Reverie

NOTES (FROM REVERIE CD BOOKLET) 'This CD owes a lot to a rekindled interest in jazz. I had the privilege to work with Bill Warfield who wrote a jazz tone poem Beneath the Stacks back in 2000-2001. The show was performed in a collaboration with The Yellow Jackets, and, although I felt like a fish out of water---I am really a concert pianist---my interest in the whole notion of jazz was awakened. It turned out that my piano technician Chris Solliday owned and ran the Jazz venue The Deer Head Inn in the Delaware Water Gap. I subsequently played there a couple of times, trying out some ideas borrowed from the jazz realm. This Reverie CD was recorded in the afterglow of these events, in one late-night session in Baker Hall in the Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University. The idea was to see what happens when subjecting classical works to a jazz improv treatment. I knew they would not sound like 'jazz' to the Jazz world, but I was itching to have the freedom to offer my personal takes on these works, using my classical background, but with an approach borrowed from Jazz. If you hear Coltrane play Summertime, you expect it to be vastly different from the original. This freedom is seldom experienced in the classical music field today, although the ability to improvise was considered a requirement for performers through most of music history. Out of that session some new material emerged which is not jazz at all, but which is included on the CD to keep the night's train of thought somewhat authentic. I was drawn to works I had recently played or had students work on around the time of the recording. The whole recording was improvised without much planning, to keep inspiration fresh. If it sounds nocturnal, it's because much of it was recorded between 11pm and 4am.' (E. A., 11/06) ARTIST BIO Award-winning artist Eugene Albulescu has performed and recorded on 4 continents. A New Zealand pianist of Romanian origin, Mr. Albulescu currently lives in the US. His emergence on the international scene came in 1994, when his debut recording (Albulescu Plays Liszt, MANU1446) earned him the Grand Prix du Disque Liszt, awarded for the best Liszt recording of the year, adding Albulescu's name to that of legendary recipients such as Horowitz and Brendel. Since then, Mr. Albulescu has maintained a successful career in the United States and abroad, having appeared at prestigious piano series such as Viva Piano in Auckland, the Dame Myra Hess in Chicago, as well as Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Noted critic Harold Schonberg praised Eugene Albulescu in the American Record Guide, for his 'power, and infallible fingers of steel', declaring that 'nothing, anywhere has any terrors for him'. Albulescu appeared in New York at BargeMusic in 1996, and later gave his Carnegie Hall Debut in the Stern Auditorium in 2001, performing the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Orchestra of St Peter. He gained national recognition in the US with broadcasts on several classical stations, as well as on NPR's Performance Today. His outreach in over 100 US high schools with a program entitled 'Inside the Piano' linking technology and creativity earn him coverage from the major media, including articles in the Washington Post, Philadelphia Enquirer, as well as the cover of Clavier Magazine. He currently a Professor of Practice at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, PA.