Pianist Lara Downes, a 2016 Laureate of the Sphinx Organization Medals of Excellence Award, celebrates the release of her new album America Again, inspired by the Langston Hughes’ poem, “Let America Be America Again.” The album explores music that expresses different facets of the American dream and features music by composers including Duke Ellington, Lou Harrison, Morton Gould, Amy Beach, George Gershwin, Angélica Negrón, Dan Visconti, Leonard Bernstein, Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, Florence Price, Aaron Copland, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and more.
Lara Downes, Piano
(Photo: Shervin Lainez)
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“Deep River,” Op. 59, No. 10, by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
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Nocturne from Lonesome Roads, by Dan Visconti
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“Shenandoah” (arr. for piano), by Anonymous
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“At Sea” No. 3 from Poems of the Sea, by Ernest Bloch
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“I Loves You, Porgy,” by George Gershwin, arr. Nina Simone
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“American Caprice,” by Morton Gould
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“Gladiolus Rag,” by Scott Joplin