Insider interview with composer Eric Chasalow

Drawing from every corner of the soundworld, composer Eric Chasalow creates genre-defying music. On April 17, 2026, his latest album “arching, reaching, breathless” is released on New Focus Recording. The album is a survey of Chasalow’s works written for string instruments spanning over 30 years. We spoke with the composer about the new album, his approach to composing electroacoustic music, the oral history project he created - now in the Library of Congress, and so much more.

What inspired this album, and how did you select the works for it?

I started recording these pieces a few years back without the idea of putting them on a record together at all.  They each have their own energy, some spacious and meditative and others dense and ferocious. Two use live electronics, one fixed media, and the others are for traditional chamber ensembles. But the more I listened to the recordings as a set, the more I felt that, heard together, they tell a story about the broad range of ideas I have explored in my string writing and are even more interesting together. Almost no one listens through an entire album anymore, but when I do that with this record, I hear an expansive journey unfolding, and I find that very satisfying.

How would you describe your approach to composing?

Like all my music, the pieces on this record are all about refracted memories, especially of favorite pieces and poems that I have known for so long that they have become part of me – I carry them in my body. In other words, my music is always looking back and forward at once, processing memory to create something new. This personal history embraces all the different musical experiences I’ve had, including writing for jazz ensemble, improvising solo and with others, experimenting with early synthesizers and tape recorders, writing and performing folk music with my wife, Barbara, producing records, and playing a huge amount of the chamber music repertoire for flute.

Whether or not I am writing a piece with direct historical references, even quotations, I am always in dialog with the past seeking to imagine some new point of view.  I have thought a lot about this, especially having taught at Brandeis for many years, the home of the “Boston School” (Bernstein, Fine, Berger and Shapero) and even having had Harold Shapero accuse me of being a neo-classical composer. My music doesn’t sound like theirs, but it shares a deep internalization and love of the repertoire. And my music is more about an interplay of layers of meaning than it is about a historical, stylistic frame. I call this approach metaclassical.

You're especially known as a composer who works with electronics combined with acoustic instruments. To the total layperson, what is electroacoustic music and how do you incorporate the electronics into your fixed compositions?

Composers of electroacoustic music use new technology to create an endless range of sounds and sometimes combine those with traditional instruments. But while many electroacoustic composers like to focus on inventing new sounds, I prefer to devise sounds that change what instruments can sound like and make them do unexpected things.  For example, I might choose combinations to create the illusion that a piano is changing into a different instrument, bending pitches, or changing timbre over a long, held chord – things that a piano can’t really do.

Working intensely in the electroacoustic music studio with existing recorded materials (samples) also invites new ways of composing. We are sculpting sound directly and responding to all the nuances it carries.  Now, after decades of working in the studio, whether I am writing a piece with electronics or not, this kind of detailed listening deeply influences my thinking.  My violin and fixed media piece that opens this album is a good example. 

In The Wings That Bear the Night Away, I started with a recording the Lydian Quartet made for the title track from my 2020 album, Ghosts of Our Former Selves, which is a very simple G Major chorale that supports a song lyric about reaching the end of a long relationship.  In early 2022, I was creating a sound installation to accompany paintings by my artist-friend Lisa Watson about the loss of indigenous plant species. I thought that the deep sadness of that music would make an appropriate starting point. To make the new sound piece, I time-stretched and layered the original five-minute chorale into a forty-two minute loop. Then, improvising with a granular synthesis tool, which is a piece of software that breaks recordings up into tiny bits of sound to create new textures, I heard another possibility. What if I were to use this rich new material, that had started as a string quartet chorale, to accompany solo violin? That was how one of my short songs became a sound art installation and then an instrument and tape piece. Each newly derived piece carries part of the original into a new context and has its own newly abstracted meaning. My process is seldom so deliberate, but I know that everything I do is a way of processing what already exists with the very significant challenges to create new meaning and to keep each piece engaging for the player and for the listener.

The Lydian String Quartet and its members appear on almost all the tracks on the album, and you used material from another of their recordings as basis for the electronic part of The Wings That Bear the Night Away. Tell us about your relationship and experiences with this ensemble. 

I was very fortunate to be able to join the Brandeis University music department in 1990. Even as a student, I knew about the historic legacy of Brandeis in American music. Part of that legacy was that Robert (Bobby) Koff, the founding second violin of the Juilliard String Quartet taught there and in 1980 he founded the Lydian String Quartet. They were formidable right out of the gate and in 1984 won the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Competition.  The Lyds have been my colleagues and friends since I arrived and individually or together, they have performed and recorded about everything I have written for strings in a chamber music setting, some on multiple occasions. Even with their busy teaching and gigging schedules they have been unceasingly generous. They commissioned the Second Quartet that appears on this album, and over the years have also commissioned my Simic Songs (1997, for soprano and string quartet) and I’m Just Sayin’ (2012, for string quartet and fixed media).

You and your wife established The Video Archive of Electroacoustic Music. What is that?

The Video Archive of Electroacoustic Music is an oral-history project that Barbara and I began in 1996 out of our desire to capture a first-person history of the pioneering composers, scientists, and engineers, mostly in the US, from 1950 onward, many of whom were already very aged or ill at that time. We spent a few years intensively collecting, eventually accumulating over sixty hours of material. Some of the subjects were pivotal in the invention and development of digital sound technology, such as Max Matthews at Bell Laboratories and Dave Smith who was responsible for MIDI. Others were some of the early explorers of musical possibilities, including Bebe Barron, Pauline Oliveros, Milton Babbitt and Mario Davidovsky. I was part of the last generation to work in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and knew quite a few of our subjects personally, so there is an intimate, candid quality to many of the videos.  In the fall of 2025, we donated The Video Archive of the Electroacoustic Music to the Library of Congress, and they are working hard to make all of it accessible to scholars.

My own electroacoustic music had already started to incorporate oral history materials by 1994, and while that was NOT why we started the project, is an interesting parallel to that effort. My sonic portraits, Left to His Own Devices (Milton Babbitt), Portrait of the Artist (John Lennon), Into Your Ears (Mario Davidovsky), and ‘Scuse Me (Jimi Hendrix) also date from the 90’s and my piece Crossing Boundaries incorporates many voices from the Archive.  Even then I thought of those pieces as a kind of scholarship as well as art: one way of creating new perspectives on that material.

Examples of excerpts from the interviews may be found on my YouTube channel, and some of my pieces inspired by the same figures are on my Soundcloud page here and here.

“Muriel’s Songs”: Monodrama of a Brooklyn grandmother

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April 23: New York premiere of Eric Chasalow's "Muriel's Songs" at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Monodrama inspired by a grandmother's memoirs traverses the tumult of 20th-Century America through a very personal lens

Performed by mezzo-soprano Sharon Harms and Talea Ensemble

A Jewish American memoir is told through “Muriel’s Songs,” a monodrama by Eric Chasalow, which receives its New York premiere performance on Thursday, April 23, 2026. The mezzo-soprano Sharon Harms performs with the Talea Ensemble at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (15 W. 16th St, New York, NY).

Chasalow was inspired by the memoirs of his grandmother Muriel Gellert Chasalow (1903-2000) to compose this set of songs, which traverses the tumult of 20th century America from a very personal perspective. Each song inhabits its own musical world with stylistic points of departure from Baroque to Tin Pan Alley, The Beatles, Latin Jazz and Disco to Milton Babbitt.

The stories - which cover Muriel’s experiences coming of age and through adulthood, including piano lessons, marriage, and family vacations - were pulled from a collection of works she had written at a senior center creative writing course when she was in her eighties. "I extracted a number of dramatic situations from the book, composing a poem on each, often incorporating Muriel’s sentences to give a sense of her voice," says the composer.

The April 23 concert also features Alex Weiser's "Coney Island Days" (a love letter to Weiser's own grandmother) and Joan Tower's "Petroushskates." Tickets are $18 ($9 seniors/students), available at Yivo.Org/Musical-Memoir.

Calendar Listing

Thursday, April 23, 2026 at 7:30 pm

New York premiere of
"Muriel's Song" by Eric Chasalow

Sharon Harms, mezzo-soprano
Talea Ensemble

YIVO Center for Jewish History (15 W. 16th St, New York, NY)

Tickets are $18 ($9 seniors/students) available at Yivo.org/Musical-Memoir

Insider Interview with Pianist Eliza Garth

Hymn tunes are the inspiration for a new recording by the pianist Eliza Garth. "By the River" was released on Centaur Records on February 6, 2026. The new album features works written for Garth by David Froom, Scott Wheeler and Sheree Clement, plus Brahms' Six Choral Preludes and Spiritual Fantasy No. 4 by Frederick Tillis. We spoke to her about the new album, spirituality, her new film, community building, and much more.

Your new album, “By the River,” is inspired by hymn tunes. What sparked that idea?

I think that great hymn tunes – on their own, apart from the texts they accompany – are musical treasures. What makes a hymn tune survive over centuries is its singability and the way it lingers in the mind, and a great hymn tune can linger there, whether or not the listener is religious and whether or not any words are sung to it. Think about Appalachian Spring and the beautiful setting of the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts that Aaron Copland incorporated into it. Simple Gifts was not from Copland’s religious or cultural background – he was an urbane, non-believing Jewish man born in Brooklyn – but it’s clear that he was captivated by that tune. Simple Gifts is a true jewel of American folk art, and so are the tunes that are featured in several of the works on By the River.

In addition to the contemporary works on the album, the collection is anchored by Six Chorale Preludes by Brahms, transcribed for piano by Busoni. Tell us how this figures into the album’s program.

It’s easy to forget how recently Brahms’ Chorale Preludes were written. Although Brahms was a 19th century composer, these Preludes were his final work, completed in 1896 with the 20th century on the near horizon. Brahms was grieving the death of Clara Schumann, to whom the Preludes are dedicated, and contemplating his own illness and pending demise. The rich and singular harmonies and voicings reveal a master composer leaving earlier idioms behind.

It was Busoni who brought these works to the concert hall and into the 20th century repertoire, with his transcriptions of six of them in 1902. Born in the 19th century but ultimately a figure of the 20th, Busoni was already a mature artist at the time Brahms was composing the Chorale Preludes. To me, these works seemed a natural choice to include in the album, as they are simultaneously a precursor of music to come and part of the tradition from which the later works in the collection flow.

In addition to this album featuring piano works that grew out of hymn tunes, you also recently created a documentary film about slavery and segregation in the South, Shall We Gather. Tell us, briefly, about the film. Do these two projects reflect a sense of spirituality in your own approach to the arts?

I think of music itself as a kind of spiritual practice, and the performance space as a sanctuary. Music’s power can move people in ways that words can’t, and can touch them more deeply, in a realm beyond words. It can awaken kinship among listeners of divergent backgrounds, beliefs, and outlooks.

The film Shall We Gather was actually inspired by a work of music: Frederick Tillis’ Spiritual Fantasy #4 for piano solo, which is included in the album By the River. I’ve had a longtime creative relationship with the congregation of a small, historic church in rural Southern Maryland, where I taught in a liberal arts college for a number of years. Although I’m not a trained church musician, they hired me to advise them about ways to bring new energy and direction to their worship music – my love for discovering new music informed that work. Also, we worked together for six seasons to create a successful and innovative concert series called Music from Poplar Hill.  

The church was founded in the 1600s, during the era of slavery. It’s Episcopalian, which means that it was built as a church for the landowners, and therefore slaveholders. The current congregation wants to come to terms with that difficult history. The film came to mind during a performance I gave in that church of the Tillis work. As I played it, I was struck by the significance of that music being performed in that space, a space built by the hands of enslaved people. I started thinking about a film that would weave together storytelling, music, and documentary elements to invite people to consider that history and how its ripple effects continue to play out today. Several conversations with the Rector followed, and Shall We Gather grew from there. Those involved in the production hope that the film will inspire reflection and invite dialog among those who see it, especially young people. So I would say that, more than a sense of spirituality, it was an interest in supporting social justice and reconciliation through the arts that motivated me to embark on the Shall We Gather project. 

You have been active as a performer in both New York City and in Southern Maryland over the past few decades. How has community in each of these places helped shape your career?

During my final semester at The Juilliard School, I had the great fortune to find work in the new music community in New York City. I had always had teachers who believed that in order to be living fully as an artist, it was essential for a musician to engage with their composer peers and contemporaries. That outlook was hardwired in me from an early age, and I had exposure to “modern” music all throughout my training; some of my favorite works in the entire piano repertoire were composed in the modern era. So as a young professional, when I started getting calls to perform new works, I quickly developed a passion for bringing new works to life through their first performances.

I also found myself working with colleagues who shared that passion, and I found a spirit of welcome and collaboration in that community. Later, when I was offered the opportunity to teach at a liberal arts college in Southern Maryland that had a strong music program, community-building became a big part of what I tried to encourage in my students. We organized joint concerts with the other piano studio at the college – a program in which we all took turns performing the complete Bach Inventions and Sinfonias was one – and I co-founded the Piano Festival by the River, a yearly summer retreat where pianists and piano students could meet, re-charge, support each other, learn about a wide range of repertoire, and offer performances to the public.

After many years dividing my time between Maryland and New York, I have now returned to fulltime living in the New York City area, which has always been “home” for me.

Insider Interview with Akshara Music Ensemble

On Monday, March 9, Baruch Performing Arts Center, in association with Lyric Chamber Music Society, presents Akshara Music Ensemble. (Tickets available here.)

Building new forms on the foundations of Indian classical music, Carnatic musician, composer, and educator Bala Skandan formed Akshara in 2008, assembling New York’s strongest voices in Indian classical music to explore the crossroads of the traditional and the contemporary. We spoke to Skandan about what audiences can expect at the upcoming concert, how improvisation functions within their music, and much more.

How would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard it before?

Akshara’s music is rooted in Carnatic music — one of the two classical music traditions of India, the other being Hindustani — presented through a contemporary ensemble format. We combine intricate rhythmic structures, raga-based composition and improvisation with a broad instrumental palette. The result is music that is structurally Indian classical but designed to be engaging and accessible even for first-time listeners.

How does your style differ from traditional classical Indian music?

Traditional Carnatic music is presented in a highly codified concert format and is predominantly vocal in structure and orientation. Akshara keeps the core principles — raga, tala, and improvisation — but reworks them for a collaborative instrumental ensemble setting. Our compositions are arranged to gradually reveal rhythmic and melodic layers so audiences can follow the structure as it unfolds.

How does improvisation function within your compositions?

Improvisation is built into the structure of some of the compositions. Certain sections are designed as open frameworks where musicians respond to the raga, rhythm, and each other in real time. This keeps each performance alive and slightly different while still grounded in a defined compositional architecture.

Can you tell us about the formation of the ensemble, and how you decided on the name “Akshara?”

Akshara began about 15 years ago as an experimental ensemble bringing together musicians from different genres in NY to explore Carnatic rhythmic and melodic ideas in a collaborative format. Over time, it has attracted some of the best instrumentalists in NY who are open to learning and experimenting through this format. The name Akshara means “syllable” or “unit of sound,” and in rhythmic terms it refers to a fundamental unit of time. The name reflects our focus on rhythm, structure, and the building blocks of musical expression.

Tell us about the program you’ll perform at Baruch Performing Arts Center on March 9, 2026.

We’ll be presenting three works from our album In Time — Mohana Blues, Urban Kriti, and Sadjam — along with three newer compositions — The Passage, Surrender, and Broken. Together, the program moves across a range of ragas, rhythmic cycles, and emotional moods, and highlights both our earlier compositional voice and our more recent musical direction.

What can audiences expect to experience at the concert?

Audiences can expect a performance that combines rhythmic sophistication with clear musical storytelling. We present layered rhythmic development, melodic improvisation, and ensemble interaction in a way that invites listeners into the process. Some pieces are meditative, others groove-driven, and others structurally expansive — so there is variety in texture, energy, and emotional character throughout the program.

How do you make complex rhythmic music accessible to new audiences?

We introduce rhythmic ideas in stages rather than all at once. Listeners first hear a groove or motif, and then we gradually add subdivisions, variations, and improvisation. This layered approach allows audiences to connect with the pulse first and understand the complexity as it develops.

March 23: Cutting Edge Concerts "Miami Comes to New York"

Read full release (with images) here

Cutting Edge Concerts kicks off 2026 spring season on March 23

Two-part recital at Symphony Space features pianist José López (Part I) and cellist Sarah Kim with guest cellist Alan Rafferty (Part II)

Season also features world premiere opera by Laura Schwendinger (April 28) and soprano-clarinet duo Whistling Hens (May 12)

Victoria Bond's Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival kicks off its 2026 season on Monday, March 23 at 7:30 pm with a two-part recital titled "Miami Comes to New York." The program - at Symphony Space's Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre (2537 Broadway at W. 95th St., Manhattan) - features pianist José López, who's on faculty at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, and Korean cellist Sarah Kim, on faculty at Miami University (in Ohio.) Tickets available at SymphonySpace.org.

Part I celebrates the centennial of Cuban American composer Aurelio de la Vega with three works from different stylistic periods: Prelude No. 1 showcases the early chromaticism influenced by European masters such as Karol Symanowski; Epigrama the continued development from the 1950’s prior to the Cuban Revolution; and the avant-garde spatial scores from the 1970’s as heard in Olep ed Arudamot, composed in the U.S. Also on the program are works by past recipients of the CINTAS Fellowship in Music Composition for composers of Cuban descent (de la Vega won a lifetime achievement award from CINTAS in 2008): Pulitzer Prize winner Tania León, Antonio Hernández Lizaso, Orlando J. García, and Ivette Herryman.

On Part II, Kim performs the world premiere of Victoria Bond's "Women of Note," a solo cello suite celebrating the lives of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, conservationist and author of Silent Spring Rachel Carson, composer Clara Schumann, Korean artist Shin Saimdang, and Anne Frank. The program also features a premiere by Kristin Kuster, recipient of the Charles Ives Prize and a professor of composition at University of Michigan, plus works by Kati Agócs and Ellen Harrison. Guest cellist Alan Rafferty joins Kim on the Agócs and Kuster.

Inspired by Pierre Boulez's series, "Perspective Encounters", the composer and conductor Victoria Bond founded Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival in 1998. Over its 28 year history, Cutting Edge Concerts has presented over 300 new works. Each program highlights the music of living composers, most of whom attend the concert. Along with performances by world-class ensembles and soloists, each program features on-stage discussions between host Victoria Bond and the composers. 

The Cutting Edge Concerts season continues on April 28 with the world premiere of Laura Schwendinger's opera "Margaret in Love and War," and the soprano-clarinet duo Whistling Hens on May 13. All concerts are at Symphony Space at 7:30 pm.

March 9: Akshara Music Ensemble at Baruch PAC

March 9: Akshara Music Ensemble performs at Baruch Performing Arts Center

The group’s innovative sound blends Indian classical music with global, folk and western classical influences

Part of Baruch PAC's Silberman Recital Series

Akshara Music Ensemble brings its distinctive brand of cross-cultural collaboration to Baruch Performing Arts Center on Monday, March 9, 2026 at 7:00 pm. The New York-based ensemble’s innovative sound blends Indian classical music with global, folk and western classical influences. 

Led by Carnatic musician, composer, and educator Bala Skandan, the program of original works highlights Akshara’s talent for combining Indian ragas with music of other cultures, resulting in a distinctive blend of rhythmic sophistication and melodic depth. 

Tickets for Akshara Music Ensemble’s performance on March 9, 2026 at 7 pm are $35 general admission ($20 with CUNY ID), available at bpac.baruch.cuny.edu. Baruch Performing Arts Center is at 55 Lexington Ave in Manhattan (enter on 25th Street, between 3rd and Lexington Avenues). The concert is presented in collaboration with Lyric Chamber Music Society.

Akshara photos, bios and more available HERE

Baruch PAC digital press kit available HERE

Pianist Orli Shaham "American Tapestry"

Pianist Orli Shaham and members of Pacific Symphony release “American Tapestry” on February 13, 2026

Album of chamber music by living Americans includes world premiere recordings of commissioned works by Avner Dorman and Margaret Brouwer; and music by Jessie Montgomery, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Viet Cuong, Reena Esmail, Peter Dayton, and Ari Barack Fisher

The pianist Orli Shaham has been the curator, host, and pianist of Pacific Symphony’s Cafe Ludwig chamber music series for nearly two decades. A new album, released February 13, 2026 is the product of her long relationship with the musicians of the symphony, which is based in Southern California.

“American Tapestry” demonstrates the diversity of concert music by living composers in the United States – a virtual portrait of America. The collection features world premiere recordings by leading American composers: Margaret Brouwer, Jessie Montgomery, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Avner Dorman, Viet Cuong, Reena Esmail, Peter Dayton, and Ari Barack Fisher. The works by Dorman and Brouwer were commissioned by Pacific Symphony and are world premiere recordings.

The album fulfills a long-standing dream of Orli Shaham’s. “I have been privileged to play with the brilliant musicians of Pacific Symphony for eighteen years now,” said Shaham. “In that time, we have grown together as we’ve vanquished difficult repertoire in the rehearsal room, luxuriated in our sound on the Samueli stage, and shared Din Tai Fung between rehearsals. We trust and rely on each other’s musicianship. For years, I have wanted to create a recording that documents these extraordinary musical connections, and I am thrilled that we now have this album to share with the world.”  

Along with Shaham, the recording features Richard Cassarino, bass; Meredith Crawford, viola; Tony Ellis, trumpet; Warren Hagerty, cello; Dennis Kim, violin; Joshua Ranz, clarinet; and Benjamin Smolen, flute.

Contact ClassicalCommunications@gmail.com to request a physical CD or digital copy of “American Tapestry." 

Feb. 12: pianist Terry Eder performs music by Bartók and more

Key Pianists Concert Series continues 10th anniversary season at Carnegie Hall

Award-winning pianist Terry Eder, Key Pianists' founder, performs on February 12

Program features works by Bartók, Schubert, Debussy, and Beethoven

The award-winning pianist Terry Eder performs a solo recital presented by Key Pianists Concert Series on Thursday, February 12, 2026 at 7:30 pm at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall (154 West 57th Street in New York City). Her program includes music by Schubert, Debussy, Beethoven, and Bartók.

Eder is a specialist in Hungarian music, having studied with Zoltán Kocsis at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest in the 1980s. That experience transformed the young pianist. "It was the days of the cold war, when Americans simply did not go to Eastern Europe. The pervasiveness and pride in musical heritage was overwhelming," says Eder. "I became captivated with the uniqueness of the Hungarian language and sensibility, the rustic scenery, the beautiful old architecture, the delicious food, the Parliament still full of bullet holes from WWII, the Turkish baths, the feeling of being so foreign, so out of place." Program highlights include two seldom-programmed works by Bartók - the Sonatine and the Two Romanian Dances - alongside Beethoven's Sonata No. 15 and works by Schubert and Debussy. (Full program details below.)

The recital is part of the Key Pianists Concert Series' 10th anniversary season. Since Terry Eder founded the series in 2015, it has provided a platform for renowned pianists to perform at Carnegie Hall who otherwise might not have the opportunity to perform in New York City.

Tickets for Eder's February 12 recital start at $30 ($25 + $5 fee) and are available at CarnegieHall.org | 212-247-7800 | Box Office at 57th and Seventh Avenue.

Pianist Eliza Garth: "By the River" out Feb. 6

Pianist Eliza Garth releases album of concert music inspired by hymn tunes

"By the River" includes world premiere recordings of works written for Garth by David Froom, Scott Wheeler and Sheree Clement

Album also features Brahms' Six Choral Preludes

Released February 6, 2026 on Centaur Records

Hymn tunes are the inspiration for a new recording by the pianist Eliza Garth. "By the River" features works written for Garth by David Froom, Scott Wheeler and Sheree Clement, plus Brahms' Six Choral Preludes and Spiritual Fantasy No. 4 by Frederick Tillis. The forthcoming album is released on Centaur Records (CRC 4170) on February 6, 2026.

The works in this collection are diverse in expression, scope, form and technical demands, but they share a common trait. Each carries a melody that was first sung in a church, found its way into the consciousness of a composer, and travelled on to the concert hall.

"By the River" opens with a composition by Garth's late husband David Froom, to whom the album is dedicated. Variations on an Early American Hymn Tune is a compact work based on the hymn tune Holy Manna. Scott Wheeler's Beach Spring, also a set of variations, connects the American hymn tradition to the gospel piano styles of Keith Jarrett, Charles Ives, and Frederick Rzewski.

The third work written for Garth on the album is Teeth for speaking pianist by Sheree Clement. This theatrical work depicts a pianist in isolation during the pandemic, struggling to manage her extreme emotions and haunted by a hymn from her childhood. Frederick Tillis' Spiritual Fantasy No. 4 is based primarily on Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen, with tunes from other spirituals woven into the 12 minute piece.

The inspiration for the album is Brahms' Six Chorale Preludes, Op. 122 transcribed for piano by Ferruccio Busoni. Brahms composed this set at the end of his life, when he was grieving the loss of his dear friend Clara Schumann, and facing his own mortality.

Contact ClassicalCommunications@gmail.com to request a physical CD or digital copy of By the River" by pianist Eliza Garth.

Insider interview with bassoonist Frank Morelli

Bassoonist Frank Morelli's sixth solo album "From the Soul" is released on February 20, 2026 on Musica Solis (MS202602). The collection features works by Wynton Marsalis, Dominick Argento, Lori Laitman, Jeff Scott, and Nirmali Fenn. We spoke to him about his incredible career as a soloist and teacher, career highlights, technical aspects about the bassoon and more.

What are the challenges and rewards of playing the bassoon as a solo instrument? 

My guiding principal as a bassoonist is that the bassoon is my voice-not a machine. The range of the instrument is three octaves and a fifth. That’s forty four pitches, or half the span of the piano keyboard! To put it another way, my bassoon voice spans from just below the standard range of a bass singer through the baritone and tenor voices and into a good deal of the alto range. My goal is to bring out the bassoon’s best expressive qualities throughout.

Beyond these facts, the instrument lends itself to a vocal style of playing. The bassoon is a double reed instrument with a conical bore. As a result, the variety of tone colors and characters available to me is rather infinite. My goal has always been to summon as many different sounds out of the bassoon as possible, and the repertoire presented in “From the Soul” offers me that opportunity. My previous album on the Musica Solis label, “An die Musik,” was my statement of gratitude for a lifetime in music. The title track, of the same name, is literally Schubert’s paean to our beloved artform. Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” afforded me the opportunity to emulate great lieder singing. Although the words themselves are not heard in my instrumental version, I endeavor to portray the flow found in the elocution and meaning of the words as if I were singing them. Brahms’ masterful Cello Sonata in E minor challenged me to bring that vocal approach to an instrumental work not originally intended for the bassoon.

One of the album's tracks is written by Wynton Marsalis. Some music lovers know Marsalis as a jazz trumpet player and composer. How does Marsalis’ jazz background manifest in Meelaan? How do you approach his compositional style? 

Wynton Marsalis is a great musician, one of the greatest, period. Earlier in his career he performed many great solo works from the “classical repertoire” at the highest artistic level. I have played several of his orchestral and chamber music compositions that combine the jazz and “classical” worlds and I’ve also had the good fortune to play as an orchestral ensemble member backing him up at Jazz at Lincoln Center. He can do it all, and when writing a piece such as Meeelaan, he exhibits his ability to bring these worlds together. Wynton’s writing expects you to “turn on a dime.” The interpreter must recognize that the composer is expecting the performer to shift fluidly from one idiom to the next. Those styles run the gamut of possibilities within the jazz idiom and contemporary “classical” style. The Callisto Quartet members and I took great care in identifying these different styles and embodying them as they came our way. In my early days I played the tenor saxophone. I was by no means a jazz musician. That would imply a level of ability beyond me. However, in that period of my life I did gain experience performing popular standards in a style that I felt comfortable bringing to the bassoon. In this work, my approach to sound, articulation, bending notes, vibrato, etc. are definitely related to my years on the saxophone, which, by the way, I gave up several decades ago!

A career as a professional bassoonist is a rare and unlikely achievement. You’ve performed with major orchestras and chamber ensembles, and performed on over 190 albums, including your six solo albums.

When you were starting out, what did you imagine your career path to be?  Can you name a couple of career highlights? 

Countless unexpected and amazing opportunities have come my way since early in my musical journey. To make a very long story short, I was introduced to the saxophone, my first love, at the age of 10 through the Massapequa (LI, NY) public school music program. Five years later the bassoon came into my life when my high school band director, Robert Martin, asked if I wanted to give an old relic from the band room closet a try. That unexpected opportunity, offered to me 60 years ago, turned out to be career highlight number one. It would eventually open doors to an entirely different world than I would have ever experienced, either personally or professionally, literally filled with career highlights! 

My first target for a career in music was to become a high school band director, like my band director. I started out after high school in the fall of 1969 at a state school, Fredonia, outside of Buffalo, NY, majoring in music ed. In my first year there I decided that in order to be the best band director possible I needed to be the best musician and bassoonist I could be. With that purpose in mind I was able to transfer to the Manhattan School of Music in NYC, still thinking the music ed was my future. That all changed when I had the life-altering good fortune to study bassoon with Stephen Maxym-career highlight number two. Under his mentorship my horizons changed drastically, as my eyes were opened to unthought-of possibilities. 

While an MSM student I auditioned for and was accepted into a NYC training orchestra, the National Orchestral Association. The conductor and director, Leon Barzin selected me to perform the Mozart Bassoon Concerto in Carnegie Hall in December 1973-yet another highlight. It is amazing to think that in the late fall of 1968 I had been given stage seats, along the with rest of our high school AP German Class, to hear a performance by the renowned baritone Dietrich Fischer Dieskau singing German lieder. It was absolutely unimaginable that five years later I would sit close to where he stood and perform as a soloist with orchestra! And perhaps fifteen years after that I would record the Mozart Concerto with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for the Deutsche Grammophon label. Yet another highlight. I travelled the world with Orpheus, appearing as a soloist in Carnegie Hall, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, to name a few, and we recorded more than fifty CDs. I played many concerts with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for over thirty years and even performed at the Whitehouse for the final State Dinner of the Clinton presidency. I’ll stop there, but I am grateful for an incredibly full life as a musician.

In addition to your life as a performer, you've taught generations of bassoonists, many of whom have gone on to successful careers of their own. What advice would you give to an aspiring professional bassoonist? 

Many of my students are active in all areas of the music profession. I am grateful if I played some part in helping them along their way. My advice is this:

• There is no doubt that the path is difficult and uncertain. Remember that the road to success is through self-improvement. Think of excellence as a journey up a pyramid with steps or ledges leading to the top. As one climbs higher, by definition there will be fewer people to be found. The effort is worth it. 

• For the most part, the world of music is the example of the ideal society. Human beings from all backgrounds come together with appreciation for each other’s contributions. In the course of one rehearsal or performance we are called upon as both leaders and team players with a common goal - to work together to make beautiful things happen. It is worth the effort to live within this rarified, rewarding society. 

• Your instrument is your voice. Develop it and your musical understanding in order to say what you want to say. 

• The world is ever changing, seek opportunity where ever you find it. Create your own opportunities. In this world of the internet and social media there is no excuse not to be connected.

In my career I have had the good fortune to be extremely busy as a performer and teacher. Many have asked me how I have had the energy for it all? My answer is clear: “It beats working for a living!”

Bassoonist Frank Morelli on "From The Soul"

Bassoonist Frank Morelli’s new album “From the Soul,” will be released on Musica Solis on February 20, 2026. The collection features works by Wynton Marsalis, Dominick Argento, Lori Laitman, Jeff Scott, and Nirmali Fenn. We asked him to share additional information about the music on the album and his connections to it. This is his response.

I’ve had, and continue to have, the good fortune to take part in nearly two hundred recordings with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and other chamber ensembles. Although I was often highlighted on these CDs, somehow I felt I had more to share personally, and if I intended to accomplish my goals, I had better get going. The defining impetus for my first series of self-produced solo albums was the approach of my 50th birthday, now nearly twenty five years ago. Those first four solo albums, on the MSR label, presented “Classical” or concert music spanning from the Baroque, (“Baroque Fireworks”) through the late 18th to early 20th centuries, (“Romance and Caprice”) to music later in the 20th century (“Bassoon Brasileiro” and “From the Heart”). 

As I saw my 70th birthday on the horizon, I realized that I still had even more I wished to share. During this latest creative period, my first “classical” album, released by Musica Solis in 2024, “An die Musik,” is my statement of gratitude for a lifetime in music. It looks back to the masters Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. My newest Musica Solis album, “From the Soul” presents music of today and also looks to the future. I have selected five pieces for “From the Soul” that are personal to me. One aspect of that connection is literal. I have had the pleasure of knowing four of the five composers personally. I met the fifth, Dominick Argento, when I performed his opera “Casanova’s Homecoming” at Lincoln Center during the years I served as principal bassoon of the New York City Opera Orchestra. From that time I felt a special connection to his compositional voice, a feeling I share for each of the other four composers whom I have known more intimately. Each work heard on this album speaks from the soul. Along with soulfulness, the thematic through-line examines the concept of innocence and the human spirit. Thus we begin with an elegy for innocence and end with a prayer for peace and kindness. In addition, each work demands great flexibility in tone and style. My guiding principal as a bassoonist is that the bassoon is my voice-not a machine. The instrument lends itself to a vocal style of playing. Being a double reed instrument with a conical bore, the variety of tone colors and characters available to me is rather infinite. Each selection heard here demands a different bassoon, if you will.

Elegy for Innocence (2008) by Jeffrey Scott (1976- ) is the perfect “keynote address” for this compilation. Jeff recalls:

I was contemplating the innocence one has as he/she starts out in life and the bittersweet journey as the expectation of life’s offerings yield to the reality.” Elegy for Innocence begins… “with a simple, Copland-esque opening, a sinister almost uninvited middle section, followed by a melancholic solo bassoon melody, ending with a virtuosic and optimistic finish.

Playing this work with my dear friend and colleague, pianist Wei-Yi Yang, Mr. Scott’s music speaks “from the soul” from the opening lullaby through the twists and turns that follow. I’ve known Jeff Scott since early in his career. It has been a joy to perform with him and admire his growth as an artist and composer. He wrote this work for his dear friend, and my former student, the exceptional bassoonist, Monica Ellis, who is now a leader in our field. I was present at its premier and I will always remember the joy I felt in witnessing their triumph.

In describing her song cycle I Never Saw Another Butterfly (1996) Lori Laitman (1955-  ) shares:

One cannot help but be touched by the hope, innocence and truth of the poems. The cycle progresses from feelings of innocence and hope to those of despair and sorrow. Composed in 1996 for solo voice with alto saxophone, I Never Saw Another Butterfly was my first Holocaust-themed song cycle… using texts from an astonishing collection of poems written by children from the Terezin Concentration Camp killed in the Holocaust [at Auschwitz.] The bassoon version was specifically composed for Frank Morelli to perform on Ruth Sommers’ 2002 Festival Chamber Music concert at Merkin Hall in NYC. ‘The Butterfly’ opens with a cantorial-style bassoon line, conjuring up images of a fluttering butterfly. Despite the tremendous sadness of the text, the message of the poem is one of undying spirit. ‘Yes, That’s the way things are’ was written by three children -- Kosek, Löwy, and Bachner — who wrote under the name Koleba. To reflect the irony of the poem, I created music…typical of Jewish folk song. The author of ‘Birdsong’ is unknown. [M]ost striking is the author’s ability to rise above the horrid living conditions to focus on the loveliness of life. The feelings of hope manifested in the earlier songs die in ‘The Garden’. The little boy walking along the garden path is portrayed by a weaving bassoon part with subtle rhythmic changes. Both parts build to a climax, then abruptly come to a close as ‘the little boy will be no more.’ ‘Man Proposes, God Disposes’ was also written by the three children who signed their name Koleba. The poem recognizes that those who were ‘rich before’ would perish much faster in the camps than those accustomed to a harsher life. ‘The Old House’, also written by Franta Bass, ends the cycle. The barren image of the deserted house is captured by the muted bassoon repeatedly playing one note, like a bell tolling.

Having performed this profound cycle together a number of times, the outstanding mezzo soprano Janna Baty and I are grateful to share it on this album.

A Man with a Paint Box Aria “Once, when I was a young man” from the opera “Postcard from Morocco” (1971) by Dominick Argento (1927-2019) compels the bassoonist to “sing” in a more operatic style. In Argento’s own words:

my music is lyrical because it’s sung. I have gone on record as saying my whole purpose in writing music is to communicate with an audience, and to move them, to make them laugh or weep. That is the fundamental aspect of music.

As a singing bassoonist, I identify very closely with his thinking. In the aria, Argento portrays an older man’s recounting of an innocent, youthful fantasy in which an imaginary ship docks in the clouds outside his bedroom window. In this instance the bittersweet and complicated feelings of the storyteller are more subtle, lacking the severity of the underlying tragedy of Laitman’s song cycle.

Meeelaan (2000) by Wynton Marsalis (1961- ) is original, deeply felt and soulful, mirroring the composer on many levels. I have known Wynton since he first moved to New York City in his late teens. He wrote this work for his and my friend, the eminent bassoonist Milan Turkovic. The title refers to the way Wynton Marsalis would often greet Milan. Excerpted from Marsalis’ official biography found on his website: “Marsalis performs and composes across the entire spectrum of jazz and has written jazz-influenced chamber music and symphonic works for revered classical ensembles across the US and abroad. He is inspired to experiment in an ever-widening palette of forms and concepts that constitute some of the most advanced thinking in modern jazz and in American music on the broad scale.” Meeelaan surely fits this description with great writing that requires the bassoonist and the outstanding Callisto Quartet to “turn on a dime” from one expressive quality to the next. The bassoonist is required to create a sound perhaps more reminiscent of a tenor or baritone saxophone. The result is an original and wide-ranging mixture of various styles from blues to tango to bebop, but the overall effect is a unified message that is soulful on many levels. 

This debut recording of, Prayer, written for me in 2022 by my dear friend, composer Nirmali Fenn, (1979- ) brings From the Soul’s journey to a meaningful close. The composer states: “The piece unfolds as a journey through body, soul, and spirit, with prayer acting as a channel that connects these dimensions.”  The bassoonist is required to conjure up the sound and style of the Armenian duduk, a double reed instrument similar in size to the oboe. The use of jaw vibrato and alternate fingerings create varied tone colors unlike the more familiar sounds one might expect to hear, or heard earlier on this album. In the final section of the composition the pianist places a “singing bowl” on the piano’s G4 string, first causing it to vibrate and then gliding it along the string creating an ethereal effect. The composer states:

Prayer is a piece born from collaboration, a testament to how friendship can spark creation. Before composing, Frank asked for a piece that could evoke a spiritual intensity of the Muslim call to prayer. For months, I listened to adhans, only to find my inner ear forging the haunting duduk-like solo that is at the center of this piece. Together, we sculpted the opening over weeks of collaboration; I still recall Frank’s instruction – “make it operatic.” Composing Prayer was pure joy: when collaborators magnify each other’s ideas, the process becomes a journey of discovery, leading to surprising new worlds of sound. Throughout its creation, one question stayed with me: what is prayer for? Beyond religion, I believe prayer is a search for unity, an act of resistance against conflict. The message behind Prayer is simple. We all belong to something larger than ourselves, and that truth leaves no room for war.

And so, there’s a through-line of expression and feeling from an elegy for innocence, to the innocent words of children murdered in the holocaust, to a young man whimsically recalling his youth, to the soulful, often jazz-inflected expressions of Wynton Marsalis, to an other-worldly prayer. The works, individually and taken together, require as large a spectrum of sounds, characters and expression as is possible.

An invaluable asset of being a bassoon teacher is that some former students have become part of my “bassoon family.” One of my students, Susan Lansing, married an outstanding saxophonist and jazz recording artist in Denver, Keith Oxman. This “family connection” opened the door back to my first musical passion. I found the golden opportunity during these past five years to return to the music of my early days, when my love of playing was fueled by the popular standards we enjoyed at home, sung by great artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. I would spend hours on my sax playing these tunes out of a “fake book” - a compendium of hundreds of those standards. I am by no means a jazz musician. That would imply a level of ability beyond me. However, in that period of my life I did gain experience performing popular standards in a style that I felt comfortable bringing to the bassoon. In my two albums with Keith, my approach to sound, articulation, bending notes, vibrato, etc. are definitely related to my years on the saxophone, which, by the way, I gave up several decades ago! As a “classically-trained” musician I needed to find a place for myself with Keith and his excellent jazz colleagues. My solution has been to focus on the connection between concert, or classical music and popular standards and jazz. You could say “the concert hall meets the music hall.” Our first album, the OX-MO Incident on the Capri label (2021) has been very well received. In late 2025 we recorded the tracks for our next album, also to be released by Capri in 2026. The title will be CLASSICOOL. 

So this latest five-year period of productivity has been extremely rewarding, celebrating sixty years of bassooning. My personal goal and message to my students is that the bassoon is your voice. Play and revel in all the genres of music that represent your passions. The sky is the limit. That has been my approach from my earliest days in music. I am eternally grateful to all involved in bringing these passion projects to life.

Bassoonist Frank Morelli: "From the Soul"

Bassoonist Frank Morelli's new recording is released February 20, 2026 on Musica Solis

"From the Soul" features works by Wynton Marsalis, Dominick Argento, Lori Laitman, Jeff Scott, and Nirmali Fenn

Legendary bassoonist's 2024 release "An die Musik" is currently available on Musica Solis, featuring works by Brahms, Schubert, and Schumann

Bassoonist Frank Morelli's sixth solo album "From the Soul" is released on February 20, 2026 on Musica Solis (MS202602). The collection features works by Wynton Marsalis, Dominick Argento, Lori Laitman, Jeff Scott, and Nirmali Fenn.

The selections on this recording are very personal, says Morelli. "Each work chosen for this album speaks from the soul." From Scott's hopeful Elegy for Innocence to Laitman's song cycle based on poetry written by children in a Nazi concentration camp to Marsalis's jazz-inflected Meeelaan performed with the Callisto Quartet, the album explores a range of emotions and moods.

Nirmali Fenn composed Prayer especially for Morelli. The score requires the bassoonist to emulate the sound of the duduk, an Armenian folk instrument. "The bassoon needn’t have just one voice. The bassoon is my voice, and it has been my life’s work to speak through it with variety and sincerity, from both heart and soul," writes Morelli. 

In 2024, the bassoonist released "An die Musik," also on Musica Solis. The album includes transcriptions of Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe, Cello Sonata No. 1 by Johannes Brahms, and An die Musik by Franz Schubert.

Contact ClassicalCommunications@gmail.com to request a physical CD or digital copy of "From the Soul" or "An die Musik" by Frank Morelli.

Baritone Joseph Parrish celebrates Harlem Renaissance

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Baritone Joseph Parrish returns to Baruch Performing Arts Center February 10, 2026

“Songs from the Harlem Renaissance” program includes music by Margaret Bonds and Harry T. Burleigh with texts by Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar among others

Concert curated for Baruch PAC celebrates Black History Month

The award-winning baritone Joseph Parrish returns to Baruch Performing Arts Center on February 10, 2026 with a special program curated for the venue. The evening celebrates Black History Month with Parrish and pianist Amir Farid performing songs from the Harlem Renaissance.

“This original program is centered around one of the pioneering cultural movements in the United States of America during the 20th century," says Parrish. "Through themes of heritage, race, love, urban life, and spirituality, this program sheds a light on the musical and literary themes that shaped a generation of African Americans and many more to come.”

Featured composers include Margaret Bonds, Harry T. Burleigh, Undine Smith Moore, Hall Johnson, with select texts by Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar among others. Full program details below. 

Tickets for baritone Joseph Parrish's performance on Tuesday, February 10, 2026 at 7 pm are $35 general admission ($20 with CUNY ID), available at bpac.baruch.cuny.edu. Baruch Performing Arts Center is at 55 Lexington Ave in Manhattan (enter on 25th Street, between 3rd and Lexington Avenues).

Cassatt String Quartet announces personnel changes

Cassatt String Quartet announces personnel changes in 2025-2026

New members Laura Goldberg (violin), Amy Galluzzo (viola), and Yi Qun Xu (cello) join violinist Muneko Otani beginning in 2026

Violinist Jennifer Leshnower, violist Emily Brandenburg, and cellist Gwen Krosnick depart in Fall 2025

Cassatt in the Basin, the residency program in West Texas, will continue under the leadership of founder Jennifer Leshnower

The Cassatt String Quartet, a mainstay in American chamber music since 1985, has announced personnel changes during its 2025-2026 season. Violinist Jennifer Leshnower, violist Emily Brandenburg and cellist Gwen Krosnick depart the group in fall 2025. 

Muneko Otani, violinist with the Cassatt String Quartet for 38 of its 40 years, announces that the new members are violinist Laura Goldberg, violist Amy Galluzzo, and cellist Yi Qun Xu. Goldberg is a founding member of the ensemble, and performed with the group for its first decade.

More information about the Cassatt String Quartet as well as artist biographies for violinists Muneko Otani and Laura Goldberg, violist Amy Galluzzo, and cellist Yi Qun Xu are available at CassattQuartet.com. More information about Cassatt in the Basin, the residency program in West Texas, can be found at CassattInTheBasin.net. 

Otani said, “Performing with the Cassatt String Quartet for nearly four decades has been an exhilarating and fulfilling experience. We have commissioned and premiered nearly 800 new works, toured across the country and throughout a dozen nations, and held residencies that have enriched the communities and universities we’ve served. I look forward to carrying these traditions forward—and exploring new artistic possibilities—with my new colleagues as the ensemble enters its fifth decade. I am deeply grateful to the Quartet’s former members, whose dedication and musical passion have made the last 40 years possible.”

Leshnower echoed Otani’s sentiments, saying, "The Quartet has played a significant role in my life for the past 31 years, and I am so grateful to my colleagues in the quartet for their partnership on this ambitious and highly successful artistic journey. Not only have we collectively expanded the string quartet repertoire, but I have also gained deep experience as a leader, speaker, educator, and entrepreneur. As I look to the next phase of my life, I am excited to focus on my career as a violinist and the broader field of arts and nonprofit administration. This includes my work as artistic director of the West Texas residency program Cassatt in the Basin, which is entering its third decade. While I will miss the quartet, I am truly excited about what comes next.”

Cellist Gwen Krosnick stated: "I've been glad to spend five seasons with the CSQ, exploring great string quartet repertoire and, in particular, getting to champion the music of American women like Tania León, Victoria Bond, Dorothy Rudd Moore, and Joan Tower. I am delighted, now, to move my focus toward other inspiring work that I love — including a series of upcoming recitals and recording projects focused on a personal retrospective of American music for solo cello, as well as my cherished ongoing teaching at Columbia and Kneisel Hall. I am thrilled to be returning, as well, to my two loves of curating and community-building as Founder/Artistic Director of the Westchester, NY chapter of Music For Food, the national musician-led nonprofit initiative to fight hunger in our local communities. With inaugural concerts is 2026, MFF Westchester features some of my most beloved colleagues, joining together in chamber music concerts and raising money to support folks struggling with food insecurity in Northern Westchester and beyond."

The violist Emily Brandenburg, in the group since 2024, said, “I am incredibly grateful for this past year with the Cassatt Quartet and for the meaningful relationships I have formed with my fellow members. Our collaborations with composers, guest musicians, and presenters have been truly inspiring, and they are memories I will carry with me throughout my career. I look forward with great enthusiasm to the many joyful musical endeavors I have planned for the coming year and beyond.”

The Cassatt String Quartet was formed in 1985 by violinists Adela Pena and Laura Jean Goldberg, violist Eufrosina Raileanu, and cellist Anna Cholakian. Violinist Muneko Otani joined the quartet in 1987.

In fall of 2025, the quartet was in residence at Bowdoin and Williams colleges and the Cassatt in the Basin program in West Texas. Cassatt performed in Maine as part of the Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music. The quartet performs at Purchase College on December 11.

Insider Interview with Key Pianists' Founder Terry Eder

Terry Eder is the founder of Key Pianists concert series, celebrating its 10th anniversary in the 2025-26 season. On February 12, 2026 Eder performs a recital of Bartók alongside music by Beethoven, Schubert and Debussy at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall (tickets available here). We spoke with her about Key Pianists’ mission, the upcoming recital, being one of the only Americans studying in Hungary in the 1980s, and more.

What made you want to start the Key Pianists series? Why Carnegie Hall?  

New Yorkers are extremely lucky to have the opportunity to hear the world’s most famous pianists from around the world with regularity. There are also concert series here in New York that specifically present opportunities to young professionals just starting their careers. I noticed that there were few opportunities for pianists who do not fall into one of those two categories. Certainly there are smaller, more informal venues where one can present or attend a concert. However, there are many wonderful pianists who deserve a more prominent platform. I felt that a series that presented significant and seldom-heard artists on the stage of Carnegie Hall would be welcome by those artists and by the pianophile audience found in NYC, who would otherwise not have a chance to hear them. Carnegie Hall is the pinnacle of achievement for any musician; the history, the acoustics, the beauty, the professionalism it represents. Weill Recital Hall has an intimacy that allows the audience to see and hear the artist up close, making a recital there a very special occasion.  

What criteria do you look for when considering which performers to present?  

First of all, I look for performers who match the reason I began the series. Carnegie Hall inspires a high level of engagement, and I seek an artist who will relish the opportunity by presenting an exceptional program.  I think programming is extremely important and I encourage pianists who perform unusual repertoire or who have acquired experience in a particular idiom or with a particular composer. The qualities of sensitivity, beauty, intelligence, communicativeness, and singularity are all important. Excellence is the real determining factor.  

You’re a pianist yourself. What made you choose the piano?  

I would say that the piano chose me. I grew up with 3 older sisters who were studying music, and my father who played jazz standards and ragtime every night after his work day as a dentist. At 4, my parents thought I was too young to study. After one of my sisters’ piano lessons ended, I would simply repeat the lesson by ear and show where the mistakes had been made. My parents learned I had perfect pitch as well, and allowed me lessons from then on. I never thought there would be a day when I stopped playing the piano.  

Tell us about the repertoire you have planned for your recital in February 2026.  

I wanted to include Bartók in this program because he is a favorite composer of mine, and also because people do not play Bartók very often despite the genius, uniqueness and beauty of his works. Two of the pieces I am programming, the Sonatine and the Two Romanian Dances, Op. 8/a, I have never heard performed by anyone else in the U.S. The Six Romanian Dances, which I am also playing, is heard and played quite often, also in a version for violin and piano. I also nearly always program Beethoven and will be playing the Sonata Op. 28. Schubert and Debussy round out the program with four of the Debussy Preludes, and a Schubert Impromptu and set of waltzes. There is a loose thread running through the program of an earthy, folk-like undercurrent in all of the works.  

You’re playing Bartók, one of your specialties, and you studied in Budapest. How does that experience enrich your interpretation of this music?  

Living in the 1980s behind the Iron Curtain was an affecting experience.  I was young and impressionable and had never been outside the U.S. other than for a 15th birthday dinner in Windsor, Ontario, across the bridge from my hometown Detroit. It was the days of the cold war, when Americans simply did not go to Eastern Europe. There were a few other American grant winners in Hungary that year, and we were the only Americans in the entire country. The man on the street had never heard American English or met an American. I felt so foreign. These days it seems hard to fathom.  

My mother was born in Romania so ancestry or genes may be a reason for my affinity with Eastern European music. But memories of my year in Hungary are incredibly vivid and no doubt have infiltrated my being. The pervasiveness and pride in musical heritage was overwhelming for someone coming from a culture where music was not considered a desirable profession. I became captivated with the uniqueness of the Hungarian language and sensibility, the rustic scenery outside the capital, the beautiful old architecture, the delicious food, the Parliament still full of bullet holes from WWII, the Turkish baths, the feeling of being so foreign, so out of place. I was immersed in all things Hungarian 24 hours a day, without English speakers around, without any westerners around, with the perfect opportunity to become part of that existence. I came away from it with what feels like an intense understanding of the Hungarian character.  

Mark Ruffin in Conversation with Sullivan Fortner

Fresh off of winning The Gilmore’s 2026 Larry J. Bell Jazz Artist Award, jazz pianist Sullivan Fortner performs an intimate solo recital at Baruch Performing Arts Center in Manhattan on December 12, 2025.

This is an excerpt from a conversation Fortner had with Mark Ruffin at the Bell Jazz Artist Award ceremony in early October, streamed live from The Greene Space in NYC. Watch the conversation in full  here.

Mark Ruffin: Your dad didn’t want you to go into the music business. Tell them about the pact you guys made.

Sullivan Fortner: Well, I graduated as valedictorian from my high school McDonogh 35, which is probably the oldest African American high school in New Orleans, and part of the deal there is if you make it into the top 10 or top 35, you automatically get a full scholarship to any university in New Orleans. So I could have gone to Xavier, Dillard University, University of New Orleans, Loyola, Tulane—all that. Full ride.

I told my dad I wanted to go into music. It was kind of an off-the-whim decision. I was driving home from prom and had a conversation with God. I said, “I’m pretty sure if I were to become a neurologist, I’d probably kill somebody.” [Laughter]

So I said, “Look, okay, if this is what I’m supposed to do, you have to figure out a way to make it work.”

I sent a videotape—on cassette—of me playing The Flintstones theme to Oberlin Conservatory of Music. And to Berklee. Berklee put me on the waiting list. Oberlin gave me a $16,000 scholarship. So I thought, Maybe I should go to Oberlin. Maybe this is my ticket into music.

My dad said, “Absolutely not. You can get a car. I’ll buy you a car. You’ll have stability. There’s no guarantee in music at all. And there’s no one in this family that is going to be able to help you.” I have a couple of cousins that are professional musicians, but for the most part, I’m the only one. So to pursue jazz, which wasn’t even in my household, he said, “You’re on your own with this.”

I told him, “I really feel like this is what I’m supposed to do.” He said, “Well, please, if you’re going to do this, make sure you get a master’s degree. So if all else fails, you can teach a kindergartener how to blow through a recorder.”

That was the conversation I had with my dad in the computer room of our house before I turned in my acceptance letter to Oberlin Conservatory.

Ruffin: Now, you  didn’t necessarily come from a music family—although your mom did play some piano playing… gospel stuff? 

Fortner: Yeah, my mom. Well my whole family- on my mom’s side particularly- are singers. Now they’ve been branching out a little bit more in a professional field doing background stuff, but for the most part it’s just been gospel music. Singing in church on Sunday mornings with the choir and the praise team. My mom was my first music teacher. She brought me to every single rehearsal and made me sit in the tenor section, even though I wanted to sit next to the organ player.

The choir director, who was also the organist, Miss Betty, said, “No, he’s fine. He’s not bothering me at all.” So I’d sit next to her, and of course I had a crush on her because she smelled like cocoa butter and had great gold hair. You know, she smelled good! When you’re four years old, and you smell good and got treats, you’re in love. That’s all it takes. [Laughter]

But really, the people I always wanted to play for always were my mom and my grandmother. I had no idea this is what I’d be doing. I just wanted to play for my grandma and keep time. That’s all. 

Ruffin: But as you grew as a piano player—where did jazz come in? Where did pop and hip hop and everything else you’re listening to come in? 

Fortner: Well my dad always had all those old school R&B records. When I was 12 years old my part time job was killing rats and cutting grass at my grandmother’s house. And that drive was probably an hour each way. And he’d play everything. My dad would say “This is the Ojays, this is Stevie Wonder, this is The Spinners.” All the old school 70s and and 80s artists: Babyface, Anita Baker, Chaka Khan, Michael Jackson. My mom was also a fan of R&B, don’t get it wrong, but when she was driving it was mostly Gospel. On our way to school with me and my sisters she’d put on a Gospel song and do ear training tests. “All right Sal (my nickname), what’s the alto line?” And I’d have to sing it. Then she’d ask my sister “what’s the tenor line?” and she’d do the same. And we’d all harmonize, with my mom and two sisters, going through the whole song. So, like I said, she was my first music teacher in that way. 

Ruffin: Where did jazz come in? 

There was a guy who came to church when I was about 11 or 12. His name was Ronald Markham. He told me I had a lot of talent. After choir rehearsal one day he goes to the organ and starts playing some Bach preludes, and I said “What’s that?!,” and then he plays some jazz, something like Jimmy Smith. I said, “What is that?” He said, “That’s jazz. You need to go to the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.”

“What do I need to need to do get in?,” I asked. 

“Just play the way you play, and apply,”

So I applied in eighth grade. I couldn’t play a C major scale to save my life. The only thing I knew was gospel songs so I auditioned playing Because He Lives. And I got in. First day of school, I walked into the classroom and saw Christian Scott (now Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah), Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews… so as I’m learning jazz, I’m surrounded by a community of people that grew up with the music with a certain type of legacy with it. So they took me under their wings, and told me what I needed to listen to. I had a teacher, Peter Martin, who said “OK, this is Herbie Hancock’s theme from Blow Up. Don’t come back next week until you’ve learned it.” And so I learned it.

At first, I hated jazz for the first two years. It was too long, too complicated. Too many solos. This was a waste of time and energy. I just wanted to play the big chords.Then my teacher Clyde Kerr Jr. gave me Concert by the Sea by Erroll Garner. He said, “If you don’t like this, you shouldn’t be a jazz musician.”

It was the first time I experienced music that brought me to tears. And that was it, I’ve been chasing that ever since.

Ruffin: Were classical musicians part of your coming up? 

Fortner: Yeah. I had a girlfriend when I was younger who sang opera—she introduced me to people like Puccini and Verdi. Then when I got to Oberlin, going to the surrounded by classical musicians, I’d see the student orchestra and opera productions, and got exposed to Rimsky-Korsakov, Berlioz, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev. 

Once I was practicing Chopin on a concert stage and a classical pianist walked in. She laughed at me and walked out. It definitely inspired me to practice harder. 

Ruffin: You’ve collaborated with a lot of folks. You’re on every Lauren Henderson record, and then you have a nice groove with Étienne Charles, and many others.There are some piano players too! I heard you were roommates with pianist Mike King for four years? Is there anybody you would dream to collaborate with? 

Fortner: I did a thing this past weekend, with Jason Moran and Kris Davis and George Cabos and David Virelles. It was really really fun to sit inside their sounds and really learn from them. I’d like to do a lot more of that. Gonzalo is top of the list. Kevin Hays, Craig Taborn, Brad Mehldau, Herbie Hancock.

I really miss Barry Harris. That would’ve been incredible, to have him just as a teacher, mentor, and a friend. Ethan Iverson. There are so many. I’ve done some stuff with Fred Hersch, and that’s been fun.

Ruffin: He’s another great collaborator with other pianists. 

Fortner: Oh yeah. And I’ve studied with him off and on for about 5-7 years. He was definitely a source of inspiration and wisdom. Sometimes he laid to me straight, and I’d walk home and think “He really just told me I suck, but in the nicest way possible.” [Laughter]

Baruch PAC presents jazz pianist Sullivan Fortner

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December 12: Baruch Performing Arts Center presents Sullivan Fortner, Solo Piano

The Grammy award-winning jazz pianist is recipient of 2026 Bell Jazz Artist Award

Baruch PAC concert is Fortner's only solo show in NYC this season

Fresh from the announcement that he is recipient of the 2026 Larry J. Bell Jazz Artist Award from The Gilmore Foundation, pianist Sullivan Fortner gives a solo performance presented by Baruch Performing Arts Center on December 12, 2025 at 7:30 pm. The concert is Fortner's only solo appearance in New York City this season.

For more than a decade, the two-time GRAMMY Award-winning artist has stretched his deep-rooted talents as a pianist, composer, band leader and uncompromising individualist. Sullivan Fortner is a frequent collaborator with singer Cécile McLorin Salvant and has enjoyed creative associations with Wynton Marsalis, Paul Simon, Diane Reeves, Etienne Charles and John Scofield.

As a leader he has issued five albums, including the critically acclaimed recording with his trio Southern Nights (2025) with Peter Washington and Marcus Gilmore, and is sideman on more than two dozen albums including with Roy Hargrove, Samara Joy and Stefon Harris.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Fortner began playing organ at the age of 7, and went on to earn degrees at Oberlin Conservatory and Manhattan School of Music. He received the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists and was named one of Downbeat Magazine’s 25 for the Future in 2016 among numerous other awards.

Sullivan Fortner's solo piano performance on December 12, 7:30 pm is part of the Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Series at Baruch PAC. Tickets are $35 general admission ($20 with CUNY ID), available at bpac.baruch.cuny.edu. Baruch Performing Arts Center is at 55 Lexington Ave in Manhattan (enter on 25th Street, between 3rd and Lexington Avenues).Friday, December 12, 2025 at 7:30 pm.

Insider Interview with Cellist Inbal Megiddo

Cellist Inbal Megiddo has just released an album of Bach’s complete Cello Suites on Atoll Records (ACD233). We spoke with her about her approach to these classic works, her mentor Aldo Parisot, life in New Zealand, and more.

"Why another recording of the Bach Cello Suites?" 

"The Suites, to me, are a lifetime." This is how I begin my liner notes, and it captures the essence of why this recording needed to exist. The Bach Suites aren't just six works I've mastered—they're companions on life's path that have grown and evolved with me over decades. Every time I return to them, they reveal new dimensions, changing as I change. 

What makes my approach distinctive is constantly trying to find the freedom within the structure. I view these works as a complete emotional and spiritual journey that mirrors human experience itself. I hear the innocent curiosity of childhood in the G major, the turbulent angst of adolescence in D minor, the confident optimism of young adulthood in C major, the complexity of midlife in E-flat major, the profound reflection of old age in C minor, and finally, transcendence in the D major sixth suite. 

But beyond this personal narrative, there's the fundamental mystery at the heart of these works. Since Bach's original manuscripts are lost, each performer must create their own edition based on surviving copies—Anna Magdalena Bach's, Kellner's, and two anonymous copies. These have minimal dynamic markings and often unclear bowings. While we could mourn the loss of the originals, I believe this mystery is part of the magic. It gives us the sublime freedom to search for beauty and truth in our own way. 

My mentor Aldo Parisot taught me something crucial: you must find your own voice, not imitate others. He would say, "Bach created a masterpiece. Our job isn’t to recreate it, but to create something even more glorious." This recording represents decades of living with these suites, performing them on the world’s stages from Carnegie Hall to the Berlin Philharmonie, and constantly discovering them anew. Just as every day contains both the routine and the unknown, every performance of the Suites is simultaneously known and improvised—the next step in life's ephemeral journey. 

Question 2: Your musical life in New Zealand 

The transition to New Zealand has been transformative in unexpected ways. After performing in the world's major concert halls—Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Berlin Philharmonie—and working with conductors like Barenboim, Mehta, and Mintz, I wondered how moving to the other side of the world would affect my artistic development. 

What I discovered is that first of all, it is entirely possible to continue traveling from here, and I do. So I spend a bit more time on planes. But musical life in New Zealand also is very full. There is a lot going on considering the size of the country, and at very high levels. There is also quite a bit of support for the arts, and audiences are quite adventurous. That may go along with the kiwi spirit – we are at the edge of the world, so experimentation and self-reliance are a must. The beauty of nature, and the bird song that NZ is known for is also something unique, giving space for deep artistic exploration. As Associate Professor at the New Zealand School of Music, I've been able to balance performance, teaching, and creative projects. My work with the Te Kōkī Trio has been particularly rewarding—our Debussy recording was a finalist for Best Classical Album at the Aotearoa Music Awards. 

I've also founded the Cellophonia International Festival here, which brings together cellists from around the world. There's something about New Zealand's geographic isolation that paradoxically creates a hunger for connection and excellence. The audiences here are sophisticated and appreciative, and the musical community is incredibly supportive and collaborative. 

This environment has given me the freedom to pursue passion projects like my upcoming "Forbidden Composers" album—works banned by the Nazis—alongside core repertoire like these Bach Suites. The distance has actually liberated me to take more interpretive risks and to trust my own artistic instincts more fully. In many ways, being in New Zealand has brought me closer to Parisot's teaching about finding your own authentic voice rather than following established traditions. 

Question 3: Studying with Aldo Parisot

My first encounter with Aldo Parisot was at age twelve in a masterclass at the Jerusalem Music Centre. He spoke about circles, breathing, phrasing, passion, and kept repeating this paradoxical phrase: "free, but in tempo!" I left that lesson exhilarated, inspired, confused—and with a hole in my new sweater from his lit cigarette! It was an incendiary lesson in every sense. Four years later, I became his student at Yale. 

What Parisot gave me wasn't just technique—though his technical principles were transformative. He taught me that artistry comes from within. He was fiercely opposed to teachers who create copies of themselves. As he would say, "You don't need a teacher if you have the curiosity and drive to discover yourself." His role was to help us find our own voice. 

His technical approach was revolutionary for me. The concept of circles—in shifting, in bow movement, in musical phrasing—changed everything. He taught that shifts should be like breathing, natural and organic. "Maximum sound!" he would demand, but always with beauty and resonance, never forcing. He had us sing everything first, then find that same expression on the cello. This came from his own training—he studied two years of solfege before even touching the instrument. 

But perhaps the most profound lesson was about the relationship between freedom and structure. That phrase "free, but in tempo" became central to my understanding of Bach. It means maintaining the rhythmic integrity while finding infinite expressive possibilities within each phrase. He would demonstrate how the same passage could be played completely differently while still being truthful to Bach's vision. 

The trajectory change was complete. Before Parisot, I played from instinct. He gave me the tools to channel that instinct into conscious artistry. He taught me to question everything—"Bach was not a saint," he'd remind us, "I respect the man and his work, but I don't worship him." This irreverence paradoxically led to deeper respect for the music. 

His influence extends beyond my playing. In my own teaching at the New Zealand School of Music and as Master Teacher for iClassical Academy, I carry forward his philosophy: technical excellence is mandatory but insufficient. True artistry comes from finding your authentic voice and having the courage to trust it. As my DMA thesis on his teaching methods explores, Parisot didn't just create excellent cellists—he nurtured artists who happen to play the cello. 

Final Thoughts 

This recording of the Bach Suites represents a convergence of everything I've learned and experienced: the technical foundation from Parisot, the musical maturity gained through performing with the world's leading orchestras, and the artistic freedom I've found in New Zealand. These aren't just six suites—they're a complete universe of human experience, and I invite listeners to join me in this never-ending journey of discovery.