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.

March 30 - New Music by Yale Faculty Members

Greg Anderson, Ezra Laderman, David Kaplan

Tonight David Kaplan and I performed Ezra Laderman's fiendishly difficult "Interior Landscapes" for Two Pianos. I managed to put the piano completely out of tune a mere minute into the performance, which yielded some frustrations later in the piece. Regardless, it was a solid performance. Perhaps next time we play the work I'll feel comfortable to sit back and enjoy myself a little more! :-)

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.