By E. Quinn Evans Staff writer
Matthew Quayle, composer and pianist, will present a guest recital in Stretansky Concert Hall on March 9 at 7:30 pm. For the performance, Quayle will be accompanied by saxophonist Gail Levinsky.
The program consists of entirely novel music, the oldest piece composed in 2012, which “pays homage to the past in some way, but through a new sensibility,” Quayle said.
Commencing the recital, Quayle will perform two original solo piano pieces, the first of which is titled “Antiques” and was inspired by one of his favorite Baroque composers, Domenico Scarlatti. The second, “Winter Ballad,” he described as being more “introspective and Romantic.”
Also in the program is a piece composed by Caroline Shaw, who recently became the youngest individual to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
“This striking but enigmatic piece features a full quotation of a Chopin mazurka in its central section,” Quayle said.
A mazurka is an upbeat Polish folk dance in triple meter.
Levinsky will then perform a solo saxophone piece composed for her by Marilyn Shrude titled “Quiet Heart: A Kaddish.” The program will finish with a sonata composed by Quayle for pianist Jackie Edwards-Henry and Levinsky.
“Most of the piece is upbeat,” Quayle said. “It concludes with a slower movement subtitled for Paris, January 2015; it was composed in the shadow of the deadly shooting at the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo.”
Quayle’s diverse compositional repertoire contains everything from concert orchestral pieces to cabaret song cycles. When asked if he has a preference of compositional genres, Quayle answered that “both of these types of music present their own challenges and rewards” and that it is “hard to state a preference as a composer.”
Music was a large part of Quayle’s childhood, as both his parents and grandparents appreciated many genres and frequently had an album playing in the background.
Through both instruction from his grandmother and self-teaching, Quayle developed a penchant for piano by the age of seven. Reflecting on the encouragement from his family, he noted how his mother “had the foresight to hand [him] some staff paper around this time, and [he] began writing little pieces that resembled the piano music [he] was playing,” he said.
Because his composing and playing developed side-by-side, Quayle said that the “two activities have always gone hand in hand for [him],” and that he has “never thought of [himself] purely as a composer or as a pianist.”
