Vicki Ray

Pianist Vicki Ray opens our season with a program she calls Vic Ray: Electric, as she delves into electro-acoustic works for piano and live electronics, backing tracks, Fender Rhodes and amplified toy pianos. With special guest Piano Spheres artist Aron Kallay. The program includes works by João Pedro Oliveira, Josh Biggs, Ben Phelps, and a tribute to the late composer William Kraft.

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2022-23 Emerging Artists

Piano Spheres presents pianists Mari Kawamura and Daniel Newman-Lessler in concert at Thayer Hall at the Colburn School. Both will hold workshops in October at Pasadena Conservatory of Music on dates to be announced soon! This program is funded in part by a grant from the NEA.

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Conor Hanick

Pianist Conor Hanick will present a rare performance of The Book of Sounds, a remarkable cycle of 12 solo piano pieces written between 1979 to 1982 by the pioneering German composer, pianist, poet and visual artist Hans Otte (1926-2007). The work is a mesmerizing exploration of sound, shaped by Otte’s immersion in both European and Eastern spirituality as well as his championing of such composers as John Cage, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass. Presented in cooperation with Monday Evening Concerts.

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HOCKET

HOCKET explores the virtuosity of two prepared pianos with a wide variety of materials including coins, screws, nuts & bolts, and more in John Cage’s seminal work, Three Dances for two prepared pianos. Alongside this groundbreaking work, HOCKET will be premiering companion pieces by Sarah Gibson for the same instrumentation and Peter S. Shin for two prepared pianos and electronics as well as works by Yoko Ono and others.

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William Chapman Nyaho

Dr. William Chapman Nyaho is Piano Spheres’ Leonard Stein Resident Artist for 2022/23. Dr. Chapman Nyaho is a Ghanaian American concert pianist specializing in solo piano music by composers from Africa and the African diaspora. For Into Africa and Beyond” he will journey on into music of the African diaspora showing melodic and rhythmic connections influences as well as weaving in personal anecdotes.

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Emerging Artist: Leonard Hayes

Piano Spheres presents Emerging Artist Leonard Hayes, a doctoral candidate at USC and student of Antoinette Perry, Mr. Hayes will be mentored by our Leonard Stein Resident Artist, Dr. William Chapman Nyaho. His concert, Statements, Spirituality and Sentiments, will include a commission by Leonard Hayes presents musical gems of the European and African Diaspora. This program explores the cultural and musical idioms of piano works by George Walker, Florence Price, Ellis Marsalis, and Johannes Brahms along with anecdotes. Also, this program will include a commissioned work by Dr. Bongani Ndodana-Breen.

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Gloria Cheng

Gloria Cheng presents “Looking Above,” with music by two recently departed local friends William Kraft and Mike Lang, the concert premiere of film composer Michael Giacchino’s Sonata in Darkness, performed by Gloria on the blockbuster movie The Batman, an unpublished score by Pierre Boulez written specially for Gloria’s wedding, jazz-suffused works by James Newton and Nicolai Kapustin, a stirring paean to planet Earth by Illinois-based Stephen Andrew Taylor, and two Valsa Choro (“crying waltzes”) by Brazilian composer Adelaide Pereira da Silva.

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Aron Kallay

“X” Metal strings struck by hammers excite the air. Peaks and troughs radiate outwards in precise predetermined relationships. Vibrations are transduced into electrical impulses by the smallest of bones. Synapses fire. Neurotransmitters are released. An intense euphoric experience follows. This program explores ecstasy and ecstatic states in music. Inspired by mysticism, religion, meditation, repetition, beauty, the grotesque. Works by Scriabin, Frances White, Alvin Curran & new Piano Spheres commissions from Rajna Swaminathan and Dante De Silva.

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