Ballroom Marfa Presents Bruce Levingston, Tomorrow

BRUCE LEVINGSTON

4 October 2007, 7 pm

Goode Crowley Theater

Free Concert

New York-based Bruce Levingston is the rarest of modern musicians, a world-class pianist whose reputation is matched by a fearless commitment to the vanguard of new composition.Born in Mississippi, trained in the United States and abroad, Levingston's career has taken him from international festivals and Carnegie Hall recitals to mixed media events at the crossroads of art, music, film and literature.

Stylistically, there is a sensitivity to Bruce Levingston's playing, a serenity that exists without sacrificing excitement or richness. Levingston's live programs reflect his poetic tendencies, favoring masters of the Romantic period like Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms as well as Impressionists such as Ravel and Debussy. With a repertoire that extends from the Baroque period to the present, however, a Liszt waltz is likely to be balanced by a dramatic Webern piano variation or a premiere by a young, cutting-edge composer like Lisa Bielawa.

If Bruce Levingston's own artistic course has been charted through the classical repertory, then he's returned his energies to the very source of the tradition's sustenance: new music. As a founding chair and artistic director of the Premiere Commission, a non-profit organization committed to promoting new music and art, over thirty new works have been commissioned and premiered under Levingston's stewardship. These have included major scores by some of contemporary music's leading composers, among them Philip Glass and Pulitzer Prize winners William Bolcom, David Del Tredici, George Perle and Charles Wuorinen.

Levingston's recent recording of composer Philip Glass's diptych "A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close" exemplifies the Premiere Commission's vision as well as the pianist's own artistic gifts. Commissioned by and composed for Levingston, "A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close" is inspired by the long-running friendship between painter and photographer Chuck Close and minimalist icon Philip Glass. The work, which appears on Levingston's 2006 Portraits album, is both an elaboration of this musician's elegant style and an appeal to the symbiotic relationship between composer and artist.

Bruce Levingston will feature Glass's "A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close" alongside masterworks by Mozart, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Brahms and Debussy.

Generous support has been provided by Ballroom Board of Trustees with special thanks to Premiere Commission.