November 28 - "Interior Landscapes" at Yale University

Woah! It's been a while. Believe it or not, I've been doing quite a bit in the past few months, even if the lack of blog updates have lead you to believe otherwise. Liz and I have played at a number of small private events; we've filmed more music videos; we've produced, edited, and designed our upcoming CD; I've written a fair amount of my dissertation; and I've composed a couple movements for The 5 Browns next CD.

In addition to everything else, David Kaplan (a fellow pianist and colleague of mine at Yale University) and I performed the world premiere of Ezra Laderman's "Interior Landscapes II" for two pianos. We began the concert with "Interior Landscapes I" which we had already performed last year. (You can listen to the recent performance here on David Kaplan's newly minted website!) The work is massively difficult, but it was refreshing to perform the work again. The piece had evolved significantly over the past few months; our minds had somehow made sense of the thousands of notes and it was much more enjoyable to perform as a result.

After some solo performances (I performed transcriptions of Vivaldi, Lully, and Rameau), we tackled the newest "Interior Landscapes," and boy, did it go well. I had to deal with the usual first performance nerves, but along with those came the usual first performance adrenaline. The last movement in particular raced along at lightning speed to a fiery conclusion.

David drew a picture of the two of us playing together. It's nice.

May 20 - Anderson & Roe Duo Recital in Milwaukee, WI

Elizabeth and I premiered my new piece, Carnival of the Animals: A New Depiction of the Zoological Fantasy, last Sunday at The Rep in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I'm going to review the composition in this blog. Head to the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo blog, "Where Soloists Fear to Tread," to learn more about the event.

We have a couple days before we perform the composition again, and I'll be using that time to revise the work. Here are the movements and my thoughts:

Introduction: Fine.
The Royal March of the Lion: I'm going to start over on this one. It just didn't work right.
Chickens: Replace the Nokia reference with another one; shorten the third section.
Turtle Staying Alive: I still question whether it works right, but I like the concept, so I'll keep it for now.
Jackrabbits: I'm going to elaborate on the second version.
Kangaroos in Love: Fine - short, sweet, and simple.
The Drunken Elephant: One of my favorites, although I plan to alter a couple confusing harmonies.
Homo pianisticus: Remove the fourth modulation and replace it with something very different. :-)
Jackasses: No changes necessary.
ADD: The Cat's Fugue...
ADD: The Cookoo in Sussex...
The Crow: Fine as is.
The Aquarium: I understand that the text may be elusive, but I like it as it is. No changes.
Fossil Jamboree: Great, although I plan to rewrite the intro.
The Swan: My favorite movement.
Finale: Hmmmm. It works fine, but it isn't necessarily representative of the suite as a whole. I'll have to think about this one some more.

If you happened to be in attendance, let me know your thoughts! What movements did you like?

April 13 - Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion

David Kaplan, Julian Pellicano, Greg Anderson, Eric Beach

Wow, wow, wow, wow! I didn't think I'd be able to go on following the first movement of today's performance; my heart was pounding so hard I was nervous my hands would shake right off the piano. I can only think of a few instances in my life in which I experienced such an incredible flow of adrenaline. (It went really well.) I was, as they say, "swept away by the music," ... swept away by the really intense, loud, and tight performance.

Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion takes a great deal of work to put together and an unimaginable level of concentration to perform, but it's worth it.

On a side note, check out this photo I took from backstage while they were setting up:


Yes, that's the stage. You can't even see the second percussionist's setup for the Bartok or the marimba at the front of the stage. Percussion recitals, it seems, have a significantly more cluttered stage than piano recitals do.

February 22 - New Music New Haven

Performers are often given unrealistic expectations when it comes to the premieres of new works. I was asked to perform an incredibly difficult piece composed by a student here at Yale - Yoshi Onishi. Written for soprano, cello, and piano, we were given four days to learn and rehearse the 25-minute work. Four days! It took me half a year to learn the Ligeti Etude I play so often. It takes pianists months to learn Beethoven sonatas (and when do we ever really feel prepared to play them in public?).

Onishi's piece was virtually impossible to play and the composer screamed every time I played a wrong note. The rhythms were so confusing that we had to have a conductor; his job was to ensure that the three of us (or in one of the movements, all two of us) were in the same place.

Somehow last Thursday night, we were expected to walk on stage, look composed and professional, and perform the piece for the public. No wonder audiences frequently take issue with new music! Somehow we got by (and I didn't hear any composer screaming during the performance). We did the best we could, and even though none of us were particularly impressed by our own performances, we were very impressed by each others. The singer did a marvelous job navigating her atonal sequence of pitches!

This is why I like to be the one to play my own music instead placing it in the hands of unprepared performers.

January 12 - Lindsay Benefit Concert

"First performances" can be terrifying. It usually isn't until the third or fourth performance that I begin to feel comfortable playing a piece in public. Or ... in the case of the Ligeti etude (the one featured on my video page), it wasn't until the 12th, 13th ... no, the 31st go that I finally could perform the piece without having a nervous breakdown before the concert. :)

Tonight I performed the Saint-Saens Fourth Piano Concerto for the first time. In attempt to quell my nerves, I made certain I was over-prepared. I could do my octaves blindfolded, I could play the difficult passage-work backwards, and my toes could have played the slow sections in my sleep. Still, on stage, my heart was racing like a trapped mouse. ... a. trapped. mouse.

That unbelievable heart rate, however, can provide a performer with a working environment unlike anything he or she is bound to find in the practice room: a slower perception of time! So while I'm up there wondering why the piece feels weirdly sedated, the audience is out there forced into the cushion of their backrest by the velocity of the thing. So while I'm up there watching my hands stroll around the keyboard and occasionally fretting over a missed note, the audience is out there wide-eyed, wondering how my hands managed to be in two places at once. Yes, tonight's performance had that energy that comes hand-in-hand with a first performance.

I also had the pleasure of performing a set of two-piano pieces with my former piano teacher. Kim Craig is an amazing woman: she can organize innumerable details at the last minute, catch a falling piano with remarkable grace, and simultaneously tug at your heartstrings and knock you in the funny bone while seated at the piano. Kudos to Kim!