| Crucial to me is the
notion of transmission.
A substantial proportion of my time is devoted to giving
lectures, lecture-concerts, master classes, workshops,
seminars, coaching sessions. Whether it be for elementary
school children, conservatory students, senior citizens,
or general public, it is a form of mission to share
the accumulated treasures that will make a difference
in people's lives.
Subjects include:
1 - Piano Music of the 20th-21st
Centuries: any format from 1 hour to full doctoral
seminar of 1 or 2 semesters.
2 - Piano Music of any of the composers
included in "Programs", i.e. Piano Music of
Charles Ives and Henry Cowell, or Piano Music of Luciano
Berio and Franco Donatoni, etc.
3 - Evolution of 20th-Century Piano Techniques.
*
4 - History of American Music. **
5 - American Piano Music of the 20th-21st Centuries.
6 - French Piano Music from 1945 to Today.
7 - Fusion Through the Ages: Popular
Elements in Classical Music from 15th-21st Century.
8 - Six Centuries of Sixth Sense: Surprise
in Music from 16th-21st Century. ****
9 - The Magic of Nadia Boulanger's Teaching.
****
10 - Workshop in Improvisation
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* PIANO MUSIC OF THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES
Tech List: 1 piano; 1 mike
The monument that is the music of our time
is neither unyielding nor impenetrable. My goal is to
demonstrate that it did not just appear from out of
nowhere. In plotting a time-curve, from late Liszt (1886)
up until current works by the young Bruno Mantovani,
it is possible to note tendencies and influences and
elements that, when elucidated, enable us to feel as
comfortable and familiar with music of our time as with
that of the standard repertory. Just as with all of
life, it is a question of a "meeting": with
composers, with works. What I am proposing here is the
pleasure of meeting.
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** HISTORY OF AMERICAN MUSIC
Tech List: 1 piano; 1 mike; 1 CD player
This presentation is a panorama of American
music, with evocation of the debt towards Europe from
the beginning of the 17th century until the end of the
19th century, as well as the immense influence, starting
in the 19th century, of Afro-Cuban sources. Verbal and
musical illustrations at the piano of forms such as
church hymns, dances, marches, patriotic music, ragtime,
theater music, symphonies, and fusion, covering inevitable
composers such as Stephen Foster, Louis Moreau Gottschalk,
John Philip Sousa, Scott Joplin, Charles Ives, Henry
Cowell, George Antheil, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland,
Leonard Bernstein, Roy Harris, John Cage, Morton Feldman,
George Crumb, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich,
and John Adams.
Duration: 1 to 1-1/2 hours
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*** "SIX CENTURIES OF SIXTH SENSE: SURPRISE IN
MUSIC FROM THE 16TH
TO 21ST CENTURY
(OR WHY GREAT COMPOSERS ARE GREAT)
Tech List: 1 piano; 1 mike
If we take for a given the famous Paul
Klee adage, "Genius is the error in the system",
this lecture-demonstration gets to the heart of the
question of genius; at least that of the towering, colossal
composers of music. Approaching the subject as a lawyer
would expose the facts as proof in a case, seated at
a piano and with a swivel microphone, my tools are specific
examples taken from works by exceptional composers.
The excerpts I have chosen, by composers such as Gesualdo,
Byrd, Monteverdi, Scarlatti, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven,
Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Wagner, Debussy,
Fauré, Scriabin, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Cage,
Ligeti, Berio, span from the 16th to the 21st century,
hence the title of the presentation.
Alternating between playing the excerpts at the piano
and my verbal commentaries, even non-musicians will
be able to perceive in concrete form how these masters
went beyond the reliable, expected formulas ("the
system"), outside of the box to create surprise.
The goal is to show clearly the consistency of magic.
Duration: 1 to 1-1/2 hours.
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**** "THE MAGIC OF NADIA BOULANGER'S TEACHING"
Tech List: 1 piano; 1 mike
Having worked closely and intensively
for many years with Nadia Boulanger, both privately
and in class, in composition, analysis, harmony, score-reading,
conducting, and piano, and believing firmly in the power
of articulating the specific components of magic, this
presentation zeroes in on precisely what characterized
Mademoiselle's extraordinary approach to music history,
style analysis and harmonic refining, with numerous
musical illustrations at the piano.
The lecture-demonstration format will show how Nadia
Boulanger provided bridges between sounds and concepts,
bringing to the fore for her students the most internal,
sometimes arcane, musical processes and, in turn, leading
us towards internalizing them for ourselves: "rule"
become "inner necessities". Her methods, both
Socratic and probative, produced the same result: illumination.
Duration: 1 to 1-1/2 hours. |
