Saturday, November 16, 2024 @ 4:30pm – 7:00pm (PST)
Online and in-person
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In person: $40 ($20 non-PSU student, $15 PSU student) |
Stream: $25

Come hear me perform a solo recital of piano music by Bartók, Stockhausen, Chopin, and Messiaen!

The Modernist Piano Series is an ongoing project where I bring new and neglected music to the Portland area and beyond. My mission is to guide audiences into the fascinating yet intimidating world of music that still has its modernist, avant-garde edge to it, regardless of when or where it was composed. Not all that is recent is new, and not all that is old has ­necessarily been truly heard and understood.

This program, "Night's Music," pairs two of the 20th Century's most famous composers, Béla Bartók and Olivier Messiaen. They both treat the piano more as a percussion instrument than a "singing" one, and both use an unwaveringly dissonant harmonic language. However, their music shows strikingly different philosophical approaches to modernism: Bartók seeks to radically redefine humans and human culture as natural phenomena on equal footing with all other life, while Messiaen bends any resources he fancies—including birdsong and music from non-European cultures—towards justifying his own personal, idiosyncratic Catholic faith.

Rounding out the program are pieces by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Frédéric Chopin. Stockhausen was strongly influenced by both Messiaen, who was Stockhausen's teacher for a time, and Bartók, whose music Stockhausen deeply admired. Stockhausen's music, however, goes much further towards discarding the vestiges of past musical style and practice, including finding highly novel ways to create sounds on the piano. Chopin seems out of place here at first, but his final pieces still challenge us today in their strange, uncomfortable deviations from the norms of musical form and development.

I'd love to have you attend! This recital will be held in person and will also be live streamed. You can buy tickets online on this website or in person at the door.