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Ian Pace – recitals in Canterbury, Graz, Austria and in York Late Music Festival

City University Music Lecturer and Head of Performance Ian Pace gave several recitals in Graz, Austria in February 2015, as part of the impuls festival there. These included performances of Richard Barrett’s lost (2004), commissioned by and written for Ian Pace, Chaya Czernowin’s fardanceCLOSE (2012), and also performances with German bass Andreas Fischer of Czernowin’s algae (2009), which Fischer and Pace commissioned and of which they gave the world premiere in the TRANSIT Festival in Leuven, Belgium, in 2009. During impuls, Ian Pace also gave a range of piano masterclasses and took part in a round table with Austrian composer Klaus Lang on the subject of whether nineteenth-century conceptions of artists and artistry had an adverse effect upon musical life today.

Prior to this, Ian gave a recital at Canterbury Christ Church University on February 9th, featuring works of Lauren Redhead (both written for and premiered by Pace), Czernowin, Barrett, Stockhausen, Finnissy and Gershwin/Earl Wild. He also gave extended composition workshops and piano masterclasses there.

On Saturday, March 7th, Ian returns to the York Late Music Festival, to which he has been a regular visitor since 2002, for a concert exploring miniatures for piano, including works of Schumann, Schoenberg, Ligeti, Kurtág, Judith Weir and James Dillon, as well as premieres of new works written for the occasion by Edd Caine and Steve Crowther.

Major Performances from Ian Pace during Summer 2013

Following appearances earlier in the year in the UK, France, Germany, Austria, and Portugal, Ian Pace gave a series of important concerts during the Summer of 2013. First of these was a recital at the York Late Music Festival on August 3rd, dedicated to the 75th birthday of American composer Frederic Rzewski, with whom Ian has worked extensively in the past and from whom he has premiered several works. This concert included the world premiere of his new piano work Illusions perdues as part of the first complete performance of the cycle Dreams, as well as the world premiere of Rzewski’s Four Hands, given by Ian and the composer. The concert also featured new commissions from Jake Wilson, James Whittle, and Sadie Harrison. A review of the concert can be read here, and a video of the performance of the Whittle can be viewed here.

In September Ian was resident pianist and director of the piano classes at the Akademie für Neue Musik in Munich, where he gave a major recital on the 12th featuring music of Pascal Dusapin, Marco Stroppa, Michael Jarrell and Wolfgang Rihm. And on September 20th, he gave a recital in Florence, as part of the Firenze Suona Contemporanea, featuring music of Brian Ferneyhough, Fabricio Filidei, Patrícia Sucena Almeida (the premiere of the new version of her Reditus ad Vitam, which Ian premiered in Coimbra in January 2013, now together with film), Lauren Redhead, Jarrell and Beat Furrer. A review by Lauren Redhead of the concert can be read here.

On Friday October 11th Ian will be giving a concert of operatic transcriptions by Liszt, Thalberg, Tausig, Busoni, Grainger, Gershwin, Earl Wild and Michael Finnissy. Full details can be found here.

 Ian’s personal website (new and currently still in the process of being updated) is here and his personal blog, ‘Desiring Progress’, is here.