Duets for Solo Piano: Casey Sokol

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

Saturday November 26, 2016 at 8 pm
PWYC but please reserve seats at info@gallery345.com
Book Launch: “Covering Oli” based on the tunes of Oliver Schroer
These compositions are not conceived as “settings” of Oliver’s melodies, nor are they piano transcriptions of Oliver’s arrangements. While there is a range of compositional approaches, none of the pieces goes so far as to deconstruct and alter his wonderful melodies in order to form new phrases, motives, or new structures. While the right hand occasionally adds another voice to the tune, the melody is presented as Oli wrote it; the newly minted left hand is my own. But this addition began to be more than merely an inventive or tasteful support for the melody. I felt the left hand to be a kind of rejoinder: an opportunity to respond to Oli’s creativity with something equally and independently creative. So, these are, in a sense, duets. When I play them it feels like playing a duet with Oli:
he in the left brain | me in the right.
Casey Sokol is a pianist and an inveterate musical explorer. He has performed classical and contemporary chamber music and improvised music in a variety of styles, collaborating with such groups as the York Winds, Canadian Contemporary Music Collective (CCMC), and Sound Pressure. He has toured extensively as a soloist and ensemble player in Europe and North America. Venues have included the Pro Musica Nova Festival, Bremen; O Kanada Festival, Berlin; Avignon Festival; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival; Expo ’86 in Vancouver; and others in Europe, the USA, and Japan.
Casey has also directed and composed extensively for dance and theatre productions and has produced a number of large-scale musical presentations. His creative collaborations include the conception and production of Cagewake, a music-circus with 150 performers marking the passing of the composer John Cage, and an adaptation of the medieval mystery play, The Clown of God, with New York director Andre Serban. He produced and co-directed the North American premiere of The Great Learning, Cornelius Cardew’s epic setting of the text by Confucius. With Tokyo’s UNO Man Butoh Company, he composed and produced a multimedia performance of a multi-lingual Renga (a poetic collaboration based on a medieval Japanese tradition).
Casey’s performances, improvisations and arrangements have been recorded on twelve LPs and an equal number of CDs, and have been broadcast widely on Canadian, European, American and Japanese radio and television. He is a founding member of Toronto’s Music Gallery. He has been teaching piano, improvisation and musicianship in York University’s Music Department since 1971. In 2001 he received an OCUFA Award for Excellence in Teaching

Source: Whats on Toronto original article at Duets for Solo Piano: Casey Sokol