The Glenn Korff School of Music’s Marguerite Scribante Professor of Piano Paul Barnes will perform in the Lied Center for Performing Arts’ Lied Live Online concert series on April 24.
Barnes will present a unique, interactive program at 7:30 p.m. The event to benefit the Lied Center for Performing Arts, will be live-streamed on the Lied’s Facebook page at https://go.unl.edu/barneslied and at liedcenter.org.
“It’s going to be a unique performance,” Barnes said. “It’s an audience interactive performance where the audience gets to choose several of the pieces. For all of my world-wide Glass fans, it will be a greatest hits evening.”
The program will include at least three world premieres. The first will be Barnes’ own piano transcription of Philip Glass’s Annunciation Piano Quintet, which Barnes premiered with the Chiara String Quartet on April 17, 2018, at the Lied Center. The second premiere will be “Trisagion” by UNL composer and lecturer David von Kampen, commissioned by the Nebraska Music Teachers Association and the Music Teachers National Association Composer Commissioning Program. The work combines two Greek Orthodox chants ingeniously combined with counterpoint and jazz-inspired harmony.
The final world premiere will be by long-time collaborator Ivan Moody, Orthodox priest and composer who studied with the late Sir John Taverner. Moody’s new work, which Barnes just recently received, is titled “Spring!” and is a direct result of the coronavirus lockdown, where Moody wrote several short piano works for his pianist friends worldwide.
Barnes will also perform chant-inspired works by Native flutist Ron Warren and Victoria Bond. This event will also mark the premiere performance of the Cornhusker Digital Byzantine Choir, which will be assisting Barnes in the performance of all the chant incorporated in the piano works.
Interspersed throughout the program will be audience-selected “greatest hits” from Barnes’ 25-year collaboration with Glass. From Barnes’ first transcription, “Dance from Akhnaten” to “Orphee and the Princess,” audience members around the world will select their favorite works from the program list, which Barnes will then incorporate into the program on the spot.
The San Francisco Chronicle called Barnes “Ferociously virtuosic,” Indianapolis Star described him as “A riveting and sensitive player,” and composer Philip Glass said, "You have a world-class pianist there in Paul Barnes. He's a pure piano virtuoso."
Celebrating his twenty-four-year collaboration with Philip Glass, Barnes commissioned and gave the world premiere performance of Glass's Piano Quintet “Annunciation.” The work is Glass's first piano quintet and first work based on Greek Orthodox chant. PBS NewsHour recently featured a Nebraska Educational Telecommunications video production highlighting Barnes' creative collaboration with Glass and the new quintet. Barnes' recording of the quintet with string quartet superstars Brooklyn Rider was released in October of 2019 to critical acclaim.
Barnes' recordings are available on Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, Apple Music, YouTube and Amazon.
For more information, visit the Facebook event page for this concert at https://go.unl.edu/08ao.