I am so thrilled to be presenting my brand-new Piano Sonata on Friday, October 11, 2024, at 12 noon at Fourth Presbyterian Church's Friday Noonday Concert series. This Sonata is something I've been working on for quite a while, and was proudly commissioned by Linda Winke in honor of her mother, Barbara Slivka. More about them and the sonata in a minute.
The concert will be just me on piano! I have put together a solo program which I'm calling "Who We Are || Not" which to me is a musical representation of the ties that bind us human beings together with all our differences and (sometimes hidden) similarities. The program is a seemingly disparate collection which I believe is unified through themes of joy, energy, family, and hope. There will be music by JS Bach, Sergey Rachmaninov, Nina Shekhar, Jeffrey Mumford, and myself. The pieces all speak to each other in different ways and I've included each one for what it brings to a celebration of life.
Friday, October 11, 2024
12:00 noon
Fourth Presbyterian Church—main sanctuary
126 E Chestnut St.
Chicago, IL
FREE
The concert will also be streamed live, and available to watch as it happens, and also after the event. Please check this link for the general viewing capability, and check back here after Monday, October 7 for the exact link.
For those of you still reading, here is the backstory of the Sonata and why it exists. I hope to see you on October 11. Enjoy!
Piano Sonata (2024)
“Mothers and Daughters”
Birth || Heart
Care || Tenderness
Work || Joy
It is an honor, a pleasure, and a responsibility for me to be commissioned by Linda Winke to write a new work for piano in memory of her mother, Barbara Slivka. In my opinion, a piece of music to commemorate the life and memory of another human being is one of the deepest acts of love possible, and I am so happy to contribute this music to the world on behalf of Linda and Barbara.
As Linda told me about her mother, what she was like as a person, a sister, a mother, a wife, I was struck by the similarities in what she described to how I would describe my own mother, so I must admit it was very easy for me to take this project quite personally, and draw upon my own experiences, thoughts, and feelings as I wrote this work, both as a daughter and a mother myself. The final form of the piece, a sonata in three movements, is quite traditional, which I believe to be the form which most accurately serves the life of a woman who was a child herself, grew to be an adult, and then have a child of her own from 1938-2015. This most basic of developments is one of the most profound and complex cycles a person can live through, and I hope to honor this global experience for all and for Barbara in particular through this Sonata.
Barbara’s details are woven throughout this piece, in the form of her name, important dates in her life, names of those she loved, and more, as translated into musical fabric. The shifting role, from daughter to mother, wife, and all it entails, is explored throughout the three movements. Themes are introduced and transformed, layered and developed, and each of the three movements, while certainly able to stand on its own, carries elements of the other inside it.
It has been both a pleasure and a true labor of love (pun intended!) to write this music and I am so grateful to Linda for entrusting me with the task of creating music in her mother’s memory. Family relationships and shifting roles are at the forefront of my own experience as both a mother and a daughter myself, and my hope that this deeply personal statement will resonate across generations, as we all contemplate our relationships with our mothers, our fathers, our children, and our entire communities as we move throughout this world.
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