Member Since: 12/09/2005
Band Members: Steven Niles, piano and harpsichord
Influences: Thank you for visiting my Myspace music page. I hope you enjoy the recordings currently posted, and invite you to return and listen to new ones, which I will continue to add frequently.My studies at the University of Southern California recently culminated in a Doctorate of Musical Arts with a major in piano performance, marking the conclusion of a ten-year period of instruction with pianist Daniel Pollack. I pursued doctoral minor fields of Historical Musicology under the guidance of Bruce Alan Brown, Music Education with an emphasis on the use of technology in teaching, and Harpsichord Performance with Lucinda Carver.While I am interested in many types of music, I have a particular affinity for the works of under-represented masters, such as the forgotten treasures of the early American composer Reinagle, the beautifully simple and unpretentious miniatures of Germaine Tailleferre, the Sonatas of Vincent Persichetti, which have been overlooked despite their marvelous wit, humor, and compositional economy, and the poignant, powerful works of contemporary composer Chris Dench and his colleagues in the school of New Complexity, whose music is under-learned by performers probably due to an impression of particular technical difficulty, whether valid or not.The study of historic tunings is one of my favorite topics in musicology, and I attempt to integrate my ongoing research in this field into my performances whenever possible. I tune the harpsichords on which I perform to the historically appropriate tunings relative to the repertoire played, and normally tune my own piano to Kirnberger III, a good all purpose temperament that effectively demonstrates the unique characteristics of each key.Purely for my own pleasure, I have recently begun expanding my repertoire to encompass the literature of Jazz, which I play from transcriptions. Some of my favorites among the many great composers of Jazz music include Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Keith Jarret, Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner, and Clare Fischer.
Type of Label: Major