Jeremy Denk’s profound encounter with ‘crazy uncle’ Charles Ives at 92nd & Lex
Jeremy Denk, pianoall photos: Joseph Sinnott for 92nd St Y Jeremy Denk, one of our leading classical pianists, winner of a MacArthur fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, originally dismissed the gnarly genius Charles Ives as “the crazy uncle of American music, weaving familiar tunes—hymns, ragtime, marches—into unsettling quilts.” But over time Denk has evolved ...
Juan de Marcos’s Afro-Cuban beat to pulsate The Soraya
Cuban music has tantalized and insinuated itself into the United States since the 19th Century. New Orleans-born composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869) was smitten with the Cuban tresillo, cinquillo and habanera, and incorporated those elements into his compositions. Ragtime pianists were subsequently taken with what Jelly Roll Morton called “the Spanish tinge.” Then came the ...