New Piano Pieces Reveal Roots of American Music

Each composer was given only a theme—American Vernacular—and free rein to steer that theme in whatever direction he felt inspired to take it. The result was a collection of sometimes wild, sometimes witty piano pieces whose inspirations that range from imitations of steel-string guitar finger-picking style of the 1920s to reminiscences of Billy Joel’s pop style of the Seventies. Nicholas Phillips will be at the piano to describe and play some of the pieces that resulted from his call to write music in the American Vernacular.