CD pre-release party!

Details

William Hobbs full profile / Piano solo / 1 musician

Full program notes

You are invited to join us for a pre-release party of Face to Face, recorded by pianist William Hobbs and to be released this Fall on Blue Griffin records. The CD features works by Greek-Canadian composer Christos Hatzis (born 1953) and English-Parsi pianist-composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988).

Hatzis has a remarkable gift for writing "concept" pieces in which the concept is both clearly audible on the first hearing and worked out in such a way that it becomes more compelling with repeated listening. The selection performed at this recital, entitled "Through a Glass Darkly," was inspired by medical diagnoses among some of Hatzis's family members. It is an astonishing meditation on memory loss, dementia, and the attendant anxieties about loss of selfhood in its myriad forms. Sorabji is represented by his Nocturne "Djâmi," inspired by the 15th century Persian poet Jami. It is one of a small number of compositions by the English-born Sorabji that explore his geographically and emotionally distant father's Persian heritage. This exotic and atmospheric nocturne might easily be heard as an attempt by a mixed-race person to connect with a culture that may well be hard-wired into their DNA but is tantalizingly absent from their day-to-day life.

These selections from the forthcoming CD will be presented alongside Beethoven's serene late Sonata in E major, Op.109 and Gargoyles, a contemporary pianistic tour-de-force in the virtuoso tradition by Lowell Liebermann, one of America's most important living composers, who will be present at the performance!