Mika Stoltzman, Marimba & Richard Stoltzman, Clarinet

Release PALIMPSEST

AVIE Records on June 7, 2019

 

Music by Bach, McKinley, Piazzolla, Ravel, Zorn
with Héctor Del Curto, bandoneón & Pedro Giraudo, bass

 Upcoming concerts featuring music from the album:

Fri., May 31 at 7pm – First Church in Boston

Wed., June 12 at 8pm – Carnegie Hall in New York 

www.mikarimba-stoltzman.com | www.richardstoltzman.com | www.avie-records.com 

Watch Mika Stoltzman perform Bach’s Chaconne: https://youtu.be/QaFgKp7Qvzw

New York, NY – Mika Stoltzman, described by the Los Angeles Times as a “high-wire marimbist . . . an amazing, energetic performer ready for major exposure,” and “classical superstar” (The New York Times) clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, releasePalimpsest (AV2409), their first album for AVIE Records, on June 7, 2019. The album features an eclectic program of music by J.S. Bach (Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903; Chaconne from Partita in D minor BWV 1004), Maurice Ravel(Pavane pour une infante de´funte), William Thomas McKinley (Mostly Blues Nos. 2, 8 & 12), John Zorn (Palimpsest), and Astor Piazzolla (Tango-Étude No. 5 and Fuga y misterio). Bandoneónist Héctor Del Curto and bassist Pedro Giraudo are guest artists on Palimpsest, which was produced and engineered by Steven Epstein. Mika and Richard will perform music from the album in concert in Boston on Friday, May 31 at 7pm at First Church in Boston, and on Wednesday, June 7 at 8pm at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall in New York.

Palimpsest is the fruit of the Stoltzmans’ musical collaboration, as well as their relationship as husband and wife. The two met when Mika, a longtime admirer of Richard’s musicianship, invited him to perform at a music festival in her hometown of Amakusa, Japan. Later, they recorded Variations on Goldberg’s Theme and Dreams by Richard’s son, and their musical rapport and friendship soon flourished into a romantic relationship. The couple married in 2012. 

Palimpsest’s title track by John Zorn was written for the duo in 2018 for Richard’s 75^th birthday. A palimpsest is a page of ancient manuscript of which sections have been partially erased and written over with new text. Richard says, “That’s what you get here. Mika begins by playing quite tonal music, and then the clarinet jumps in with something abstract and arrhythmic, with crazy leaping intervals, almost as if Ornette Coleman had stepped into the room, and it keeps in conflict with the steady meter of the ‘old manuscript’ underneath Mika’s part. It’s really fun to play, and it has been a surprise hit with audiences.”

William Thomas McKinley also wrote his Mostly Blues for the duo, at Mika’s suggestion, who asked the composer for “something jazzy, and something I could groove to, with a steady rhythm.” The result was 22 pieces, each based on the interval of a minor third. Mika and Richard have recorded Nos. 2, 8, and 12 for this album.

Mika and Richard have each arranged a favorite work by J.S. Bach for Palimpsest – Mika arranged for solo marimba his Chaconne from Partita in D minor for solo violin, and Richard his Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue. Of the Chaconne, said to have been written after Bach learned that his wife Maria had died while he was away, Mika says, “In my opinion his sorrow is best expressed in the broad arpeggio passage in the latter part of the first section, and playing this always brings tears to my eyes. The last section is like a reminiscence – and unlike the gloomy beginning, I think it ends as a kind of vigorous hymn to life.” 

The album also includes Mika’s expressive arrangement of Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante de´funte, and two works by Argentinian classical/tango composer Astor Piazzolla. Piazzolla’s Tango–E´tude No. 5, originally written for violin or flute, is a piece that Richard often played as an encore, which Mika encouraged him to record for this album. Of Piazzolla’s Fuga y misterio, Richard says, “It’s got the groove, the feeling of improvisation, a change of mood into Latin blues, and an amazing Bach-like fugue – but 300 years after Bach. And we loved adding Héctor on bandoneón and Pedro on bass to our little duo for this track: we live and thrive with additional friends. And it feels perfect to play, as if Piazzolla had actually written it for this combination. I like to think that if he’d heard it, he would have written it for clarinet and marimba.”

Mika Stoltzman has been described as a “Japanese Marimba Maestro,” by Time Out New York. All About Jazz raves, “Mika Stoltzman is beyond category, to use Duke Ellington's signature compliment.” Mika has toured to 19 countries and 65 cities around the world. She has performed nine times at Carnegie Hall (Zankel and Weill Hall), as well as at PASIC 2005 and 2007, the Blue Note in New York, the Tokyo and Cairo Jazz Festivals, and the Rockport Jazz Festival. She regularly performs around the world in a duo with her husband, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, at major venues in New York, Boston, Austin, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Hong Kong, Japan, Germany and many more.  

Mika has performed as soloist with the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra, Kumamoto Symphony Orchestra, Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra, Krakow Philharmonic, and Szombathey Symphony Orchestra. In 2013, she gave the world premiere of Chick Corea’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on marimba with the Xalapa Symphony Orchestra in Mexico and performed the work again with Orchestra Machiavelli in Italy in 2018.  

Mika released her first album Mitsue in 1998, followed by Marimba Phase in 2003. In 2010, she released a live DVD, Marimba Madness, on Big Round Records, and new CD, Mikarimba, on Video Art Music (Japan). In 2013, she released If You Believe with Steve Gadd on TeeGa Music (Japan). In 2017, Mika and Richard Stoltzman recorded a duo album titled Duo Cantando with producer Stephen Epstein, guest artist Chick Corea, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), released on the DENON label (Nippon Colombia, Japan and Savoy record, US). In addition, Mika’s arrangement and performance of Tokyo/Vermont Counterpoint appears on Steve Reich's album Triple Quartet (Nonesuch). She has also appeared on Richard Stoltzman's album Goldberg Variations (BMG Japan) and Jo Hisaishi's Asian X.T.C. (Universal Japan).

Mika Stoltzman is from Amakusa, a small island in the Kumamoto prefecture in southern Japan. Her grandparents played traditional Japanese instruments, while her aunt taught piano and her father was a Kendo master. She began studying piano at age three, and in junior high became fascinated by the drums. At eighteen, she found the marimba, a perfect combination of piano and percussion. She studied marimba at Toronto University with members of NEXUS, and later moved to New York in 2008. She now resides in Boston. www.mikarimba-stoltzman.com

Richard Stoltzman’s virtuosity, musicianship and sheer personal magnetism have made him one of today’s most sought-after concert artists. As soloist with more than a hundred orchestras, as a captivating recitalist and chamber music performer, as an innovative jazz artist, and as a prolific recording artist, two-time Grammy Award winner Stoltzman has defied categorization, dazzling critics and audiences alike throughout many musical genres. 

As a ten-year participant in the Marlboro Music Festival, Stoltzman gained extensive chamber music experience and subsequently became a founding member of the noted ensemble TASHI, which made its debut in 1973. Since then, Stoltzman’s unique style of playing the clarinet has earned him an international reputation, as he has opened up possibilities for the instrument that no one could have predicted. He gave the first clarinet recitals in the histories of both the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall, and in 1986 he became the first wind player to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize. In 2006 he was awarded the prestigious Sanford Medal by the Yale School of Music; he is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His talents as a jazz performer as well as a classical artist have been heard far beyond his annual tours. He has performed or recorded with such jazz and pop greats as Gary Burton, the Canadian Brass, Chick Corea, Judy Collins, Steve Gadd, Eddie Go´mez, Keith Jarrett, the King’s Singers, George Shearing, Wayne Shorter, Mel Torme´, and Spyro Gyra founder Jeremy Wall.

His commitment to new music has resulted in the commissioning and premiere of numerous new works for the clarinet, among them Toru Takemitsu’s Fantasma/Cantos, 1994 Grawemeyer Award winner for Music Composition Landscapes with Blues by Stephen Hartke, and a concerto by Einojuhani Rautavaara which premiered with conductor Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. 

Richard Stoltzman has a discography numbering over 60 releases on BMG/RCA, SONY Classical, MMC, BIS, Albany and other labels, including a Grammy-winning recording of Brahms Sonatas with Richard Goode. Among Stoltzman’s most beloved releases are the album of American works Amber Waves and the Trios of Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart with Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma, which won Stoltzman his second Grammy Award. In 2017, Sony Classical released a 40-CD retrospective box set of Stoltzman’s recordings. www.richardstoltzman.com

Argentinian bandoneo´nist He´ctor Del Curto has performed with Tango legends Astor Piazzolla and Osvaldo Pugliese and Latin jazz giant Paquito D’Rivera and has appeared with a number of noted orchestras worldwide. In 2003, Del Curto founded theEternal Tango Orchestra (now the He´ctor Del Curto Tango Orchestra) which debuted at Lincoln Center, and his celebrated quintet has appeared in venues and festivals in the US, Puerto Rico and Brazil. Del Curto’s albums, Eternal Piazzolla and Eternal Tango, have been featured on BBC News and PRI’s The World. www.hectordelcurto.com 

Bassist and composer Pedro Giraudo is among today’s most compelling tango artists. His latest album, Vigor Tanguero, won a Latin Grammy award for Best Tango Album in 2018, and he was the bassist on Rube´n Blades’s 2014 Grammy-winning albumTangos (Best Tango Album & Best Latin Pop). After two decades performing with the most important interpreters of tango – including Pablo Ziegler, He´ctor Del Curto and Daniel Binelli – Pedro Giraudo debuted his own Tango Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing and has since become an active cultural ambassador for this beautiful and passionate music of his native Argentina. www.pedrogiraudo.com 

Palimpsest (AV2409)

RICHARD STOLTZMAN clarinet MIKA STOLTZMAN marimba
HE´CTOR DEL CURTO bandoneo´n PEDRO GIRAUDO double bass
AVIE Records | Release Date: June 7, 2019 | Total length: 59:04

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH 1685–1750

1.  Chromatic Fantasia arr. solo clarinet
and Fugue BWV 903 arr. clarinet, marimba and bandoneón by R. Stoltzman [15:51]
2.  Chaconne arr. solo marimba by M. Stoltzman [16:51]
from Partita in D minor for solo violin BWV 1004

MAURICE RAVEL 1875–1937

3.  Pavane pour une infante de´funte arr. clarinet and marimba [6:47]

WILLIAM THOMAS MCKINLEY 1938–2015

4.  Mostly Blues Nos. 2, 8 & 12 for clarinet and marimba [6:10]

JOHN ZORN b.1953

5.  Palimpsest for clarinet and marimba [4:44] 

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA 1921–1992

6.  Tango–E´tude No.5 arr. solo clarinet [2.30]
7.  Fuga y misterio arr. clarinet, marimba, bandoneón and bass [6:10]