Eighty-eight keys just aren’t enough for Jaroslaw Kapuscinski. He knows his way around the black and white notes of a tradition piano keyboard plenty well, having studied at the Chopin Academy in his native Warsaw. But for the last 20 years he’s created and performed original works that combined the piano with video. Kapuscinski will appear at EMPAC on Saturday night (4/16) in a program titled “Catch the Tiger.” “I...

LIAISONS: Off to a Good Start Saturday April 2 University of Maryland Anthony de Mare kicked off his American tour of LIAISONS: Re-imagining Sondheim from the Piano at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center with fine performances of 14 new works. LIAISONS will eventually include short piano pieces written by 36 stylistically diverse contemporary composers, each work based on a Steven Sondheim...

The American composer celebrated his 85th birthday on February 17 and died on March 28.  A former protege of Barber and Menotti, Hoiby lived in a remote corner of the Catskills Mountains with his partner of many years, Mark Shulgasser. In all he wrote eight staged works, and his web site lists “Romeo & Juliet” as in progress. Opera News obituary New York Times obituary Please share your memories of Lee here. Previously...

Ailing elder pianists have given Jeremy Denk new opportunities. So what if he’s a substitute. This month he made his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel (replacing Martha Argerich) and on Sunday (3/27) he made his Carnegie Hall solo recital debut (replacing Maurizio Pollini).  Denk played Ives’ “Concord” Sonata and Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations.  Anthony Tommasini...

Evelyn Glennie, percussion soloist Albany Symphony Orchestra David Alan Miller When a composer and soloist, conductor and orchestra are all at the top of their game, the only result is that audiences rise to their feet. That’s just what happened during Saturday night’s concert of the Albany Symphony Orchestra at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. An immediate standing ovation and five solid minutes of applause followed...

Twenty-five year old Cleveland violinist Andrew Sords has already appeared as a soloist with over 60 orchestras across the country and internationally.   During the current season will perform the concertos of Dvorak, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky.  He’s also made the rounds with some of gltb orchestras and this summer will be on the faculty of Cleveland Institute’s chamber music festival....

Over the past week, the Washington DC-based Post-Classical Ensemble, in conjunction with The George Washington University, the National Gallery of Art, and the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia, presented an ambitious series of three programs looking at the life and work of Lou Harrison. A true American original, Harrison was a composer of great lyric gifts and a maverick who espoused “world music” before we called...

The melody had to come first.  Until he had it, composer John Corigliano waited — about 12 years — before accepting percussionist Evelyn Glennie’s commission for a new concerto. Corigliano admits that he’s a slow writer and that coming up with a fresh new tune isn’t easy.  But it didn’t really take him that all that time to string the notes together. The real challenge was whether or not a lyric, sustained...

Canadian composer Rodney Sharman has three new works debuting this month… First up is the world premiere of his new Violin Concerto on March 6 and 7 with soloist Jonathan Crow and the Victoria Symphony, conducted by music director Tania Miller.  Then on March 26 and 27, the same orchestra with guest conductor Alain Trudel premieres “Romantic Ideals.”  The pieces are the culmination of Sharman’s three-year...

Nicholas Chase will be in good company this week at the Other Mind Festival in San Francisco.  He’s a composer fellow hobnobbing with Louis Andriessen and other more senior composers, all on hand for the week-long series of events, now in its 16th season. Nick is a Ph.D. candidate in the iEar program at Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute in Troy, NY. Though he’s been in the Capital Region for at least a couple...