/pianist Paul Grabowsky’s jazz-inflected tackle Bach’s masterpiece. Grabowsky will carry out his personal works.
Keyed Up! #2 | April 19: Notations (RBC BRIDGES Composer Showcase)
This showcase live performance premieres six keyboard works for keyboards by rising composers who participated on this 12 months’s RBC Bridges program: Uko Abara, Alexandra Gorlin-Crenshaw, Gustav Knudson, Maria-Eduarda Mendes Martins, Prokhor Protasoff, and Hsiu-Ping Patrick Wu. Their items will likely be carried out by the resident ensemble.
The second half of the free live performance will function 4 brief works: T. REX by Ana Sokolović (North
American premiere) carried out by John Paul Farahat; Mutations by Alvin Singleton carried out
by Jackie Leung; Toile de Jouy by Monica Pearce carried out by Wesley Shen; and Glass Homes
(#5) by Ann Southam carried out by Gregory Oh.
Keyed Up! #3 | April 20: 6 Pianos 12 Palms
Works for six grand pianos are on this system for this live performance, together with: Steve Reich’s iconic Six Pianos, Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air, André Ristic’s Vivaldi Variations. The live performance rounds out with works for 2 pianos by Ana Sokolović and Julia Wolfe.
Pianists performing on this live performance embody: Stephanie Chua, Geoffrey Conquer, Simon Docking,
Gregory Oh, Midori Koga and Wesley Shen.
Discover out extra concerning the Keyed Up! Competition, and tickets, [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
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