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6:00 PM WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2018
BENNETT GORDON HALL
LARA DOWNES,
piano
For Lenny
BERNSTEIN
(arr. Distler)
“Story of My Life,” originally written for
Wonderful Town
BERNSTEIN
(arr. Downes)
Greeting
from
Arias and Barcarolles
BERNSTEIN
Selections
from
irteen Anniversaries
For My Daughter, Nina *
For Felicia, On Our th Birthday (& Her nd) *
BERNSTEIN
For Aaron Copland
from Seven Anniversaries
*
BERNSTEIN
For Stephen Sondheim
from
irteen Anniversaries
BERNSTEIN
For Johnny Mehegan
from Four Anniversaries
*
BERNSTEIN
For Lukas Foss
from Five Anniversaries
*
FOSS
For Lenny: Variation on ‘New York, New York’
*
SHULAMIT RAN
Exuberance (for Lenny)
*
JOHN CORIGLIANO
Anniversary for Lenny
*
STEPHEN SCHWARTZ
Anniversaire for Lenny
*
EVE BEGLARIAN
Another Time (for Lenny)
*
MICHAEL ABELS
Iconoclasm (for Lenny)
*
BERNSTEIN
“Big Stu ” (Prologue) from
Fancy Free
*
BERNSTEIN
(arr. Smit)
Four Movements from
West Side Story
Jets
Jump
Cha-Cha
Cool
.
*
First performance at Ravinia
LARA DOWNES,
piano
A native of San Francisco, pianist Lara Downes
grew up across Europe and today mines her
Jamaican and Russian heritage and her peripa-
tetic upbringing to forge concerts with a broad
and inclusive breadth of human experience and
inspiration from unexpected places.
e myri-
ad artists she has collaborated with range from
classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma and baritone
om-
as Hampson to jazz vocalist
eo Bleckmann,
beatboxer Kevin “K.O.” Olusola, and multifac-
eted singer Rhiannon Giddens to writer Adam
Gopnik and former US Poet Laureate Rita
Dove. Additionally, she has worked with lead-
ing composers on projects that span genres and
generations to bring signi cant new contribu-
tions to American repertoire. In
, Downes
was awarded the Sphinx Medal of Excellence in
recognition of her leadership in expanding the
reach of the arts as a performer, an entrepre-
neur, and a cultural visionary. She is currently
an artist-in-residence at the Mondavi Center for
the Performing Arts at the University of Califor-
nia–Davis, where she also mentors young mu-
sicians as director of its National Young Artists
Program, and is the founding director of the
My Promise Project, which was inspired by her
collaboration with Dove on her album
America
Again
. at critically acclaimed disc was named
among NPR’s “ Albums that Saved
” and
explored the breadth and diversity of American
history through its music and its musicians that
have inspired her, from Leonard Bernstein to
Nina Simone. Downes’s latest disc and her rst
on Sony Music is
For Lenny
, an intimate centen-
nial tribute to Bernstein that was awarded the
Classical Recording Foundation Award.
She has been featured on such radio programs as
NPR’s
First Listen
, WNYC’s
New Sounds
, APM’s
Marketplace
, and SiriusXM’s
Symphony Hall
, as
well as on the stages of Carnegie Hall, the Ken-
nedy Center, Lincoln Center, Queen Elizabeth
Hall, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, and urban venues
such as National Sawdust, Le Poisson Rouge,
and Yoshi’s SF, among many others. Downes’s
upcoming projects include a -state tour with
Hampson titled “Song of America: Beyond Lib-
erty” and the premiere of a piano concerto by
Maxime Goulet. Lara Downes is making her
Ravinia debut.
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2018
102