This is part of our composer series on Ryan Francis. In this post, Ryan talks about his new piano concerto, the featured work in Metropolis Ensemble’s upcoming concert Loop.
Composed concurrently to his Piano Etudes, Ryan Francis’s Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra brings together two creative directions that he has been pursuing in his music. One is a post-minimalistic style driven by rhythmic relationships within a simple, diatonic harmonic scheme, exemplified by Remix for violin and piano. Straights of Anian represents the other, post-spectralist style, evoked through coloristic texture and less concerned with metric rhythm. In the Concerto, the solo piano and chamber ensemble engage in an intimate and dynamic dialogue, as in Luciano Berio’s Points on the Curve to Find.
Music credits: Luciano Berio, Concerto II (Echoing Curves), Andre Lucchesini piano, Luciano Berio, London Symphony Orchestra; Red Seal; B000003GAZ. Ryan Francis, Remix, Wayne Lee violin, Daniel Spiegel piano. Ryan Francis, Straights of Anian, Pacific Orchestra. Ryan Francis, Digital Sustain for Piano, (MIDI rendering). Special thanks to Ania Dabrowski.