CONOR HANICK

MUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST

June 28, 2024

Back in Santa Barbara this summer for my twelfth year at Music Academy. Concerts and masterclasses up on the schedule page!

SPRING

April 29, 2024

Been a minute. That’s because I’ve been learning Unsuk Chin’s Double Concerto for prepared piano and percussion for performances in Dallas and Sarasota. Hard piece, much practicing. The concert is part of Ensemble New SRQ’s Parisian Refractions, a mini-festival chock-full of brilliant artists and music. In addition to the Chin, I’m presenting Hans Otte’s Book of Sounds and joining some fearless friends - new and old - in Pierre Boulez’s sur Incises.

Also in the mix, the TAKT Trio band is back together for recitals in Denver, a two-show residency at the Library of Congress, and a Miller Theater Pop-Up at Columbia University later in May. On the docket, Brahms and Ligeti Horn Trios, DC and NY premiere of Koan by Hilda Paredes, and the world-premiere of Atlas by Marcos Balter.

Video stills from the Kaufman Center, with Adam Tendler (photos by Joan Jastrebski)

SOME RECENT PRESS

December 23, 2023

Had an absolute blast playing Steve Martland’s Drill and Julius Eastman’s Gay Guerilla with my dear friend Adam Tendler for “Piano Dialogues” at the Kaufman Center. Had a few people show up and a couple nice reviews:

“Resilience, if not resolution” from Backtrack, December 1 2023
”One hundred and seventy six keys” from Concertonet, November 30 2023

Also, my performance of Sam Adam’s No Such Spring, the piano concerto I premiered with Esa-Pekka and the San Francisco Symphony, was listed in the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Best Of Classical” list for 2023. Thank you Joshua Kosman for the shout out. He wrote:

This ingeniously wrought piano concerto by Berkeley native Samuel Adams, which had its commissioned world premiere Feb. 23 from the San Francisco Symphony, marks a turning point in the composer’s career. In delving into thoughts about spring, both its regenerative properties and its capacity for violence, Adams played out an ambitious theme on a suitably large scale. The writing is a marvel, by turns intimate and theatrical. The performance, led by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen with pianist Conor Hanick as soloist, did justice to the material.

Doing justice since 2013!

SAM ADAMS’ ETUDES AT THE OJAI / CALIFORNIA FESTIVAL

November 20, 2023

Sam wrote my students at Music Academy a stupendous set of piano etudes last summer. I’ve been frothing at the mouth to learn them ever since and was overjoyed to present Etudes vol. 1 at the Ojai Festival in November, an off-season concert in association with the California Festival. It’s a rare pleasure working with a composer as gifted, thoughtful, and generous as Sam. Look for the Etudes this winter in New York City, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and elsewhere.

Oh, and here is a nice review from Ojai in the Santa Barbara Independent.

2023 YVAR MIKHASHOFF PRIZE RECIPIENT

November 15, 2023

I am thrilled to be a co-recipient of the 2023 Yvar Mikhashoff Prize alongside my friend / living legend / personal idol / pianist extraordinaire, Gloria Cheng. From the YM Trustees:

Eligible to receive the prize are international composers and performers of contemporary concert music, as well as individuals or organizations that have demonstrated excellence in the support of works by living composers through performances, programming, recordings and commissions. The Trust does not accept applications or nominations.

Thank you for the recognition and for the Trust’s decades’ long support of contemporary music.

“CURRENT” REVIEWS

October 27, 2023

Sam Adams’ recent album, Current, has garnered hearty, widespread praise. Here are some recent critical highlights:

• The Strad Magazine
  ”It’s a deeply rewarding disc that is by turns exhilarating and emotionally affecting, from a composer with very much his own distinctive voice.”

• Gramaphone Magazine
  ”Conor Hanick, the pianist on Violin Diptych and a like-minded colleague for whom Adams composed his remarkable piano concerto No Such Spring (2022), likewise defies gravity in Shade Studies (2014). Written as a tribute to Terry Riley, the piece unfolds as a dialogue between solo piano and electronic samples resonating from a speaker tucked beneath the lid of the instrument. Through hymnal cadences that pirouette into reverent silence, Hanick lifts us into a state of raptly attentive contemplation and clarifying simplicity.”

• Bandcamp Daily
  ”This superb portrait album from composer Samuel Adams captures his ability to shade and collide acoustic music rooted in the classical tradition with subtle electronic flourishes that transform his writing in mysterious ways.”

• The Whole Note
  ”Equally luminous are a solo piano and electronics work, Shade Studies, displaying tranquil pulsations, gestures and sine waves subtly altering piano tones, and Violin Diptych, a resonant evocation of Bach coupled with the most intriguing acoustically produced delay effect at the end of short phrases.”

• BBC Music Magazine
  ”A booklet note ripe for Pseuds Corner claims this erases ‘the false dichotomy of new and historic music in an embrace of the entire enterprise as a fertile, ultimately bi-directional, continuum’.” (lol)

FELDMAN AT THE NEW YORK STUDIO SCHOOL

September 24, 2023

Overhead image from Miranda Cuckson’s and my recital of Morton Feldman’s music at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture (NYSS). Feldman was the dean of the school from 1969 to 1971 and I can’t imagine a more suited space for hearing his music. (Or a better audience!)

You can read the very thoughtful review of the concert here.

NEW ALBUM ALERT

September 1, 2023

Friend of the pod and all around remarkable dude Samuel Carl Adams is releasing a new album, Current, on September 8th. It was my great joy to contribute two performances to the disc, Violin Diptych with the effervescent violinist Karen Gomyo, and Shade Studies, a piano+electronics piece that remains beguiling and mysterious, even after all these years of playing it. Rounding out the album is Sam’s stupendous second String Quartet performed by the Spektral Quartet.

You can pre-order the album here.

2023-2024 SEASON UPDATE

August 28, 2023

After a busy summer of teaching (above), and a much needed vacation, the Concert Page has been updated with a smattering of performances in the 23-24 season. This fall, I’m thrilled to reconnect with my cello trifecta of buddies, Jay Campbell, Joshua Roman, and Seth Parker Woods; debut with San Francisco Performances with a program of Eric Wubbels, Schubert, Ligeti, and Poulenc; offer two programs at 92NY, one with Sandbox Percussion (featuring works written for us by Chris Cerrone and Tyshawn Sorey), and Jay Campbell (which includes the second installment of a new work for us by Marcos Balter); and more!

GAY GUERILLA AT THE CENTRE POMPIDOU

July 20, 2023

Photos from Gerard and Kelly’s remarkable Gay Guerilla from the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France this past summer, featuring some of my very favorite people from AMOC, Wild-Up, the Paris Opera Ballet, et al. With immense gratitude,

Credits here.

REFLECTIONS, A TWO-PIANO BALLET BY SUFJAN STEVENS, IS OUT NOW

May 19, 2023

Sufjan Stevens wrote this here remarkable seven-movement two-piano ballet in 2019 for the Houston Ballet and choreographer Justin Peck. Timo Andres and I recorded the piece and it is now available for your aural/-visual consumption. I’m exceedingly proud to be on this recording and find the music so inventive and beautiful. Also, don’t miss Brian Paccione’s brilliant video for the first track, “Ekstasis”, which Timo and I performed live at (believe it or not) Yamaha Artist Studio.

AMOC TOURS EUROPE WITH A PRODUCTION OF MESSIAEN’S HARAWI

May 14, 2023

My dear friend Julia Bullock and I brought Olivier Messiaen’s titanic song cycle Harawi to Europe. On May 5 our production with the American Modern Opera Company made its debut at De Singel International Arts Centre in Antwerp, Belgium, then Erholungshaus in Leverkusen, Germany on May 7, and concluding on May 10 with a performance Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany.

Julia and I worked alongside Or Schraiber, Bobbi Jene Smith, Zack Winokur, John Torres, and Julia Eichten to amplify aspects of the score through movement, lighting, and dance. It’s a very special piece, and our work together deepend my already profound respect for these miraculous artists.

Photo from our performance in Hamburg, during “Amour oiseau d’etoiles” - my favorite movement.

SAMUEL CARL ADAMS PIANO CONCERTO PREMIERE

February 26, 2023

On February 23, the San Francisco Symphony and I had the great joy of premiering Samuel Adams’ piano concerto No Such Spring with Esa-Pekka Salonen. The work was universally praised, called "ingenious... a marvel... clearly an important addition to the orchestral repertoire," (SF Chronicle) "bewitching... a major work as appealing as it is thought-provoking, and as heartfelt as it is inventive," (Wall Street Journal) and "scintillating and gloriously expansive... at once ingratiating, inventive, and structurally ambitious... No Such Spring is one of those new works that leaves a listener wanting to hear it all over again right away.” (Musical America)

David Mermelstein of the Wall Street Journal said that “In selecting Mr. Hanick as soloist, Mr. Adams has found a kindred spirit. The pianist has all the right attributes for a modern keyboard artist—impressive technique, obvious intelligence and a yen for adventure. But he has something else as well, an abundant love for the piano’s tonal variety. And at crucial points in Mr. Adams’s piece, chief among them the repeated raindrop motif and the concerto’s resigned conclusion, Mr. Hanick brought that quality to bear.”

Read the full reviews below:

/ S.F. Symphony celebrates spring with a beautiful new commission
/ Salonen Conducts a Bewitching Premiere in San Francisco
/ The Scintillating Glow of Adams's No Such Spring

HANS OTTE AT MONDAY EVENING CONCERTS

December 20, 2022

There are few better series than Monday Evening Concerts, with its fearless director Jonathan Hepfer and its second-to-none audience. Thank you for the amazing week and presenting Hans Otte’s Book of Sounds, especially for the perfectly placed prelude performance of John Cage’s “But What About The Noise Of Crumpling Paper…” Photos by the ever-brilliant Anneliese Varaldiev.