Portland Piano International: Michelle Cann
$55 keyboard view, $45 non-keyboard view
- Michelle Cann, piano
Betty Jackson King — Four Seasonal Sketches
Florence Price — Fantasie nègre No. 2 in G minor
Florence Price — Fantasie nègre No. 4 in B minor
Florence Price — Fantasie nègre No. 1 in E minor
Irene Britton Smith — Variations on a Theme by MacDowell
Margaret Bonds — Spiritual Suite
Sergei Rachmaninoff / Hazel Scott — Fantasy Pieces, Op. 3, No. 2: Improvisation on Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp minor
Franz Liszt / Hazel Scott — Improvisation on Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
A "pianist of sterling artistry" (Gramophone) capable of "transmitting in every note a surprising calm and beauty" (Ear Relevant), Grammy Award-winner Michelle Cann makes her PPI debut with a program exploring Chicago's Black Renaissance, a prolific period of artistic experimentation and community building that blossomed in the city's South Side during the Great Migration.
Focusing on six of the movement's women composers, Cann explores how each of these artists merged the romanticism of Brahms, Liszt, and the Schumanns with elements of Black musical idioms — including jazz, urban blues, gospel, and spirituals — to forge compelling musical worlds steeped in European tradition but quintessentially American in character.
2 performances:
- Sunday, February 4, 4pm at Portland State University
- Tuesday, February 6, 7:30pm at the Reser Center for the Arts