MIDWEST SONATAS - CD Release - featuring pianist Kristín Jónína Taylor
MIDWEST PIANO SONATAS - https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6653/
Joanne Baker composer
Mike McFerron composer - https://www.bigcomposer.com/
Bryan Stanley composer - https://hofmeyer.org/bstanley/
Kristín Jónína Taylor piano - https://kristinjoninataylor.com/
Pianist Kristín Jónína Taylor dives deep into the lyrical, evocative, and hauntingly beautiful works of three leading composers and educators from the Midwest United States on MIDWEST PIANO SONATAS. A blend of neo-classical and neo-romantic styles are presented in this Navona Records release, exploring compositional concepts ranging from bitonality to mixed meters, and life’s inscrutable emotions, particularly, anguish and bereavement. These profound spectrums of musicality and feeling are conveyed with stunning clarity by Taylor, an award-winning pianist lauded for her mesmerizing performances of nuance and depth.
Navona Records (https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6653/) will release an album of solo piano sonatas performed by Dr. Kristín Jónína Taylor,
UNO Associate Professor of Piano and Keyboard Area Coordinator. “Midwest Piano Sonatas” presents three solo piano sonatas by Midwestern composers (Missouri, Iowa/Nebraska, and Oklahoma/Illinois). Each composer was born, raised, and lived significant portions of their lives in the Midwestern US: Joanne Baker, whose neo-classical sonata from 1948 has gone largely unheard and forgotten despite winning a national competition and performance at Carnegie Hall; Mike McFerron, with a dramatic composition written in 2022 telling the story of inexplicable loss from the point of view of parents who lost children in the Sandyhook Elementary school shooting; and Bryan Stanley, with a neo-Romantic sonata written in 2018. The sonatas, two of which are recently commissioned works, show an immense diversity of styles.
The recording also extensively features the work of Wyndhem Ennaemba, UNO School of Music’s Music Production Manager, as the Re
Coming up on the next Composer's Voice Concert Series