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What's happenging now...
As Ms. Walwyn keeps busy with numerous recitals this season, she will complete three solo cds entitled: "Karen Walwyn Plays Chopin"; and "DOUBLETAKE" Piano Music of Adolphus Hailstork, (Albany). "Dark Fires", Vol. III is the third recording project for Ms. Walwyn this season. It will include works by George Walker, T.J. Anderson, a debut work by Karen Walwyn and others. This distinctive collection is a rare treat for it encompasses a vast range of works by American composers of African descent. "... a fascinating sample of a neglected area of contemporary repertoire..." (Records International Catalogue). All three volumes are almost all premier commercial releases; Volume II includes invited guest artists Branford Marsalis, Jason Marsalis, and Rodney Mack. Fanfare says, " ...this is a diverse and compelling selection of music..." and American Record Guide concludes the review of "Dark Fires", Vol II: "Walwyn's pianism is superb." More Highlighted PERFORMANCES and MASTERCLASSES: The International Liszt Society, University of Oregon, Oregon. The Auyer Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN . "Conciertos de Camara" Del Conservatorio, Tenerife, Spain. Salzburg College, Salzburg, Austria. The McCarthy Theater, Miami-Dade Community College, Miami, FL. Master Artitst Concert Series the NOCCA Institute, New Orleans, Louisiana. Centre d'Educacio Musical de Terrassa, Terrassa, Spain. Orvis Hall, The University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI. Gusman Hall, The University of Miami, Miami, FL. Ut Conservatorio de Musica, Barcelona, Spain. AVAILABLE PROGRAMS for future engagements: PROGRAM 1 Frederic Chopin: The Twenty-Four Preludes, Op. 28 Polonaise in Ab Flat Major, Op. 53 Sonata in Bb Flat minor, No. 2, Op. 35 PROGRAM 2 Sergei Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C# minor, Op. 3, No. 2 Etudes, Op. 39: F# minor, No. 3; A minor No. 2; Eb minor No. 5; A minor No. 6 Sonata in Bb minor, No. 2, Op. 36 PROGRAM 3 Wolfgang Mozart, Sonata in A Major, K.331 Robert Schumann, "Kinderszenen", Op. 15 Sergei Prokofiev, Sonata No. 7 in Bb Major, Op. 83 PROGRAM 4 Robert Schumann, Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17 Franz Liszt, Six Transcendental Etudes "Mazeppa", No. 4 "Harmonies du soir", No. 11 "Chasse-neige", No. 12 F minor, No.10 "Wilde Jagd", No. 8 "Vision", No. 6 PROGRAM 5 Frederic Chopin, Prelude in C# minor, Op. 45 Ludwig van Beethoven, "Waldstein" Sonata in C Major, No. 21, Op. 53 Franz Liszt, Annees de Pelerinage, Book Two, "Italie" PROGRAM 6 Wolfgang Mozart, Sonata in A minor, K. 310 Claude Debussy, "L' Isle Joyeuse" Alexander Scriabin: Etudes: No.11in Bb minor,Op. 8 No.12 in D# minor, Op. 8 No.4 in F# Major, Op.42 No 5 in C# minor, Op.42 Sonata No. 5, Op. 53 PROGRAM 7 Dolores White: Tocatta for Piano Karen Walwyn, Sonata for Piano Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, "Statements", Sonata for Piano T. J. Anderson, "Street Songs" Adolphus Hailstork, Sonata No.1 for Piano PROGRAM 8 Alvin Singleton, "Argoru II" George Walker, "Guido's Hand": Five Pieces for Piano Jeffrey Mumford, "fragments of a surrounding evening" Roger Dickerson, Sonatina for Piano Tania Leon, "Ritual" David Baker, Sonata for Piano CONCERTI Ludwig van Beethoven, Concerto No. 1 in C Major Ludwig van Beethoven, Concerto No. 5 in Eb Major Johannes Brahams, Concerto No. 2 in Bb Major Frederic Chopin, Concerto No. 2 in F minor Adolphus Hailstork, Concerto for Piano Franz Liszt, Concerto No.1 in Eb Major Sergei Prokofieff, Concerto No. 2 in G minor Camille Saint-Saens, Concerto No. 2 in G minor Peter Tschaikowsky, Concerto No. 1 in Bb Flat Major Sergei Rachmaninoff, Concerto No. 2 in C minor RECENT REVIEWS IN FULL Below, please find reviews for "DARK FIRES": 20th Century American Music", Volume 1 Karen Walwyn, Pianist Composers and Compositions: Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941): 'Piano Sonata No. 1'. Roger Dickerson: Sonatina. Jeffrey Mumford (b. 1955): "fragments from the surrounding evening". Lettie Beckon Alston: 'Three Rhapsodies for Piano'. Dolores White: 'Toccata'. Tania Leon (b. 1943): "Ritual". Hale Smith (b. 1925): "Evocation". FANFARE MAGAZINE, By Peter Burwasser, #248 May/June 1998 "This happens to be a collection of music by composers of African extraction, but I didn't realize it until after several listens. There is no thread that connects these composers by ethnicity; this is a diverse and compelling selection of music, by any standard. All of this music is marked by distinct personal styles and passionate, anxious momentum. Delores White's Toccata as well as Lettie Beckon Alston's Three Rhapsodies present traditional forms in a chromatic, energetic, and firmly shaped manner. Roger Dickerson's Sonatina is the most conventional work on the program, although it is not utterly derivative. Dickerson displays a fine lyrical gift in this work, the most approachable music on this disc. Cuban-born Tania Leon wrote Ritual to mark the 20th anniversary of her arrival in the United States. It describes her artistic and professional journey with spikey energy, expressed across a broad crescendo. Hale Smith's Evocation follows a less direct path, and is full of dramatic gestures. Smith attempts to relate serialist language with jazz-influenced rhythms. Jeffrey Mumford's music is, as the title suggest, inspired by the random beauties of nature. The music is an abstract impression of changing weather patterns, overly programmatic at one level, but darkly emotional as well. Adolphus Hailstork's 1980 Sonata is an ambitious, large-scale work, filled with strong melodies cloaked in dense harmonies and complex rhythms. The composer achieves a masterful integration of such folk idioms as blues, spirituals, and jazz into a tautly conceived classical sonata form. The glorious melodiousness of Ellington sings out in the finale. Despite all of these influences, Hailstork produces a singular voice, and one which I would look forward to hearing from again in future works. Karen Walwyn, who is on the faculty at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, gets through this technically demanding program with aplomb. Her rhythmic nimbleness is especially notable. Here is a collection of composers who deserve a higher profile." THE WASHINGTON POST, by Joseph McLellan, Sunday, November 23 1997 "This collection of works by seven composers is the beginning of a four-disc project devoted to music of African American composers. The music is played perceptively by Karen Walwyn, who shows considerable range. She is virtuosic in Dolores White's Toccata and Lettie Beckon Alston's Three Rhaposdies, meditative and energetic in Tania Leon's "Ritual." Angular and rich-textured in Hale Smith's "Evocation," traditional and polished in Roger Dickerson's Sonatina and Adolphus Hailstork's Piano Sonata No. 1, and vividly evocative and impressionistic in Jeffrey Mumford's "fragments from the surrounding evening." After hearing this dic, it is impossible to generalize about African American composers today except to say that they are solidly in the American mainstream". AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, by Mark Lehman, March/April 1998 "I won't even bother to disapprove of the marketing strategy behind this disc-a program of piano music by 20th Century Black American Composers: "Dark Fires"-get it? With the sultry black pianist on the cover in fetching pose and low-cut dress. Despite all this positioning and posturing, Walwyn is a confident and impressive pianist, and her well-recorded program (almost all first records, surely) is varied and interesting, the pieces unsullied by cheap compromise or shallow gimmicks. Three are by composers new to me and no doubt very seldom (if ever) before represented on disc. Dolores White's Toccata is angular, chromatic, and steely in a Prokofieff war sonata vein-a forward -driving show piece of real substance and urgency. Lettie Beckon's Three Rhapsodies are also fairly chromatic, but exotic in flavor and more on the very different other hand, is tuneful, suave, flowing, and calmly diatonic, as much like early Rorem as Richard Cumming's music reviewed earlier in this issue. The first movement is especially winsome. The remaining four composers are if not widely celebrated, then at least known among those of us who make it our business to know the music of as many living composers as we can: all of them have had several other works recorded. Two are represented by short but characteristic pieces. Tania Leon's Ritual is intended to conjure up a barbaric ceremony: it consists almost entirely of frenzied repetition of a single jagged gesture and sounds to me more like a furiously deranged robot than any human ceremony. Hale Smith's Evocation is a study in quiet, atonal fragments that achieves a gnomic mysteriousness. Two longer works complete the program. Jeffrey Mumford's fragments from the surrounding evening is an atonal-impressionist tone-painting similar in mood to Smith's flights of fancy. Finally, at nearly half-an-hour in length, Adolphus Hailstork's First Sonata is much the biggest and most ambitious piece here-a powerful and virtuoso four-movement work in a dense, chromatic, often dissonant but never pointillist idiom. It ranges from the unpredictable volatility and violence of the opening sonata-allegro and the catchy jazz inflected rhythms and blusey harmonies of the scherzo, to the dreamy remoteness that wells up into monumentality of the nocturne and the rugged, heroic transformation of the old spiritual that generate the work's finale. This is a disc that I will return to with pleasure and admiration, particularly for the White, Dickerson, and Hailstork pieces. And maybe, I might as well admit, for another look at the cover, too". DETROIT FREE PRESS, by Mark Stryker; Sunday, February 15, 1998 "Local connections also abound in pianist Karen Walwyn's "Dark Fires". A fine collection of contemporary piano music. Walwyn teaches at the University of Michigan, Lettie Beckon Alston, associate professor of music at Oakland University, is represented by her "Three Rhapsodies for Piano." An energetic work bursting with colorful details and a lyric slow movement, all channeled through an impressive economy of means". Elsewhere, Hailstork's prickly "Sonata" treats the piano as a set of tuned drums- a common theme in this CD- and seamlessly blends blues and spiritual -based episodes into a wide-ranging modernism. RECORDS INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE, November 1997: "A diverse collection of piano music by living African American composers. Hailstork's sonata is a real tour de force of piano technique, in an advanced mete-tonal, polymetric style that recalls, of all people, Sorabhi. It is by far the largest and most impressive work here. The other music runs the gamut of 20th century styles and influences, from the lyrical serialism of Hale Smith to the almost English-pastoral tonality of Roger Dickerson, providing a fascinating sample of a neglected area of contemporary repertoire". THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER, "SCENE AND HEARD", Tuesday, November 10, 1998; by Donald Rosenberg "Pianist gives eloquent voice to black composers" "Karen Walwyn is a musician on a mission. The pianist, a faculty member at the University of Michigan School of Music, is devoting much of her energy to the championing of music by living black composers. She has released a compact disc of the repertoire and is scheduled to make two more. Walwyn brought a taste of her project to the Cleveland Museum of Art's Gartner Auditorim Sunday, where she offered a lecture-recital of works by Dolores White, David Baker, Ellis Marsalis, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. The audience was small, but enthusiastic. Walwyn, wearing a gown worthy of Cinderella, did a first-rate job talking about the composers and music and then honoring them with bold, sensitve performances. What defines music by black composers is a question Walwyn couldn't answer in any conclusive way, for there is no single answer. Some black composers employ elements of jazz, gospel, spirituals, and blues in their works. Others embrace only classical structures, while others weave cross -cultural and cross-century tapestries. Walwyn presented pieces that run the gamut of stylistic personality. White's Toccata for Piano takes a Baroque form and energizes it through darting figures and mercurial changes of mood and texture. The score is trim, propulsive, and occasionally redolent of Prokofiev. The pianist, who played everything from the music articulated phrases with biting clarity. A more densely packed opus is Baker's Sonata for Piano, which suggests affection for traditional architectures, but adds contemporary ideas to the mix. Baker infuses the piece with a host of jazz influences, including a final movement celebrating the art of John Coltrane. The harmonic adventurousness that pervades jazz is taken many steps further. Baker avoids tonal centers amid writing of energetic and pensive utterances. The Coltrane movement is a whirlwind of furious flights, just the thing to trip a vulnerable pianist. Walwyn was fearless throughout, managing every challenge with precise fingers and heroic command of textures. The sonata is a bit longwinded, but Walwyn made a compelling case for it. She was enchanting in Marsalis' "Fourth Autumn", a ballad that pays homage to legendary jazz pianists. Marsalis, father of trumpeter Wynton and saxophonist Branford, has a knack for breezy lyricisms, which this work possess in lovely abundance. Perkinson's Sonata for Piano, subtitled "Statements", couldn't be more different. Here, the emphasis is on strict formal ideas passed through 20th -Century filters. The composer uses 12-tone techniques in sonata -allegro form in the opening movement and builds a forceful fugue in the finale. The second movement is a brilliant set of theme and variations on the folk tune "Another Man Done Gone," which undergoes impressionistic, spiky and tender transformation. A pager turner would have helped Walwyn bring more cohesion to some phrases. Even so, the pianist relished rhythmic shapes, leaned into dissonances and gave splendid definition to the variations. On this occasion, she accomplished her mission". Below, please find reviews for "DARK FIRES": Karen Walwyn and Friends, Volume 2, Albany Troy 384 (74:12) Karen Walwyn, pianist Guest Artists: Branford Marsalis, Saxophone Jason Marsalis, Percussion Rodney Mack, Trumpet Composers and Works Ellis Marsalis:"Fourth Autumn". David Baker: 'Piano Sonata No. 1' Alvin Singleton: "In Our Own House". Adolphus Hailstork: 'Sonata For Trumpet and Piano'. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson: 'Piano Sonata No. 2', "Statements" FANFARE MAGAZINE September/October 2000, Review by Peter Burwasser "As in Dark Fires, Vol. 1, which I enthusiastically reviewed in 21:5, pianist Karen Walwyn has chosen a stylistically eclectic group of contemporary American pieces. I commented in the earlier review that, although all of the composers on Volume 1 happened to be black, there was not a strong ethnic component in the music, with the exception of a few jazz reverences. The latest collection leans more strongly to the world of jazz, especially with the inclusion of three members of the Marsalis clan. The program opens with a lovely ballad by patriarch Ellis Marsalis, played with warmth and affection by Walwyn. David Baker is the chairman of the jazz department at Indiana University, but his Sonata 1 for Piano, which he wrote in 1982 for the late Natalie Hinderas, has a spiky and abstract personality, only picking up a syncopated swing in the rapid-fire final movement, inspired by the improvisations of John Coltrane. Alvin Singleton's quartet In Our Own House seems to refer as much to cultural unity as to the energy achieved when a group of fearless jazz players get together and jam. The balance of Jason Marsalis's driving drumming and his brother Branford's dreamy sax is reminiscent of the recent music of Ornette Coleman. Adolphus Hailstork's Sonata for Trumpet and Piano, written for the husband-and-wife team of Mack and Walwyn, also has a jazzy profile, but Hailstork starts with a solidly European basis, accented and characterized by synocopation, blues (in the slow movement), and virtuoso riffing, in the manner of similar Old-World/New World concoctions from Stravinsky, Marinu, and Copland, to name but three. Dark Fires, Vol. 2 concludes with the Second Piano Sonata of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, an exciting, motif-packed work based on such Classical forms as sonata-allegro, theme and variations, and rondo, and it is dark and fiery indeed. Perkinson's writing is dense, with cascades of notes, but every sound seems to serve a purpose in this brilliantly conceived work. Walwyn's playing captures the smoldering power of the music. As with Volume 1, Karen Walwyn and her friends present a fine clutch of pieces that touch on a variety of cultural influences with confidence and adoritness. Excellent recorded sound and robust performances only aid and abet the cause". The AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, Bill Faucett, reviewer "Pianist Karen Walwyn's Dark Fires, Vol. 2 is very much a Marsalis family affair. Walwyn is joined by her husband, trumpeter Rodney Mack, and his cousins Branford and Jason Marsalis; the program opens with a selection by the family elder, Ellis Marsalis. This recording presents the music of five black composers without the accompaniment of political statement-several exceptional works speak for themselves. Marsalis's contribution, Fourth Autumn for solo piano, is a beautiful and of course jazzy concoction. In the same vein is Alvin Singleton's In Our Own House, also fascinating and effective. David Baker's name will be familiar to serious jazz enthusiasts. His carefully-crafted Piano Sonata is tinted with jazz but is more traditionally "classical" and modernist than one might expect. The reflective second movement is masterly. Coleridge -Taylor Perkinson's energetic Second Piano Sonata is more standard fare, replete with disjunct melodies, stark harmonies, and the like. The gem here is Adolphus Hailstork's trumpet sonata, a soaring, delectable piece from 1996 that should have little difficulty establishing a place in the repertoire. Mack's performances make me want to hear more from him, and Walwyn's pianism is superb". RECORDS INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE June 2000 "This second volume of music by African-American composers presents a wide range of fine music, as did the first. Beginning with a gently jazzy nocturne by Ellis Marsalis (father of Wynton, Branford and Jason, the latter two of whom appear on the CD), the program progresses via Baker's alternately lyrical and tumultuous Sonata I and Singleton's original and striking ensemble piece, commissioned for this recording, to Hailstork's immensely appealing jazzy trumpet sonata. The final work is Perkinson's somewhat neoclassical Second Sonata, with its use of note-rows in a very tightly organised structure with definite tonal centers and implications". |