Guest Artist: Augustus Arnone, piano “The Music of Milton Babbitt”

Pianist Augustus Arnone, will present an all Babbitt concert featuring four large-scale works drawn from diverse periods in his history. The earliest of the works on this program, Tableaux (1974), is one of the most pointillistic and physically imposing of all of his piano works. The program also features Allegro Penseroso (1999), Babbitt’s last work for solo piano which comes across quite a bit more transparent than some of his most dense works from the 60’s and 70’s yet at the same time exhibits an even greater control of its wide-ranging diversity and proliferation of multi-dimensional relationships. Two other works, from the late 80’s and early 90’s, feature unique proportions of changing tempos as well as scintillatingly dynamic fluctuation between rapidly diversified material and surprisingly static configurations. Augustus Arnone is an adventurous pianist who has made a home at the edge of transcendental extremes in the modern repertory. Specializing in works which push the boundaries in virtuosity and complexity, he's particularly interested in those which explore innovative compositional media or technological approaches. His repertoire includes the complete works for solo piano by Milton Babbitt, and Michael Finnissy's complete monumental eleven movement piano cycle, "The History Of Photography In Sound," as well as works by Cage, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Rzewski, Carter, Nono, Lucier, Feldman, Martino, Rakowski, Sierra, Campion and Eckardt. He is a founding director of Collide-O-Scope Music, a New York based contemporary music ensemble with a focus on combining diverse media forms. With Collide-O-Scope Music, Arnone has commissioned numerous works by some of the most exciting emerging voices of our time including Yotam Haber, Michael Klingbeil, Christopher Bailey, Spencer Topel and Lou Bunk, among others. Other highlights from the current season include the World Premiere of a new cycle of piano works written for Arnone by British ’New Complexity’ pioneer Michael Finnissy, entitled Brahms Lieder, as well as ensemble concerts with Collide-O-Scope Music, one of which also celebrates the Babbitt centennial with some of his more rarely performed and ambitious ensemble works. This event is free and open to the public.