Archive for James Iman

Métier Announces James Iman Album II

James Iman
James Iman © Divine Art

Divine Art’s new-music imprint, Métier, signed up American pianist James W. Iman in 2021 for a three-album deal, the first of which, featuring Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez and Amy, appeared in the spring of 2022 (MSV 28637) to high praise: “The pianism, is top-notch” (Infodad);  “Outstanding and imaginative” (Art Music Lounge).  Post-production work on the second recording is well underway and the album is likely to see release in the summer.

The pianist explains the ethos of the disc:

“This album has been nearly four years in the making. The repertoire was chosen in the summer of 2019, with the first performance of the program taking place in January of 2020, with plans to record in April of that year. 

I first discovered the music of Donald Martino in graduate school through his infamous Pianississimo–a monstrous work expressly requested by Easley Blackwood to be as difficult as possible. As ferocious as it is, Martino still manages to craft a remarkably beautiful work. Indeed, beauty and lyricism are the hallmarks of Martino’s mature compositions, which are as romantic as they are modern. While Pianississimo is something of a spectacle, his masterwork for the piano is his Fantasies and Impromptus from 1981.

The title immediately evokes the work of Schumann, Chopin, and Brahms–composers who were important influences on Martino’s aesthetic ideology, and their fingerprints can be seen throughout the work. The work is not, it should be noted, in a Neo-romantic style. Instead, Martino retains the melody-driven, emotional intensity of Romanticism through his unique approach to twelve-tone composition. 

When I first started learning Martino’s Fantasies and Impromptus, I knew immediately that Debussy would be the perfect contrast. I knew I wanted something that would have a similar stature, to balance the intensity and fire of Martino’s work, which naturally led to selecting Debussy’s two books of Images

Debussy had been absent from my repertoire since 2009, when I performed his Estampes. It was important to me, in taking up these pieces, to rediscover what Debussy means to me and what I wanted to say through his music. My interpretations grew out of a study of Debussy’s letters and his own recordings. 

I have played Stand Still Here more times than any other work in my repertoire. Each of the five pieces that comprise the work are brief–the longest is four minutes–but Jenny Beck achieves a depth of introspection and emotional sweep that is absolutely magnetic. How she achieves this is nothing short of miraculous–the pieces are collections of terse motives and static harmonies that hover rather than move. In some ways, these pieces feel like a painting by Mark Rothko–where color alone elicits the emotional response.

This program, and this album, are deeply personal to me, not just because of my connection to the music, but also because it was the last program my mother heard me perform before her passing in 2021.”

Pianist James W. 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. 

Iman: Album II (Métier)

  • Fantasies and Impromptus (by Donald Martino)
  • Images, Books 1 and 2 (by Claude Debussy)
  • Stand Still Here (by Jenny Beck)

Divine Art Signs Pianist James Iman for Three Albums

James Iman
James Iman

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

James Iman
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)