Transcription

A project which is on the docket for this summer is an album of vocal music - but not with a vocalist! 

With my faculty colleague, who also played on my recent faculty recital - Dr. Eric Lau. You can read more about him here. 

 

On the album are the complete set of five “Rückert Lieder” of Gustav Mahler, along with some well-known and beloved 17th and 18th century Italian vocal pieces. 

Here is a video of us playing something else we will record, “Journey” by Lori Laitman. You can view the video here. This piece was originally for high voice and piano, with a text about the Underground Railroad. The poet eventually removed the rights for Laitman to set his or her text, so she republished the work for alto saxophone and piano (without words). 

We must “do whatever [we] do intensely. The artist is the (wo)man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.” (Robert Henri, The Art Spirit).

As I reflect on this amazing year, my first after the doctorate, and my first at UNM and in the Southwest, it has very much felt like “pioneering.” I’ve left the crowd of the East Coast and come out to a place hungry for artists, hard workers, creative thinkers, and entrepreneurs.

I am grateful for the journey. 

 

PHOTO: From the move a year ago - traveling from OH into KY.