One Piano, Six Hands

Eagle Rock-based pianist and Cal Arts faculty member Vicki Ray, who is also the artistic director of the California E.A.R. Unit and a well-known proponent of “new music,” will sit alongside two other pianists—on the same bench—to play a riveting piece that pays homage to three of the world's greatest classical music composers: Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich.

The piece, titled Hommage to Stravinsky, Prokofiev & Shostakovich, is aptly known as “One Piano, Six Hands”—a lively 1979 composition by the Russian composer and musician Alfred Schnittke, one of the most important but lesser-known musicians of the 20^th century.

Ray will also play Stravinsky's Sonata, a piece that explores “the tension between refinement and abandon,” according to Patrick Scott, the artistic director of Jacaranda, a classical music series that is behind the concert and whose mission is to present “music on the edge” performed by current and rising stars in the world of classical music.

The evening also features two other piano solos by pianists Danny Holt and Yana Reznik. After the intermission, the Lyris Quartet will play a string quartet each by Shostakovich and Shostakovich.