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| Chicago Musician "Plays" His Memoir in a Premiere Live Performance Composer-pianist-author Peter Saltzman takes on a bold, playing-my-autobiography process to perform his first live concert of music from his recently released app, Blues, Preludes & Feuds—a hybrid album-ebook, infusing his life story with a seamless blend of solo piano tracks. His deeply imaginative, improvisational, and highly structured compositions move center stage at Chicago's PianoForte Studios on Saturday, October 1, 2016, at 7 pm. Saltzman also plans to discreetly incorporate multimedia—voiceovers and projected images/titles—to enliven certain elements of the memoir and move the Blues, Preludes & Feuds story along. The tale relives Saltzman's journey as an artistic soul in search of its unique self, often feeling out of sync with the conventional world. The story and music traverse his early years in a Jewish-American home during the politically charged times of 1960s Chicago to becoming a budding teenage jazz musician, and eventually, a composer whose works are performed and recorded globally."Good instrumental music always tells a story. You need strong narrative structures to keep instrumental music from devolving into a meaningless stream of notes, rhythm, and harmony. Even if you haven't read Blues, Preludes & Feuds, I believe you'll feel the narrative during the performance, " Saltzman said.Saltzman's goal is to bring his art—the fusion of words and music—to his reader-listener audience in an experience where they might see, hear, and feel the world in a different way."Am I violating some sort of unwritten code that instrumental music should stand on its own? I don't think so. There's rarely a direct correlation between the music and the words. Rather, the music tells a side of the story that words can't and vice versa, " Saltzman said. Released in segments, Blues, Preludes & Feuds (Parts 1-4) is available via a smartly designed iOS app—available on the App Store—and a universal web app. The next segment is scheduled for a mid-2017 release and will include tracks with a band. The memoir and accompanying music can be enjoyed together or separately. The music-only version is available at Bandcamp, CD Baby, and most digital download and streaming services.Subscribers to the Blues, Preludes & Feuds app have access to Saltzman's live concerts, excerpts from upcoming musical and ebook segments, as well as special postings and offerings to keep them connected. About Peter Saltzman With a deep jazz-and-blues core, Peter Saltzman has produced a broad career in the music industry as composer, pianist, singer-songwriter, and entrepreneur. Various ensembles have performed and recorded his work globally—the Czech National Symphony Orchestra recorded his orchestral dance suite "Walls" (1996), and the Dallas Black Dance Theatre performed "Walls" during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The Dallas Morning News reviewed Saltzman's music as "powerful stuff." His second album, Kabbalah Blues/Quantum Funk (2000), earned critical acclaim for its jazz/classical/pop fusion, hailed as "ambitious, richly layered, wonderfully accessible." Saltzman studied jazz at Indiana University (Bloomington) and composition at Eastman School of Music. He was an adjunct professor of music at Columbia College Chicago, where he taught music technology and piano. His concert works are published by Oxford University Press; his film and television works are published by Wild Whirled Music. Saltzman's music has been licensed for television shows, jingles, and industrials, including My Name is Earl (NBC, 2006). In 2016, he designed and launched a hybrid album-ebook app for his memoir, Blues, Preludes & Feuds, A Music Memory. write your comments about the article :: © 2016 Jazz News :: home page |