Cellist Aron Zelkowicz is the founder and director of the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival which presents rare and diverse works from Jewish musical traditions. In his new album with pianist Christina Wright-Ivanova, Zelkowicz presents late 20th and early 21st century works by six American composers—Carter Pann, Gabriela Lena Frank, Kevin Puts, Margaret Bonds, Stacy Garrop, and Stephen Paulus. Though quintessentially American in spirit, the repertoire is as diverse as the men and women who composed them. Drawing from influences as disparate as the blues, jazz, Broadway, gospel, folksong and the wild west, these ‘American vignettes’ merge popular idioms into a new canon of the repertoire for cello and piano. Three works on this album are receiving their premiere commercial recording and are new to the WFMT library.
American Vignettes: Contemporary Works for Cello and Piano
A delightful entry point for those unfamiliar with these American composers. All the music beyond Bonds’s well-known Troubled Water (which receives a heartfelt performance) will likely be new to you. My favorite discovery is the album’s title piece by one of the elder statesmen of American music, the late Stephen Paulus. His free-wheeling paraphrases of tunes from the American West cleverly capture their original spirit through a modern musical prism.
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