Awadagin Pratt Releases 'Still Point' (single) via New Amsterdam Records

Internationally acclaimed pianist Awadagin Pratt has released 'Still Point', composed by Judd Greenstein, the second single from his upcoming album STILLPOINT, a collection of six newly-commissioned works of profound grace, power, and depth, composed by a group of stylistically diverse composers for piano (Pratt), string orchestra (A Far Cry), and vocal ensemble (Roomful of Teeth) which releases on August 25, 2023 via New Amsterdam Records.

"Still Point is a profoundly moving work that touched me from the first moment of seeing and playing through the score," says Pratt. "It is an accomplishment to produce music at once beautiful and transcendent, as well as something American and universal."

'Still Point' represents a musical synthesis between Awadagin Pratt's prowess at the piano, the warmth and virtuosity omnipresent within A Far Cry's artistry, and Roomful of Teeth's limitless palette of vocal colors. Composer Judd Greenstein masterfully balances what he calls "a counterpoint between movement and stasis" as he introduces and grows new themes that constantly push the music from serene and intimate silences to shifting collages of textures, interweaving melodies, and ever-growing heights.

Listen to the single: https://awadaginpratt.bandcamp.com/track/still-point-composed-by-judd-greenstein
Listen to the album: https://awadaginpratt.bandcamp.com/album/stillpoint

About 'Still Point' (single)

Pianist Awadagin Pratt tells us:
"Still Point is a profoundly moving work that touched me from the first moment of seeing and playing through the score. There is something about it that captures the stillness, stasis, and ecstatic quality that one can imagine would come from dancing in that still point. it relates perfectly to the Eliot lines.

There's also something distinctly open-spaces-Americana in the sound, in the captivating tune that at some point the piano has in soliloquy. This kind of moment struck me as though Judd captured something of the America of our time, our Aaron Copland. It is an accomplishment to produce music at once beautiful and transcendent, as well as something American and universal."

Composer Judd Greenstein tells us:
"Still Point began with the idea of oscillation, springing from Eliot's vivid, mysterious imagery, I played through dozens (hundreds?) of chords on the piano before finding the two that "needed," in my ear, to move back and forth between each other. At the same time that the piano articulates this simple motion, the strings introduce the idea of stillness and motion being conjoined into a single concept through playing and singing repeated notes while changing the "shape" of their sound. Eventually, Awadagin's chords begin to form a progression, and all these materials become the basis of much of the piece's forward motion, a counterpoint between movement and stasis. As new melodic materials enter, they begin to suggest a new direction: this is the dance, and that is where the piece arrives.

Somewhere amid writing this work, my first "piano concerto" of any kind, I realized that a new spirit had entered my process. It was the remembered spirit of the great pianist and composer McCoy Tyner, one of my musical heroes. Tyner died just as Covid was shutting down the world, and I never properly grieved his passing. This work therefore contains many spirits: Tyner's, Eliot's, those of A Far Cry and Roomful of Teeth (two of my favorite ensembles), and of course Awadagin's, whose towering musical presence is at the center of this work, and this project. Still Point is dedicated to Awadagin, in memoriam McCoy Tyner, in friendship and with great admiration and respect."

About STILLPOINT

STILLPOINT is a testament to the collective creativity and musical exploration that defines the genre-fluid landscape. It was born from a transformative encounter between Pratt and composer Judd Greenstein In 2016 when Pratt and Greenstein were invited by Executive Producer Mark Rabideau to serve as adjudicators for a chamber ensemble contest that sought to re-imagine the long established, genre-specific norms of classical music. This encounter ignited Pratt's curiosity, leading him to reimagine his artistic journey. To bring this vision to fruition Pratt engaged composers Alvin Singleton, Jessie Montgomery, Judd Greenstein, Paola Prestini, Pēteris Vasks, and Tyshawn Sorey to compose works for Awadagin in combination with the eight-part amplified vocal ensemble, Roomful of Teeth and the conductorless string orchestra, A Far Cry.

STILLPOINT takes inspiration from T.S. Eliot's profound poem, The Four Quartets:

"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance."

Driven by his love for literature and poetry, Pratt chose these lines as a means for exploring the truth and beauty found within Burnt Norton through its sibling universe in music.

"These lines have meant a lot to me over the years. A great expression of a particular kind of tension, an understanding of a duality that can exist in life, the struggle for balance, and an acknowledgement of the inexpressible-that which cannot be tidily communicated. The magical, musical first stanza completely captures the manner in which music is heard: its linearity and its potential for entropy in the same moment.

And in this stanza, Eliot offers the tension of seemingly diametrically opposed energies of dance and stillness, not only coexisting but doing so symbiotically. There is so much life in these thoughts, so much to contemplate, and explore that I thought it would serve as a great launching point for a project of this magnitude."

Pratt believes that artists have the power to build worlds that connect people with the essence of truth and beauty. Through STILLPOINT, Pratt invites listeners to immerse themselves in a musical universe that explores that which is most fundamental to the human experience: a desire to feel connected to something true and beautiful, something timeless and of-the-moment.

Track Listing

1. Rounds [composed by Jessie Montgomery]
2. Code [composed by Paola Prestini]
3. Time Past, Time Future [composed by Alvin Singleton]
4. Castillo Interior [composed by Pēteris Vasks]
5. Untitled Composition for Piano and Eight Voices [composed by Tyshawn Sorey]
6. Still Point [composed by Judd Greenstein]

Album Credits

Executive Producer: Mark Rabideau
Producers: Mark Rabideau, Judd Greenstein, Jesse Lewis
Recording Engineer: Francisco Gonzalez Navarro
Engineering Assistant: Christopher Moretti
Editing Engineers: Christopher Moretti, Shauna Barravecchio
Mixing Engineer: Jesse Lewis
Mastering Engineers: Christopher Moretti, Shauna Barravecchio

Piano: Awadagin Pratt
Composers: Alvin Singleton, Jessie Montgomery, Judd Greenstein, Paola Prestini, Pēteris Vasks, Tyshawn Sorey

Sponsors: ArtsWave Cincinnati, Art of the Piano Foundation, Yamaha
License agreement for use of T.S. Eliot poetry: Faber & Faber Limited

Roomful of Teeth:
Estelí Gomez, Mingjia Chen, Eliza Bagg, Virginia Kelsey, Steven Bradshaw, Avery Griffin, Thann Scoggin, Cameron Beauchamp

A Far Cry:
Alex Fortes, Annie Rabbat, Caitlin Lynch, Celia Hatton, Francesca McNeeley, Gabriela Díaz, Hannah Collins, Jae Cosmos Lee, Jason Fisher, Jesse Irons, Lizzie Burns, Megumi Stohs Lewis, Michael Unterman, Miki Cloud, Rafi Popper-Keizer, Sarah Darling, Zenas Hsu

Artist Biographies

Awadagin Pratt - pianist, pedagogue, conductor, and curator-of-artistic-moments - is actively inventing the musical world he hopes to live in as. And you're invited.

Launched onto the international stage after winning the prestigious Naumburg International Piano Competition (1992) and conferred as an artist-to-be-reckoned-with when awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant (1994), early reviews rightfully hinted that "surprise seems to be the one constant in recitals by the extravagantly gifted, young American pianist, Awadagin Pratt." (Daniel Cariaga, Los Angeles Times)

Hailed by the Washington Post for his "forceful, imaginative and precisely tinted performance," Awadagin's resumé includes appearances at addresses as familiar as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (at the invitation of the Clinton and Obama administrations) and Sesame Street (at the invitation of Big Bird). His breakneck schedule includes engagements with the Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis Symphony Orchestras, solo recitals at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center, and chamber music collaborations with Zuill Bailey, Simone Dinnerstein, and the Harlem Quartet.

Awadagin, in equal measure, spends his time studying and creating definitive performances of existing repertory, including Johann Sebastian Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C, minor, BWV 582, Franz Liszt's Funerailles (Harmonies Poetiques Et Religieuses, No. VII), and Florence Price's Piano Concerto in One Movement, and ushering new works into the canon.

Between performances at the piano, Awadagin maintains a bustling conducting career, including recent appearances with the Vancouver (WA), Winston-Salem, and Santa Fe symphonies, Porgy and Bess with the Greensboro (NC) Opera, and a concert featuring the music of jazz great Ornette Coleman with Bang on a Can at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

But Awadagin's creativity cannot be confined to the stage alone. After witnessing the public, televised execution of George Floyd, he published a podcast that he later moved to a multi-media staged performance. Awadagin Pratt: Black in America infuses music composed for and performed by Awadagin, still and moving pictures by filmmaker Alrick Brown, and an original authored and delivered narration, while capturing the complexities of America's original sin by chronicling his life from his time as a music student at the Peabody Conservatory through his ascent to international acclaim through graphic accounts of police stops for Driving While Black. In 2023, AP: BIA was produced as a PBS documentary that aired to more than 1,000,000 households.

Awadagin's commitment to ushering in the next generation of agile, creative, and inventive pianists is evidenced by his work as founding director of the Next Generation Festival, Art of the Piano Festival, and the Nina Simone Piano Competition. He is the Artistic Director of the World Piano Competition (Cincinnati, OH), and has adjudicated the Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition (Israel), Cleveland International Piano Competition, Minnesota e-Competition, the Unisa International Piano Competition (Pretoria, South Africa), and the International Competition for Young Pianists created in memory of Vladimir Horowitz (Kyiv, Ukraine). He is Professor of Music at the San Francisco Conservatory and teaches at the Eastern Music Festival in summers. Awadagin remains the only graduate of the Peabody Institute to earn Performance Certificates in violin, piano, and conducting, has received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Johns Hopkins, and an Honorary Doctorate from Illinois Wesleyan University.

Here's what you might not know about Awadagin. His greatest passions include smoking meats while entertaining friends, tasting wine from cellars rare and beautiful, and traveling the world to sample menus from restaurants that boast of James Beard Awards and the best local barbeque. Ayrton is the name of his favorite Formula One race car driver and his beloved son.

Roomful of Teeth is a Grammy winning vocal band dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice. By engaging collaboratively with artists, thinkers, and community leaders from around the world, the group seeks to uplift and amplify voices old and new while creating and performing meaningful and adventurous music.

Founded in 2009 by Brad Wells, the band was incubated at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts, where members studied with some of the world's most extraordinary singers and teachers. Through experimentation, exploration, and plenty of failure, the group learned that the boundaries of the human voice are never what they seem, that rules can be bent, even broken, and perhaps they should be.

Through their unique collaborative process, Roomful of Teeth has worked with many of today's most compelling musical creators to build a significant and continuously growing repertoire. They have collaborated with a wide range of artists and ensembles spanning genres and artforms.

As the world rapidly changes, Roomful of Teeth is cultivating deeper relationships with technology, continuing to expand the capabilities of the human voice, aiming to be unburdened by physical limitations. They are excited about new collaborative projects that are focused on the stories of place, home, and community in the diverse environments our planet has provided. They explore these boundaries with passionate curiosity, contagious enthusiasm, and deep gratitude.

Called a "world-wide phenomenon" by Boston's WBUR, A Far Cry has nurtured a distinct approach to music-making since its founding in 2007. The self-conducted orchestra is a democracy in which decisions are made collectively and leadership rotates among the players ("Criers"). This structure has led to consistently thoughtful, innovative programming - and impactful collaborations with celebrated performers and composers. A Far Cry has risen to the top of Billboard's Traditional Classical Chart, been named Boston's best classical ensemble by The Improper Bostonian, and celebrated two Grammy nominations for its Visions and Variations. Boston Musical Intelligencer sums up the group: "This conductor-free ensemble has earned and sustained a reputation for top-drawer playing, engrossing programming, and outstanding guest artists."

Described as "joyfully musician-led" by the Boston Globe, the group's democratic spirit has been in overdrive in recent seasons. As The Arts Fuse stated this past season, "As is the norm with this group and their selections, everything somehow connects - and on multiple levels." In the season ahead, this connectivity is central, with programs exploring home and sense of place, love, and purposeful interaction. A Far Cry seeks to do its part in reinforcing the idea of a "world that listens."

About New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam is a Brooklyn-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit artist's service organization dedicated to supporting new music by composers and performers whose work transcends traditional and outdated genre distinctions. The label's artists have won numerous awards and accolades, including two Grammy Awards, seventeen Grammy nominations, and a Pulitzer Prize. New Amsterdam has also curated and presented more than 500 live concerts of groundbreaking new music. In recent years, the label embarked on a partnership with Nonesuch Records, seeing the release of approximately three albums per year to support contemporary American composers in realizing ambitious creative projects.

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