Chicago's own Thirsty Ears Festival is happening this weekend! I'm so happy to be part of it again this year. Alyson and I are playing a set at 4 pm with music we are really excited about—the Debussy sonata, Only Gestures Remain by Jane O'Leary, which has me making all sorts of crazy sounds from inside the piano, Hot Streak, written by Seth Boustead especially for us, and polishing it all off with some rousing Beethoven, Sonata No. 4 in G major.
We'll also be playing again at 8 pm on Saturday with the Palomar Ensemble, with music from our upcoming Composer Alive Cd, music from our architectural pairings project (one of the pieces is written by me in honor of —sadly now gone—Dinkel's Bakery in Lakeview, and the super crazy, super virtuosic Commercial Etudes, by composer Will Rowe, for piano solo, which are based on hilarious 50's commercial jingles and have been a true gargantuan summer project for me to learn.
We also get to reprise most of the music from the Sound of Silent Film Festival which happened in April 2022. I'm super excited that we'll get to play The Trader once again, which features gorgeous landscape from Iceland and music I wrote for the ensemble to accompany such majestic images.
The festival is taking place Saturday and Sunday all afternoon into the evening. There are tons of musical groups with far-reaching variety of repertoire and instrumentation. There's also food, beer, kid's activities, arts and crafts for sale. I hope to see lots of friends there!
For more information, go to: https://acmusic.org/events/thirsty-ears-festival/