Chamber Music Piano

SKU: PR.140401310

Composed by Nora Holt. Edited by Lara Downes. Sws. Score. 8 pages. Duration 2 minutes. Theodore Presser Company #140-40131. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.140401310).

ISBN 9781491134153. UPC: 680160684250. 9 x 12 inches. Key: G major.

NORA’S DANCE is a jazz-influenced rag from 1921, and among the only surviving compositions by Nora Douglas Holt. A charming and exciting work rejuvenated by Lara Downes’ 2021 recording for the Rising Sun label, the rag is both a fun 2 minutes for pianists and audiences, and also a fascinating time capsule. Composed several years after Scott Joplin’s death, and several years before the Charleston pervaded popular music, NORA’S DANCE blossoms with the energy and jazz harmony starting to emerge as The Roaring 20’s, using ragtime and stride as the seed for pianistic style.
My own life in music has been driven by a quest to find strong female role models, trails to follow, shoulders to stand on. In Nora Douglas Holt, I find an inspiring example of creativity, independence, and resilience – with a dash of troublemaking. She was a free spirit, a force of nature, and she lived a fascinating and eventful life on her own terms. She reinvented herself through five marriages and at least as many careers. From her beginnings at the piano at age four, she explored many avenues of musical expression – performing, composing, music journalism, broadcasting, teaching – all with inventiveness, style, and zeal.She made the most of the Roaring ’20s, as an artist, socialite, jetsetter, muse, and patroness of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1921 she started an independent arts journal called “Music and Poetry,” where the charming piano solo Nora’s Dance was first published. I think the piece captures beautifully, in a little under 2 minutes, the energy and excitement of those heady years.In 1926, Nora left New York to travel the world, performing in nightclubs throughout Europe and Asia. She put her belongings in storage before she left, and when she came back she discovered that many of her things had been stolen, including more than 200 of her musical compositions. She never composed again.When the Depression hit, she moved out to Los Angeles, where she studied music education at USC, taught music in the LA public schools, and opened her own beauty salon. She returned to New York in the ’40s and worked as a music critic for several major newspapers, then launched yet another career, this time in broadcasting. Her popular radio concert series “Nora Holt’s Concert Showcase” broadcast to New York’s classical music audience, with a focus on Black composers and performers.Ahead of her time, larger than life, full of ideas…. I am so pleased to introduce you to the feisty and free spirited Nora Douglas Holt!

Piano

SKU: FG.55011-456-2

Composed by Esa Pietila. Fennica Gehrman #55011-456-2. Published by Fennica Gehrman (FG.55011-456-2).

ISBN 9790550114562.

Three Strides of Light is inspired by the light and its behaviour in different circumstances, appearances and surroundings. The work is in three movements, but they are played together attacca.

The first movement starts off with a headstrong theme on the left hand. This motif has persistent momentum, like a train, and one could think of it as the rays of a setting sun. The beams are straight and relentlessly penetrate our eyes. The seven-bar repetition on the left hand supports this mental image, until the repetition ends and a new thematically central motive starts to emerge, bringing new kind of texture for the last rays and dance of the setting sun. At the end, the light vanishes into the night.

Second movemement, slow rubato, depicts the first rays of the rising sun, they drop behind a morning cloud into the day, growing, developing and becoming yet faster. Eventually the day opens up in all of it sunny glory. The music leads us towards the third movement, in which one bathes in the rays of the sun. The repetative motive of the first movement returns, but by now it has been transformed into something else. A pensive quintuplet-passage emerges, paving ground for the final themes of the work. The ending of the work is thick in sound, depicting the relentless glare of the sun and the heat sun creates. Within the entire work, one can imagine to have gone through a whole 24-hour period on the sea, in which the three strides of light are apparent in different parts of the day.

Written by Amanda Vick Lethco, Morton Manus, Willard A. Palmer. Instructional book (spiral bound) and accompaniment CD for piano. With introductory text, instructional text, standard notation and fingerings. Series: Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course. 144 pages. Published by Alfred Publishing.

(Volumes 1-5, Complete) Written by Kenneth Baker. For piano. Format: instructional book. With standard notation, chord names, lyrics, instructional text, illustrations, fingerings and pull-out keyboard chart. Learn to play. 240 pages. 9x12 inches. Published by Music Sales.

(for the Young Beginner) Written by Nancy Faber, Randall Faber. Instructional book for piano. 72 pages. Published by The FJH Music Company.