Image via Present Music
Pianist Cory Smythe dwells in a quantum dimension of music where old boundaries dissolve into uncertainty—where a wave can also be a particle, where jazz can be classical, improvisation can be compositional and old terms can never fit. Smythe is an esteemed figure in that dimension, receiving a Grammy for his collaboration with violinist Hilary Hahn and numerous commissions from around the world, including Milwaukee’s Present Music.
Smythe is returning to Milwaukee—virtually—as part of Present Music’s “Key of Now” keyboard series. As Present Music’s co-artistic director Eric Segnitz puts it, “the series opens up a whole new repertoire of fantastic modern composition to Milwaukee—much of it challenging our preconceptions of what ‘piano music’ really sounds like.”
Perhaps it’s the lingering pandemic, but Smythe’s program for “Key of Now” reverberates with melancholy. Included are Felix Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words” and Anthony Braxton’s Composition No. 1, described by Smythe as a work “of new and wondrous possibility, but I hear a kind of glacial blues in its slow harmonic rhythm.”
The theme continues through the program. “There are achingly beautiful moments in Nicole Mitchell's ‘Interdimensional Interplay,’ though this piece strikes me as the most playfully mercurial and transcendentally joyous of the bunch—perhaps because its video component is built around a brilliant flute performance by the composer herself,” Smythe says. “Threaded through are bits of a solo project I've been working on during the pandemic—a set of strange, bulbous, billowing, (maybe sculptural?) improvisations on the Jerome Kern-Otto Harbach song ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,’ a song about desire, self-deception and tragedy.”
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Although this concert will be pre-recorded from Smythe’s home, he will join via live, interactive Zoom Conference sessions, both before and after the streaming of his performance video. The chat will be moderated by Present Music co-artistic director David Bloom.
"In The Key of Now: Cory Smythe," 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 16. You can get ticket information here.
