Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Anthony Rzewski is an American composer and virtuoso pianist. He attended Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt. In 1960, he went to Italy, a trip which was formative in his future musical development. In addition to studying with Luigi Dallapiccola, he began a career as a performer of new piano music, often with an improvisatory element. A few years later he was a co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum. Musica Elettronica Viva conceived music as a collective, collaborative process, with improvisation and live electronic instruments prominently featured. Many of Rzewski's works are inspired by secular and socio-historical themes, show a deep political concience and feature improvisational elements.
Frederic Anthony Rzewski is an American composer and virtuoso pianist. He attended Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt. In 1960, he went to Italy, a trip which was formative in his future musical development. In addition to studying with Luigi Dallapiccola, he began a career as a performer of new piano music, often with an improvisatory element. A few years later he was a co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum. Musica Elettronica Viva conceived music as a collective, collaborative process, with improvisation and live electronic instruments prominently featured. Many of Rzewski's works are inspired by secular and socio-historical themes, show a deep political concience and feature improvisational elements.
Nonsequiturs: Writings & Lectures on Improvisation, Composition and Interpretation (Book)
English-German edition, 576 pages (!) collection of writings about ideas concerning music by American composer Frederic Rzewski (April 13, 1938 – June 26, 2021) considered to be one of the most important American composer-pianists of his time. Rzewsk…
Speaking Rzewski
"This album is the result of years of work and friendship with the composer. It started with De Profundis, a piece which has had a deep impact on me as a musician and a person, and ended with it. Frederic attended many of my performances of the piece…
Spectral Malsconcities
The evolution of the string quartet repertory has accelerated during the last half of the twentieth-century and beyond as composers from both the mainstream and the avant-garde have mined its seemingly inexhaustible creative resources. This CD featur…
Which Side Are You On?
The first woman to record Frederic Rzewski's setting of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, Bang on a Can/Steve Reich pianist Lisa Moore sheds powerful new light on Wilde's jailhouse meditation on imprisonment, debasement, and the barriers that he faced as a…
8 duos
Born in 1934, Christian Wolff is the last surviving member of the group of composers that also included Morton Feldman and Earle Brown, which gathered around John Cage in New York in the 1950s. Wolff's own music has remained faithful to that Cageian …
The People United Will Never Be Defeated
Frederic Rzewski’s work “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” is based on the Chilean protest song, “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!,” written by Sergio Ortega a few months before Pinochet’s military coup in September of 1973.Frederic Rzews…