Recently added articles from Piano Today:
LETTERS
Jan 01, 2009; ... Mystery Piece The "Mystery" piece in the Fall 2008 issue was by Arnold Schoenberg: the fifth of his Six Little Keyboard Pieces, Op. 19 No. 5. This was before Schoenberg developed his strict 12-tone method, but he was already venturing far beyond traditional tonal boundaries. The ...
Correction
Jan 01, 2009; ... Math has never been my strong suit. But even I should have been able to calculate that last issue's Rare Find, the Granados ...
Gloria Cheng: THE ART OF MODERN PIANO MUSIC
Jan 01, 2009; ... There is a reason so many contemporary composers-including John Adams, Pierre Boulez, Terry Riley and others-seek out Gloria Cheng to premiere their new piano works. She is not only fearless, but, as composer Steven Stucky reveals in his liner notes to her new Grammy-nominated Telarc release, ...
Beethoven Waltz in D
Jan 01, 2009; ... Are you surprised that Beethoven composed waltzes? So was I! It was when I was recording my CD of piano waltzes (Brioso 142), and editing a companion print volume for Dover Publications, that I looked through Beethoven's work list and found he had composed two. (Two pieces designated "waltz," ...
PARLOR MUSIC, TEXAS STYLE
Jan 01, 2009; ... Performers never know when serendipity is going to lead them to an interesting musical discovery. I had one such experience last spring, while I was preparing to perform at the Lords Valley Country Club in Pennsylvania. I had been asked to prepare an "easy listening" program. To make sure I was ...
Thinking About The Lion
Jan 01, 2009; ... His full name was William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholoff Smith, and he was an amazing pianist/composer. Perhaps some of the interior names were not birth-given-he had a complex geneology, both Jewish and African-American-but were appended by Willie when he began to develop the regal but ...
Peace of Mind
Jan 01, 2009; ... Sometimes the frenetic pace of life in today's world can be overwhelming. With terror threats, climate change, economic crisis and the like, the need for a peaceful, safe, quiet place becomes essential. Where better to look for peace and safety than in music? While it is not always quiet, it can ...
JAMES P. JOHNSON
Jan 01, 2009; ... Dick Hyman's article on Willie "The Lion" Smith in this issue includes references to Smith's close friend, piano legend James P. Johnson. The Lion had a lot to say about Johnson in his autobiography, Music on my Mind, and though the writer was not considered a completely reliable witness-he ...
Intros, Turnarounds and Endings: PART 1
Jan 01, 2009; ... This article is adapted from Michael Esterowitz's classic guide, How To Play From A Fakebook, published by Ekay Music, Inc. (and available from musicbooksnow.com). How do you begin a song? One way is to create an introduction based on the last two or four measures of the tune. (This is ...
Meredith Monk's RAILROAD (TRAVEL SONG)
Oct 01, 2008; ... CAN MINIMALISM GET YOU ANYWHERE? In the 1950s, art music was polarized all through the western world. At one extreme were the atonalists for whom a major triad was abhorrent. On the other were neo-tonalists, whose attempts to escape the purple folds of Romanticism were nearly as ...
Granados The Patriot
Oct 01, 2008; ... Great composers have long based compositions on national anthems, creating variation sets, fantasies, or simple transcriptions. Even though the themes may have been chosen for extra-musical reasons, a number of fine piano works have resulted. When Mozart was touring Europe, he spent some ...
Thinking About Bix
Oct 01, 2008; ... This article by Piano Today Artist Advisory Board member Dick Hyman is adapted from his album, Thinking About Bix, on Reference Recordings. Leon Bix Beiderbecke was born in 1903 to a comfortably middle-class German-American family in Davenport, Iowa. Although, in time, the Davenport ...
Flight: ODD METERS IN PROG MUSIC
Oct 01, 2008; ... Flight is a piece I originally wrote for my "Quanah Parker" progressive rock band in the early 1980s. First active in 1981-1985, this band was re-founded in late 2006 and has been performing since then, with appearances at international festivals such as "MusicaContinua" in Venice. Since the ...
My Kind of Blue
Oct 01, 2008; ... You never know where or when the inspiration for a new tune will strike. Recently, I came up with a new piece while giving private instruction to a guitar student at Purchase College in New York. Here's the back-story. I was subbing for my friend, guitarist John Abercrombie. One of ...
The Jazz Tetrachord Approach To Improvisation PART II
Oct 01, 2008; ... To continue our study of jazz tetrachords from the last issue, let's add a tone to the four-note tetrachords we've been using. Improvise a melody using only the four tones of the upper jazz tetrachord plus the tonic tone of each chord in C Major (tonic), F Major (subdominant), and G Major ...
LETTERS
Oct 01, 2008; ... Mystery Solved We usually pick five correct answers to our "name the composer" contest at random and award a free one-year renewal to those subscribers. However, despite a sizable number of guesses, we received only one letter that accurately named the composer and piece, which was A ...
LETTERS
Jul 01, 2008; ... Mystery Piece The mystery piece in the Spring issue was Erik Satie's Little Overture for a Dancer. The five correct answers chosen at random for a free 1-year subscription renewal are: Bruce Hunter of Apple Valley, CA ("Thank you for continuing to publish this magazine. Piano Today is my ...
DAVE BRUBECK: No Time To Take Five
Jul 01, 2008; ... Dave Brubeck turns 88 on December sixth. Some would say he has earned the right to retire or take it easy. But this has been one of his busiest years yet, with dozens of concerts in the United States and Canada, recording sessions with his cellist son Matthew and Yo Yo Ma, and completion of a ...
It's A Jungle Out There
Jul 01, 2008; ... The Jungle Books of Rudyard Kipling (1894 and 95) are as strange as they are compelling. The two volumes are a loose collection of stories and poems united by a single theme-the struggle for survival in an extreme climate, whether the jungle or the Arctic. Kipling reminds us that all characters ...
Marc Neikrug
Jul 01, 2008; ... Composer and pianist Marc Neikrug's fortunes seem to have been fixed from the start. "My father was a great cellist," he reveals. "His is still the best recording, I think, of Bloch's Shelomo, with Stokowski conducting. My mother was also a cellist. She played for the Czar of Russia when she was ...