125 / 132
6:00 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 26, 2018
BENNETT GORDON HALL
AARON PILSAN,
piano
†
BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonata No.
Andante con Variazioni
Scherzo: Molto allegro
Marcia funebre sulla morte d’un’ Eroe: Maestoso andante
Allegro
SCHUBERT
Wanderer
Fantasy
Allegro con fuoco, ma non troppo—
Adagio—Presto—Allegro
–
–
SZYMANOWSKI
Metopes
*
L’île des Sirènes
Calypso
Nausicaa
CHOPIN
Andante spianato
and
Grande polonaise brillante
†
Ravinia debut
*
First performance at Ravinia
BRETT DENNEN
Brett Dennen spent much of his West Coast
youth learning guitar and writing songs. Fol-
lowing his studies at the University of Califor-
nia–Santa Cruz, he released an eponymous al-
bum on the boutique indie label
ree Angels
and a Saint in
. Dennen very quickly made
a popular breakthrough with the track “Desert
Sunrise” when it began playing on the in uen-
tial station KCRW that same year, leading to a
record deal with the larger indie folk label Dual-
tone. e fresh partnership resulted in
’s
So
Much More
, which featured philosophical lyrics
that caught the ear of John Mayer, who invited
Dennen to open for him at several shows. Subse-
quently, Dennen was named an “artist to watch”
by
Rolling Stone
and made a list of eight “guys
on the rise” in
Entertainment Weekly
. He teamed
up with Jason Mraz to contribute “Long Road to
Forgiveness” to the
charity album
Songs for
Survival
, and later that year he followed up with
his own disc,
Hope for the Hopeless
, featuring
Femi Kuti on the track “Make You Crazy.” His
tour credits soon expanded to include opening
for Dave Matthews, Taj Mahal, Ziggy Marley,
and Jackson Browne, among others. Dennen’s
disc,
Loverboy
, brought an expanded son-
ic palette, layering funky pop over African
rhythms, but
’s
Smoke and Mirrors
stripped
back the veneer in favor of acoustic lines, sig-
naling his arrival on the Atlantic Records folk
imprint F-Stop Music.
e latter disc was also
his rst to make
Billboard
’s top albums chart,
landing at number . Several of his songs were
featured on the NBC drama
Parenthood
before
“Comeback Kid ( at’s My Dog)” became the
theme song for the network’s
sitcom
About
a Boy
. His
album,
Por Favor
, continued the
stripped aesthetic and appeared on Atlantic’s
famed Elektra label, and a new EP,
Let’s …
, was
released earlier this year. Brett Dennen made his
Ravinia debut last summer.
AUGUST 20 – AUGUST 26, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE
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