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Topic: Matthew Lewis "Ballade"  (Read 1414 times)

Offline avguste

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Matthew Lewis "Ballade"
on: July 26, 2009, 04:58:53 PM
During the recital at the University of Miami, in addition of the 2 world premieres,I performed
"Ballade" written by Matthew Lewis

The bio of Matthew Lewis is

Born in 1979,Matthew Lewis began studying music between the ages of 5 and a half to 6 years old. While growing up, he performed in several piano competitons as well as a few compostition competitions. At the age of 17, he recieved second place in a Texas state composition competition.

At the time,he did not think this to be a big deal until he found out that he had been competing against a large number of other pieces and he realized that he had not recieved any compositional training as of yet. This is when Matthew Lewis realized that it might be a good idea to major in composition. He learned of Ouachita Baptist University from a former piano teacher who obtained a job there. Under her advice, he entered the Ouachita Baptist University in the fall of 1999 as a composition major under Dr. Patrick Houlihan. In 2005 he received the degree from Ouachita and since then has been working as a pianist and arranger at various churches.

Currently Matthew Lewis teaches piano and some composition at the Master's Touch School of Music in Grapevine, Tx where he met the concert pianist Avguste Antonov.
Matthew Lewis lives with his amazing wife in North Richland Hills.


The program notes for the composition are:

" The idea for Ballade came from several things all at once; I needed a solo piano piece for my senior composition recital; My former piano teacher lived nearby and said she would perform a piece in my recital.The last influence was that I wanted to experiment with 2 different keys( C major and cmin) at the same time while retaining several traditional aspects, such as a strong tonal center and not so much dissonance as to annoy the listener. However, I also had to meet the requirements of the composition department which says that modern music should sound... well... modern. I have always preferred the romantic era myself, so I tried to duplicate that feel while incorporating aspects that assure the listener this was composed today. Those aspects include changing meter and dissonances that can be rather harsh, but tend to resolve in a traditional fashion. The form is more or less an ABA' with the tension building throughout the B section until it climaxes and we hear only a brief return of A at the end."

Mr Matthew Lewis is currently writing a piano piece for me,with the world premiere scheduled for this fall.
Avguste Antonov
Concert Pianist / Professor of Piano
avgusteantonov.com

Offline ted

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Re: Matthew Lewis "Ballade"
Reply #1 on: July 30, 2009, 09:04:13 AM
This is a very attractive piece, beautifully played. It sounds as though it could have arisen directly from improvisation because of its spontaneous effect, although a second listening does reveal a coherence which belies this impression. Its effect for me is pastoral; there is much of the landscape in it, although this might be my overactive imagination.

There is so much beautiful piano music being written at the present time. Thank you for posting it for us.
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." - James Joyce
 

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