10 years of marriage and 20 years playing music together

My wife Gillian and I will celebrate 10 years of marriage this September. It's also our 20-year anniversary of playing music together. Over the years music has been a big part of our life together, and we've done everything from theatre pit orchestras to guitar folk/pop. But our most enduring love is classical music for violin and piano.

On Sunday, Sept. 20 at 3pm, we present a violin/piano recital in the same town where we were married ten years ago, at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Amherst, Massachusetts.

We'd be delighted if you could join us!

Program includes a Handel sonata, pieces with a romantic theme by Sarasate and Dvorak, unaccompanied Bach on the violin, solo Chopin on the piano, and "Spring" from the Four Seasons by Vivaldi -- which is the first piece we ever performed together as a duo at age 15.

Thank you, Memorial

After a wonderful 3 years of service and community at Memorial Baptist Church, I am leaving my position there to become minister of music at the United Methodist Church of South Hadley, Holyoke and Granby, in South Hadley where I live. It is a bittersweet transition as I know and love both congregations. But I am glad to be able to serve at my neighborhood church.

I wanted to give Memorial a thank-you gift of music on my last day. So next Sunday we will have a short concert and hymn sing at 11:45am immediately after worship. Lunch will follow.

I will also play some movements of the French Suite no. 4 by Bach as service music.

(It is okay to come for the concert and lunch and not for the church service, and in fact, at least some other people will surely be doing that.)

Memorial Baptist Church, Hartford CT (see here for location/directions)
Sunday, July 26, 11:45am

Program

Gabriel Fauré - Barcarolles no. 4 and 6

Hymn: Lord of the Dance

Ludwig van Beethoven - Bagatelles Op. 126

Hymn: Amazing Grace

Gwyneth Walker - "Caper" from Cantos for the End of Summer

Hymn: Down By the Riverside

Performing Schumann's "Kinderszenen" in the Amherst Ballet performance, Saturday May 16 1pm Bowker Auditorium UMass

Hello everyone,

I wanted to invite you to a unique performance this Saturday. I play the piano for dance classes in various places including at Amherst Ballet where I also teach classes for children. This Saturday (May 16) the Amherst Ballet performance will include a piece set to Robert Schumann's piano pieces "Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood)." I will be with the dancers onstage accompanying them on the piano. The choreography, like Schumann's music, evokes emotions from childhood experiences.

We will be in Bowker Auditorium at the University of Massachusetts. Bowker is in the brick building just across the circular driveway from the central campus parking garage. If you want the full ballet recital experience you can come at 1pm for the younger children's class dances. After intermission (around 1:45-2pm) begin the dances for the more advanced students, and Scenes from Childhood, although it is a multi-age cast, is in this second half of the program.

It would be lovely to see you there!

Please feel free to share this invitation with anyone who might be interested.

Sideris - Toccata "Burning Kiev" - video for Editions Musica Ferrum

Composer Nikolas Sideris wrote this searing piece last February. It is a powerful reflection on war and its aftermath.
The Toccata is now available from Editions Musica Ferrum here. Here I am playing it with a transcript of the score. The recording was done at Northfire Recording Studios in Amherst MA by engineer Marc Seedorf.

Bert Williams' Lime Kiln Field Day - Silent movie accompaniment! - Wed. Feb 25 7:30pm Amherst MA

Really, I've always wanted to accompany for a silent movie. It seems like one of the most fun things you could do from behind a piano. So I was tickled when an opportunity came along to accompany a silent film for the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival.

Then I began to learn more about the film, Lime Kiln Field Day. It's really quite a historic film. It was made in 1913 and then never released until the New York Museum of Modern Art unearthed it last fall. Created by legendary comedian Bert Williams, it is the first feature-length film with an all-black cast. It is a love story with many funny moments and a really terrific big dance number. Besides being just plain entertaining, the film is also a rarity in that it shows black characters not in the roles of servants or criminals, but as heroes of their own story, including a love story shown in a warm and positive way.

I'm planning a score for the film based on the works of black composers of the period: Scott Joplin, Will Marion Cook, and Samuel Coleridge Taylor. I will also play some pieces that the New York MOMA sent along which were probably used in a stage adaptation of Lime Kiln Field Day by Bert Williams' troupe. Two are songs by J. Leubrie Hill, who appears in the film.

I'm so happy and humbled to be part of this performance.

More about the performance, from the film festival brochure:
wednesday 25 february
Bert Williams’ LIME KILN CLUB
FIELD DAY Project
(dir Edwin Middleton, T. Hunter Hayes, & Sam
Corker, Jr., USA, 1913, 53 min, silent)

Legendary Caribbean American musical theater
performer and recording artist Bert Williams
(1874-1922) stars in this never-released film, its
footage lost for a century. Discovered in the MoMA
archives, this restoration of daily rushes and multiple
takes represents the earliest known surviving feature
film with a predominately black cast. A comedy of
three young men vying for one woman’s affection.
New England premiere. Introduction by Demetria
Shabazz, UMass. Curatorial and Restoration Talk by
Ron Magliozzi, Museum of Modern Art.

Live piano accompaniment by Heather Reichgott.

7:30pm UMass Amherst
137 Isenberg School of Management
 (click for map. Easiest parking is probably the lot across from the Fine Arts Center, near the corner of Stockbridge Rd and Clark Hill Rd.)

More about Bert Williams' Lime Kiln Field Day:
Article on New York Museum of Modern Art website
New York Times article