Tag Archives: piano

Pianist and composer Mark Micchelli twists and blows up five jazz classics with piano, toy piano, percussion, and electronics.

The meaning of simple contrasts is magnified in composer Ryan Vigil's meditative, thought-provoking works for violin and piano.

If alternate tuning systems are new to you, this album will be an introduction more musical than pedagogic, and nonetheless revealing. If not, it will be easy to admire Thornock's ingenuity and talent.

The title piece is a set of variations on a theme from the Irish folk song "Shule Agra." The lyrics to a version known in English as "Johnny Has Gone for a Solider" are hopeful but uncertain. But that doesn't take away from this colorful album's predominantly upbeat feel.

The concert was only a few minutes old and I was already scribbling in my notebook phrases like "as if pulling out the guts of the piano itself." And I meant that admiringly.

In all these works, played magnificently by Jing Yang, Vigeland makes conscious and effective use of the piano's acoustical properties to create sound worlds that couldn't exist in the same way if played by orchestral instruments.

When is an improvisation more than an improvisation? When a spontaneous collaboration gels into something that's more the sum of its parts.

The pianist spoke with us about his upcoming concert at Carnegie, his Chopin project, and commissioning new music from Colorado to Eastern Europe.

Liszt's B minor sonata gives a pianist opportunities to show off blazing technique. But interestingly, Zhang's particular skills allow him to find greater depths of feeling in the piece than I'm used to hearing.

Zhang plays Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' and Liszt's B minor Sonata on his latest recording.