Bruce Brubaker – Piano Recordings of Glass’s Operas

Bruce Brubaker is an exceptional pianist who, like Stephen Edwards in my previous post, is also recording piano arrangements of works you wouldn’t normally associate with solo piano playing.

Brubaker has recorded several albums that include solo piano arrangements of pieces from the operas of Philip Glass.

The most moving (and my favorite) is the recording of Satyagraha: Act 3, Conclusion from Glass’s opera Satyagraha about the life of Mahatma Gandhi during his stay in South Africa . This arrangement works incredibly well as a piano piece and Brubacker’s recording of it is sublime. The recording is on Glass Cage recorded in 2000 for Arabesque Recordings.

Other Glass opera works recorded by Brubaker include Knee Play No. 5 from Glass’s seminal Einstein on the Beach. This is the main theme from this 6-hour plus opera. The recording is from Brubaker’s 2007 release on Arabesque entitled Hope Street Tunnel Blues.

Brubaker has also recorded piano arrangements from John Adams’ 1987 opera Nixon In China. His arrangement of Pat’s Aria is on the 2003 album “Inner City” also on Arabesque. Nixon in China is explores the truths beyond the headlines surrounding President Nixon’s historic 1972 encounter with Mao and Communist China.

You can find all of these recordings on Amazon.com. If you have an emusic.com account, I believe most of these albums can be found there as well.

Minimalist opera as solo piano music? – turns out, in the hands of the very capable Bruce Brubaker, it works exceptionally well.

Movie Themes performed on piano

I think this is a really great idea for presenting film music. Pianist, Stephen Edwards has taken famous movie themes and arranged them for solo piano performance. Many of the arrangements have a distinct Chopin-esque quality to them.

Hearing the music this way gives the film scores a different focus. Edwards uses thinner piano accompaniment textures to provide a clearer, more concentrated attention to the melodies. The music really sings.

You can listen and purchase the music from CD Baby.

Here is a review on FilmScore ClickTrack.

more information….
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STEPHEN EDWARDS CELEBRATES THE BEAUTY OF THE MOVIE THEME WITH PIANO MUSIC FROM THE MOVIES

(April 7, 2011- Los Angeles, CA) – Composer Igor Stravinsky said, “Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in myliving room has on the book I am reading.” Stephen Edwards (Cool Dog, Feast) combines the two with Piano Music From The Movies. The recording will be available digitally and on CD on May 3, 2011.

Many of the tracks featured on the recording were originally performed by a larger ensemble, in some cases a full orchestra. Taking these pieces and strippingthem down to a solo piano may seem an odd choice. “What I love about this collection,” said Edwards, “is that in many of the instances these are very similar to the original piano recordings that were in the movies – just my pianistic interpretation of them.”

Though he’s a film composer himself, Stephen Edwards decided to pay homage to the film music that moved him. He described, “Shawshank Redemption is one of my all-time favorite movies and I’m so moved by Thomas Newman’s muted and slightly dissonant beauty in this score; Field of Dreams moved me so profoundly because of the relationship with my own father and the piano music grabbed me immediately in the theatre when I saw it in the 1990s; A.I is a beautiful tone poem that very few would guess is actually written by John Williams.

He continued, “’Playing Love’ from The Legend of 1900 is a bravura jazz piece turned into a beautiful thematicstatement – and in the film actor Tim Roth’s character plays the piece in the movie just as it is heard on this CD. Once Upon a Time in America is probably my all-time favorite Morricone theme – I can still remember the very late night in the 1980s when I saw that movie on late night TV and was bowled over by the beauty of the single voice and orchestra playing that iconic tune – and this is my pianistic remembrance of that recording.”

As to one of the lesser-known themes on this recording, “Betty Blue sounds like Gabriel Yared’s modern take on the Chopin Ballades,” said Edwards.

Michigan native Stephen Edwards’ music education began at an early age with training by his mother, Rosalie Edwards, followed by studies at Interlochen Music Camp and Lawrence University, where he was recipient of the “Outstanding Classical Soloist” award sponsored by DownBeat magazine, and selected as a participant in the All-American College Orchestra National Talent Search sponsored by Disney.

Edwards continued his studies at the Dick Grove School of Music in Los Angeles and immediately started working as a session musician for film and TV composers including Mike Post. An avid pianist, he frequently performs on soundtracks for film and TV, including The Mechanic, The Prestige, Desperate Housewives and many others. A prolific composer, Edwards has scored more than 60 movies. He is producing a feature-length documentary, Requiem for My Mother, about a new choral work he composed in honor of his latemother that premiered at the Vatican. Look for the film and CD soundtrack release sometime in 2012.

“Since I started out as a piano player, I was always interested in playing music I heard in movies that I loved when I was a kid.” said Edwards. “It just made sense to me to record a CD of my favorites.”

Stephen Edwards Piano Music From The Movies will be available digitally and on CD on May 3, 2011

Track Listing

1. To Kill a Mockingbird “Main Title” Elmer Bernstein
2. Cleopatra “Antony and Cleopatra’s Love” Alex North
3. Being There “The Room Upstairs” Johnny Mandel
4. Being There “Goodbye Louise” Johnny Mandel
5. Diva “Sentimental Walk” Vladimir Cosma
6. Sophie’s Choice “Main Title” Marvin Hamlisch
7. Once Upon a Time in America “Main Title”
Ennio Morricone
8. Betty Blue “le Petit Nicholas” Gabriel Yared
9. Cinema Paradiso “Medley”
Ennio Morricone/Andrea Morricone
10. Field of Dreams “Night Mists” James Horner
11. Cousins “Main Title” Angelo Badalamenti
12. Shawshank Redemption “New Fish”
ThomasNewman
13. Shawshank Redemption “Brooks Was Here”
Thomas Newman
14. Sabrina “Main Title” John Williams
15. Titanic “The Portrait” James Horner
16. The Legend of 1900 “Playing Love” Ennio Morricone
17. A.I. Artificial Intelligence “The Reunion” John Williams
18. Munich “End Credits” John Williams
19. Little Children “2 Hillcrest” Thomas Newman
20. The Mechanic “Eb Piano Trio”
Franz Schubert arr. Stephen Edwards

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For more information contact cinemediapromo@yahoo.com