American pianist James Iman has signed up with Divine Art’s new music division, Métier Records, for three albums of modern and contemporary music. The first to appear, featuring works by Schoenberg, Boulez, Webern and Gilbert Amy, is likely to see release around April 2022 and is in fact a re-issue, having been previously released (for a short time only) by the now-defunct Belgian label ZeD in 2017. Divine Art CEO Stephen Sutton is delighted:

“We are absolutely thrilled to be working with an artist of James’s calibre. His championing of contemporary composers including those from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds is wonderful and fits perfectly with the ethos of the Métier label.”

The re-issue of this very fine debut album heralds two new recordings, to be made in the early months of 2022: the first will include Debussy’s Images, Donald Martino’s fantasies and Impromptus, and Jenny Beck’s Stand Still Here, while the second features the Sonata Op. 1 by Alban Berg, B for Sonata by Betsy Jonas, Ein Hauch van Unzelt II by Klaus Hüber and Morton Feldman’s Last Pieces.

The pianist has provided this note:

“I’ve always been drawn to the obscure. In some ways that might be why I pursued classical music in the first place—growing up in Appalachia, it wasn’t the most ubiquitous genre of music. It’s certainly why I’ve focused my efforts as a performer and researcher on the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It’s also at the heart of my first album.

Pierre Boulez is undeniably one of the most important and influential figures in twentieth century music. His Third Piano Sonata is one of the most significant contributions to the piano repertoire and because of its mobile structure, is one of the most important works in music history. It’s a work that I have played and lectured on for years, so I knew it had to be the nexus for the rest of the album.

The only other work comparable in scale is the virtually unknown Piano Sonata by Gilbert Amy—a work I knew through my research on Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata. The Amy sonata also has a mobile structure and explores the same philosophical question—how does one maintain coherence in a work whose parts can be rearranged? —but Amy approaches it from a rather different perspective than Boulez. With those two works selected, I wanted to provide an overarching context.

The way Arnold Schoenberg wrote for the piano in his Drei Klavierstücke op.11 served as a model for Boulez and how he wrote for the instrument (the influence can be seen in many of the Darmstadt school). They’re also wonderful, deeply expressive pieces and serve as an emotional counter-balance to the Boulez and Amy. Anton Webern exerted the greatest influence over the composers of the Darmstadt School, both for how he employed twelve-tone technique and the textures he created in his music. By Karlheinz Stockhausen’s account, the performance of Webern’s Variations op.27 at Darmstadt was something of a religious experience and gave rise to the term “star music” to describe it. It’s also a work that Amy played while studying with Yvonne Loriod at the Paris Conservatoire and its influence can be seen right at the surface of Amy’s Piano Sonata.” James Iman

Pianist James Iman plays the usual and the unusual, by composers known and unknown. As a specialist in music written since 1900—with an emphasis on music written since 1945—his repertoire spans many stylistic developments since Debussy. He is meticulous in his study of the scores and the aesthetic concepts behind each of the works he plays. This allows him to find fresh approaches to established canonic warhorses and to make complex contemporary works engaging and immediately clear to audiences. Frances Wilson of The Cross-Eyed Pianist heralded James as among the few pianists who can “rise to the challenge of this music and meet it head on with conviction, musicality, and a supreme alertness to its myriad details and quirks” and as a performer he gives “a very clear sense of his total commitment to this music, and also how comfortable he feels in this repertoire.”

James is constantly looking for new and interesting works to add to his repertoire and curates his programs with an interest in diversity, contrast, and continuity. He is a vocal advocate of underrepresented composers and frequently performs music by women, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ composers. He has appeared on Chatham University’s Friday Afternoon Musicales concert series in which he has presented four programs of works by female composers.

James has given world premieres of works by Charlie Wilmoth, David Dies, and Everette Minchew and United States premieres of works by Gilbert Amy, Alwynne Pritchard, Raphaël Languillat, and Soe Tjen Marching. In April of 2017, James gave the World Premiere of “People,” a concert-length work he commissioned from composer Lowell Fuchs. In addition to his activities as a performer, James is active as a lecturer and clinician. He is a frequent guest lecturer on contemporary music at Shenandoah Conservatory, and has been a resident at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and at Grand Valley State University giving master classes for pianists and clinics with composition students.

Album details:
Label: Métier
Catalog number: MSV 28627
Performer: James Iman
Works:
Drie Klavierstücke, Op. 11 (Arnold Schoenberg)
Third Piano Sonata (Pierre Boulez)
Variationen für Klavier, Op. 27 (Anton Webern)
Piano Sonata (Gilbert Amy)