ariel blair mcmillen - ariel artists · blair mcmillen has nearly 20 years of teaching experience,...

BLAIR MCMILLEN piano

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ARTISTSArielbiography

Blair McMillen has established himself as one of

the most versatile and sought-after pianists

today. The New York Times has described him as

“riveting,” “prodigiously accomplished and exciting,” and

one of the piano’s “brilliant young stars.” He has performed

in venues both traditional and avant-garde; from Carnegie

Hall, the Moscow Conservatory, the Metropolitan Museum,

Avery Fisher Hall, Caramoor, Miller Theatre, and the Library

of Congress; to (le) Poisson Rouge, Galapagos, the Knitting

Factory, and The Stone. Highlights from recent seasons

include a performance of the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No.

1 at the Bard Music Festival, a dozen performances of John

Cage’s landmark Sonatas and Interludes, and several

appearances with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Dedicated to new and groundbreaking projects, Blair

McMillen is intensely committed to commissioning and

performing the music of today. Known for his adventurous

and imaginative programming, he has premiered hundreds

of works, and constantly works with both established and

emerging composers in commissioning new works for the

piano. An avid chamber player, Mr. McMillen is pianist for

the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players.

He is also the co-founder and director of the Rite of

Summer Music Festival on Governor’s Island, a classical-

contemporary music series which had its inaugural season

in Summer 2011.

Blair McMillen holds degrees from Oberlin College, the

Juilliard School, and Manhattan School of Music. His first

solo CD Soundings was released in 2005 to wide critical

acclaim. More recent recordings include Powerhouse

Pianists on Lumiere, Concert Music of Fred Hersch on

Naxos, and Multiplicities: Born in ’38 on Centaur. Mr.

McMillen lives in New York City and serves on the music

faculty at Bard College and Conservatory.

P H O T O B Y B O B L O N D O N



ARTISTSAriel

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

Enrique Granados, selections from “Goyescas” (Goya)

John Cage, 4’33″ (Rauschenberg)

Franz Liszt, Spozalisio (Raphael)

Claude Debussy, L’isle joyeuse (Watteau)

Modest Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition (Hartmann)

For most of us, our visual senses galvanize our creative sides.

Indeed, composers have long taken inspiration from the visual arts,

and painting in particular. But the result of trying to compose and

convey the passage of time from a single visual image often leads

to more questions than answers. Can we really hear what we see in

a painting? How can we as listeners relate to a composer’s well-

intentioned attempt to meld the aural and visual?

This is a program of piano masterpieces, all of them quite different.

But they were all directly inspired by a painted canvas, a static mo-

ment in time. All of this music was composed before the advent of

modern-day technologies and internet capacities. It’s a given that

everywhere you turn nowadays, music is set to images. But usually,

very little is left to the imagination, which is where this program

comes in!

Except for the Cage, all of these pieces were composed prior to

the ubiquity of movies and television which we saw by the end of

the last century. Slides of the paintings which inspired the pieces

will be projected at the beginning and end of each piece. In

between, there will be a few choice slides of other works by visual

artists who were directly inspired by the initial painting. The listener

will be left with more context for both the music and the images,

and more a sense of their mutual enrichment.

THE FAENZA CODEX, HERE AND NOW

Faenza Codex:

Anonymous, Constantia

Francesco Landini, Che pena questa (“How it Pains my Heart”)

Guillaume de Machaut, De tout flors (“Among the Flowers”)

Ottorino Respighi, Three Preludes on Gregorian Melodies

Girolamo Frescobaldi, Toccata No. 1, Book 2

Jon Magnussen, Toccare!

John Adams, China Gates

Faenza Codex:

Anonymous, Bel fiore danca (“Beautiful Flower Dance”)

Anonymous, (untitled)

Jacopo da Bologna, Aquila Altera (“Proud Eagle”)

Fabrizio De Rossi Re, Hurucane (“Demon-Spirit of the Wind”)

Giacinto Scelsi, Five Incantations

The late Renaissance saw a flowering of secular vocal music, as well

as the transformation of the function of music in general. The

oldest surviving keyboard manuscript in the world, the Faenza

program offerings

P H O T O B Y K E I K O N A G ATA



ARTISTSArielprogram offerings (cont.)Codex, contains dozens of keyboard arrangements of late 14th-centu-

ry Italian and French vocal works. For this program, Blair McMillen has

arranged and interspersed six Faenza examples with a wide-ranging

set of works both new and very old. Every piece relates directly or

indirectly to the Faenza, to the sound-world and spirit of late medieval

instrumental music, and to the spirit of keyboard playing and impro-

vising. “Faenza Codex, Here and Now” also includes two works

commissioned by Blair: Jon Magnussen’s Toccare! and Fabrizio de

Rossi Re’s amplified/vocal-piano piece Hurucane. This program, more

than anything, pays tribute to the many-centuries-old tradition of

keyboard playing, performing, arranging, and extemporizing.

CAFFEINATED! / CALMATIVE...

Daniel Felsenfeld, Toscanini’s Glasses

Marc Mellits, Two Etudes

“Medieval Induction”

“Defensive Chili”

John Adams, Phrygian Gates

John Kaefer, Time Capsule I

“Image is Fading”

“Areas of Loss”

“As I Open Fire”

“In the Wake”

Karen Tanaka, Three Techno Etudes

Frederic Rzewski, from 4 North American Ballads

“Down by the Riverside”

“Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues”

This program is a new-music experience of energy juxtaposition.

Using John Adams’s mellow minimalist masterpiece Phrygian

Gates as a center of gravity, “Caffeinated!/Calmative…” veers

between the hypnotic Adams, the much higher-octane (Felsen-

feld, Mellits, Tanaka), and other works (Kaefer, Rzewski) that

oscillate between the super-stimulating and the supremely

soothing.

THE LEGACY OF THE AMERICAN PIANO

Charles Ives, Study No. 23 and Song Without (Good) Words

John Cage, In a Landscape and Water Music

Frederic Rzewski, De Profundis

Morton Feldman, Palais de Mari

Elliott Carter, 90+

Aaron Copland, El Salon México

“The Legacy of the American Piano” is a 75-minute smorgasbord

that explores some of the most groundbreaking, cutting-edge,

and exciting piano music of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

From Charles Ives’s bombastic and patriotic Study No. 23, to John

Cage’s beyond-zany Water Music, to Morton Feldman’s hushed

and ethereal Palais de Mari, on this concert there is more than a

little of something for everyone. With “The Legacy of the Ameri-

can Piano,” experience a miscellany of masterful piano music

written by some of the most compelling American composers of

the past century.



ARTISTSAriel

J.S. BACH (1685-1750)Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D minor, BWV 1052

Keyboard Concerto No. 4 in A Major, BWV 1055

HAYDN (1732-1809)Piano Concerto in D Major, Hob. XVIII

MOZART (1756-1791)Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453

Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488

BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15

Concerto No. 2 in Bb major, Op. 19

Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, “Emperor”

CHOPIN (1810-1849)Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21

CÉSAR FRANCK (1822-1890)Symphonic Variations, M. 46

ANTON RUBINSTEIN (1829-1894)Piano Concerto No. 4 in D Minor, Op. 70

SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921)Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22

GRIEG (1843-1907)Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16

ERNEST CHAUSSON (1855-1899)Concerto (arr. Jon Magnussen)

BARTÓK (1881-1945)Piano Concerto No. 1, Sz. 83

STRAVINSKY (1882-1971)“Movements” for Piano and Orchestra

Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments

PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)Piano Concerto No. 1 in Db Major, Op. 10

GERSHWIN (1898-1937)Rhapsody in Blue

Concerto in F Major

SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)Piano Concerto No. 1 for Piano, Trumpet and String Orchestra,

Op. 35

Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 102

ELLIOTT CARTER (B. 1908)Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano

SAMUEL BARBER (1910-1981)Piano Concerto, Op. 38

LEE HYLA (B. 1952)Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra No. 2 (1991)

CARL SCHIMMEL (B. 1975)Concerto for Piano (2009)

concerto offerings



ARTISTSAriel

RHYTHM NATION: PIANO AS PERCUSSION

Of the many elements that define music, rhythm has arguably

played the most crucial role in the development and furthering of

piano repertoire over the past 100 years. What does it really mean

when people call the piano a percussion instrument? You will find

this out and much more in this one hour performance-talk. Blair

uses the hour to play and talk about piano music in which rhythm

appears with an overwhelming presence.Repertoire will include

examples from Béla Bartók’s Sonata, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue,

Marc Mellits’s 2 Etudes, George Crumb’s Makrokosmos, Annie

Gosfield’s Brooklyn, October 5, 1941 and Fats Waller’s Swingin’

Down the Lane. Music with repetition, polyrhythms, percussive

extended techniques, constantly changing time signatures: all of

these things and more will be covered in this program, with time

left over at the end for a short Q&A. The length of this program is

flexible, depending on scheduling needs.

PIANO 20/21

This is a casual hour-long journey through some of the multifarious

trends that constitute 20th- and 21st-century piano music. “Piano

20/21” is geared for pianists, composers, music-lovers, and non-

musicians alike.

For this program, Blair will play, demonstrate, and discuss piano

music by Aaron Copland, Annie Gosfield, John Cage, Marco Strop-

pa, György Ligeti, Fred Hersch, and Ray Charles (among others).

Blair will touch on many trends: the influence of jazz and improvi-

sation on recent piano music, today’s “alt-classical” generation of

composers, extended techniques at the piano and what “works,”

and (for composition students) the clearest way to notate a piano

or keyboard part. Perhaps the most important question addressed

in this lecture/demonstration is: what makes a piece of piano music

memorable, convincing, and worth coming back to, both as a per-

former and as a listener?

MASTERCLASSES

Blair McMillen has nearly 20 years of teaching experience, and

has given masterclasses at numerous schools and communities

around the country. He has presented masterclasses to musi-

cians of all ages and levels, and is comfortable coaching soloists

and ensembles, in classical repertoire both new and old, ortho-

dox and rarefied. In addition to his classical background, Blair

has studied and taught improvisation, jazz, and musical theater,

all of which he also enjoys coaching within a public setting. His

masterclasses are targeted, first and foremost, toward the music

and the musicians performing. Yet, he knows that involving and

engaging the audience, at least to a small degree, is important

as well. A short Q&A/discussion session with Blair after a mas-

terclass is encouraged: it allows for some “down-time,” and is

an appropriate send-off for everyone involved.

EXTENDED RESIDENCY

The main goal of an extended residency is to allow students to

nurture a working relationship with a performing artist over the

course of several days. The time period allows for interaction well

beyond what is possible in a one-time workshop or masterclass.

The residency often (but not always) takes place in preparation

before student performances or specific courses of study.

Residencies can include many facets: masterclasses, private

instruction, performances, youth outreach programs. Discus-

sions about music and the music business are a viable option. A

residency often brings exposure to student musicians within the

community, outside of their school setting. Ensembles receive

several private coachings, and often collaborate with the visiting

artist in performance. Instrumentalists and singers benefit from

days of lessons and masterclasses as part of their preparation for

performances or auditions.

An ideal residency lasts from 2-5 days, with an appropriate amount

of time set aside for rehearsals, masterclasses, and other interactive

programming. There are no age restrictions, and the number of stu-

dents involved can vary from several to numbering in the hundreds.

additional offerings



ARTISTSArielpress

“Mr. McMillen’s technique was outright formidable. Dazzling and virtuosic; he is at turns, all highly charged density and in the next

instant, spiritually translucent and lucent, always with a sensitivity that brings illumination to the knottiest music at his fingertips. Mr.

McMillen is a wonderful discovery for me, and brilliant is too light a term to describe his myriad attributes.”

–John Hammel, WNTI (NPR)

“McMillen draws softly glowing pianissimos from his

instrument… He has an acute feeling for those

remarkable passages in which Morton Feldman strips

everything down to a unison line or even to bell-like

soundings of single notes. And McMillen applies just

the right amount of pedal, so that the music is

enveloped in a slight mist while remaining crystalline.

I hope he has a chance to record the piece: his view

is one that I’d like to have in my library…”

–Alex Ross, New Yorker music critic (taken from

therestisnoise.com)

“…sharp-edged, cluster-driven pianism…forceful,

virtuosic…”

–Allan Kozinn, New York Times

“New music’s torchbearer. The pianist Blair McMillen can play composers like Debussy, Liszt, and Scriabin with flair, intelligence, and

Juilliard-honed virtuosity, as his 2004 recording Soundings makes abundantly clear…when played by the formidable Mr. McMillen, any

piece sounds terrific.”

–Anthony Tommasini, New York Times

ariel blair mcmillen - ariel artists · blair mcmillen has nearly 20 years of teaching experience,...

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