American Composers At Play
by Stephen Powell
American Composers At Play is my modest effort to produce definitive interpretations. For decades, I’ve wanted to perform the work of living composers with the composers themselves playing their compositions. It’s a singer’s dream. Musicians typically interpret composers’ music based on what we’ve learned in conservatory about historic performance practice. We rarely ever meet the creators. But this venture would be different…
…now is a time of renewal-personal, artistic, perhaps even spiritual. Through the eloquence of their example, these four composers have taught me that one’s time of life does not dictate one’s capacity for creativity. At every age, we should remain stubbornly dissatisfied, always pushing the frontiers of what we-and the music itself-can contribute to the world. In sharing this lesson with me, these four giants have liberated my American voice.
-Stephen Powell