Pianist-composer, Richard Cameron-WolfePianist-composer Richard Cameron-Wolfe will embark upon a multi-city Russian
concert tour this autumn between October 10 and November 9, performing a
program entitled A Rainbow of American Piano Music with repertoire
including three native-born composers Charles Griffes, William Flanagan,
and Charles Ives; plus three migr American composers Leo Ornstein
(Ukraine), Dane Rudhyar (France), and Thomas de Hartmann (Russia).
Cities thusfar confirmed for Cameron-Wolfes tour are Nizhny Novgorod (as part of the Glinka Conservatory's 65th anniversary celebrations),
Astrakhan, Novosibirsk, Omsk, and Moscow.
In addition to performing, Cameron-Wolfe will be lecturing on
American music and attending performances of his compositions. In Nizhny
Novgorod (called Gorky during the Soviet era), a new arrangement of his
2009 work Roerich Rhapsody will be premiered, in a version for cello and
bayan (the Russian button accordion).
In Astrakhan, his flute and piano
composition Lapis Lazuli will have its first performance outside the
United States.
Cameron-Wolfes lecture will include composers Edward MacDowell,
Charles Ives, Charles Griffes, Henry Cowell, Aaron Copland, Ruth Crawford
(Seeger), Harry Partch, Elliott Carter, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Milton
Babbitt, Morton Feldman, George Crumb, Morton Subotnick, Terry Riley, and Charles Wuorinen. (A follow-up lecture, featuring more
recent composers, is scheduled for 2012.)
In May of this year, Cameron-Wolfe previewed his piano concert in
Zhitomir, Ukraine at the third annual Musical Spring Festival. His most
recent composition, Lilith, for violin and piano, had its world premiere
at the Festival, in a concert at the Soviet Museum of Cosmonautics. What an
honor that was, commented the composer, hearing my music in a museum
dedicated to space exploration, with a sputnik and satellite prototypes
suspended above the musicians!