Description

Energetic rhythms seasoned with Afrodiasporic syncopations dance around the pulse.

Name: Samantha Ege - Maestra (CD)
SKU: WEEC653995
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.8 (259 reviews)

Maestra follows Ege”s previous recordings on the Lorelt label included Homage (2022), Black Renaissance Woman (2022), and Fantasie Nègre (2021). Odaline de la Martinez”s label Lorelt releases an album Maestra with pianist and academic Samantha Ege featuring the premiere recording of Julia Perry”s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in Two Uninterrupted Speeds on Perry”s birthday (1924-1979). The album with Lontano conducted by Odaline de la Martinez also includes Ege performing Concerto for Piano and Strings by Doreen Carwithen (1922-2003), the pioneering film composer in the male dominated movie industry and an English contemporary of Perry. Ege commented on Perry”s piano concerto: ”Note how her concerto is not in two movements, but in two speeds, as if she is playing with spacetime. The first speed, ”Slow,” is, as Maestra Martinez calls it, ”celestial.” merging out of a haze of strings and winds, the piano”s opening solo unfolds. The irregular time signatures evoke a suspended temporality. But the second speed, ”Fast,” brings us back down to earth. Energetic rhythms seasoned with Afrodiasporic syncopations dance around the pulse. Here, the piano cadenzas are more virtuosic, as you might expect to hear in a more conventional concerto (like Doreen Carwithen”s). But Perry is experimenting more with colour than technique; the pianist must paint rather than play.”