ZOFO duet one piano, four hands

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S ince joining forces as a professional duo in 2009, internationally acclaimed solo pianists Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke

Nakagoshi—ZOFO duet—have electrified audiences from Carnegie Hall to Tokyo with their dazzling artistry and outside-the-box thematic programming for one-piano-four-hands. This Grammy-nominated, prize-winning Steinway Artist Ensemble—one of only a handful of duos worldwide devoted exclusively to piano duets—is blazing a bold new path for piano four hands groups by focusing on 20th and 21st century repertoire and by commissioning new works from noted composers each year.

ZOFO, which is shorthand for 20-finger orchestra (ZO=20 and FO=finger orchestra), also performs heart-pumping duet arrangements of famous orchestral pieces such as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, exploring the realms in which many composers first experienced their symphonic visions. They believe that the piano duet is the most intimate form of chamber music, with two musicians playing individual parts on one instrument in a complex, often beautiful choreography of four hands.

ZOFO’s concert programs often incorporate a unifying theme that connects the works both musically and historically. Several of these thematic programs have been released worldwide as critically acclaimed commercial CDs under their multi-disc recording contract with Grammy Award-winning Sono Luminus Records. Their 2013 debut CD, Mind Meld was nominated for two Grammy Awards for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Producer of the Year.

ZOFO made its Carnegie Hall debut in 2010, the same year they won the Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition. ZOFO was the only piano duo to be elevated to the final round in the 2011 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition. They have performed at a wide variety of concert venues across the U.S., Europe, and Japan, including intimate, informal spaces, colleges and universities, and major concert venues such as the Tokyo Opera Recital Hall and Tonhalle Zürich.

Committed to contemporary music, ZOFO duet has commissioned more than 30 works by noted composers including Pulitzer Prize-winner William Bolcom, Gabriela Lena Frank, Terry Riley, Akira Nishimura, Carl Vine, Pawel Mykietyn, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, and many others.

short bio

press“What happens when you sit two internationally acclaimed solo

pianists down at one piano? ...you get something energetically

and electrifyingly out of this world.”

–Bachtrack

“ZOFO’s feisty performances surge with athletic precision, always

mindful of how much joy there is in the music.”

–The Washington Post

“The (Terry Riley) birthday offering of the four-hand piano duo

ZOFO, which was a guest of the Kronos festival, is a dazzling disc

of arrangements of Riley works.”

–Los Angeles Times

“Every recital they give never fails to astonish, but just as

important is that every program they prepare has at least one

item that never fails to amuse.”

-San Francisco Examiner

ZOFO duet one piano, four hands

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MIND MELD: COMPOSERS SHARE THE BENCHMind Meld brings together stunning duet works by four noted 20th century composers and pianists who knew each other, learned from each other, and sometimes shared the bench. As young students at Harvard, Leonard Bernstein and Harold Shapero teamed up as a piano duo before Bernstein’s career exploded. Shapero wrote his Sonata for the two of them. Stravinsky read through the one-piano-four-hand score of his Rite of Spring together with Debussy in the home of their friend Louis Laloy, before any orchestra had touched the work. Debussy later wrote to Stravinsky about the Rite of Spring as a “beautiful nightmare.”

Released by Sono Luminus in 2012, Mind Meld was nominated for Grammy Awards in the categories of Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Producer of the Year, Classical. The album and live performance program continue to attract positive critical attention around the world.

Works to be performed on the “Mind Meld” program include:

Leonard Bernstein, Candide Overture

Harold Shapero, Sonata for Piano 4 Hands

Claude Debussy, Six Epigraphes Antiques

Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring

MOSH PIT: AMERICAN DANCES FOR 20 FINGERSThis program offers an adrenalized exploration of dance themed duet compositions by five distinctly American voices of the 20th and 21st centuries—George Gershwin, Allen Shawn, Samuel Barber, John Corigliano, and Paul Schoenfield. The pieces featured on MOSH PIT

encompass a wide range of evocative dance styles and rhythms; from Gershwin’s driving rhumba-rhythms in Cuban Overture to Barber’s sensuous Hesitation Tango to Paul Schoenfield’s dizzying Boogie from Five Days from the Life of a Manic Depressive. An album with the same title was released by Sono Luminus in 2013.

Drawing inspiration from classical, modern, jazz and rock and roll forms, the MOSH PIT repertoire and ZOFO’s inspired interpretations might tempt you to the dance floor.

Works to be performed on the “Mosh Pit” program include:

George Gershwin, Cuban Overture

John Corigliano, Gazebo Dances

Allen Shawn, Three Dance Portraits

Samuel Barber, Souvenirs, Op. 28

Paul Schoenfield, Five Days from the Life of a Manic Depressive

ZOFORBIT: A SPACE ODYSSEYZOFORBIT takes the listener on a voyage through outer space. Estonian composer Urmas Sisask sets the mood with otherworldly sounds, featuring innovative inside-piano techniques that evoke a sense of the cosmos. The short movements of his Spiral Symphony serve as a sonic spaceship to transport us from one planet or star to another. Starting on Mars, the Bringer of War, the journey continues to tour Gustav Holst’s The Planets and pays visits to the stars Alpha Centauri and Beta Cygni as musically envisioned by George Crumb in his one-piano-four-hands masterpiece Celestial Mechanics. David Lang’s Gravity gives the impression of falling without ever landing. Before taking off for infinity we alight on a planet for the last time—Venus, the Bringer of Peace.

ZOFORBIT was also released in 2014 by the record label Sono Luminus.

Works to be performed on the “ZOFORBIT” program include:

Urmas Sisask, Intertwined Spirals, Spiral Symphony

Gustav Holst, Mars, the Bringer of War, The Planets

Urmas Sisask, The Peace of Rod-Spirals, Spiral Symphony

Gustav Holst, Mercury, the Winged Messenger, The Planets

George Crumb, Beta Cygni, Celestial Mechanics

Urmas Sisask, The Sleeping Beauty, Restless Spirals, Spiral Symphony

Gustav Holst, Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, The Planets

Urmas Sisask, Broken Spirals, Spiral Symphony

George Crumb, Alpha Centauri, Celestial Mechanics

David Lang, Gravity

Gustav Holst, Uranus, the Magician, The Planets

Urmas Sisask, The Disorder of Spirals, Spiral Symphony

Gustav Holst, Venus, the Bringer of Peace, The Planets

Urmas Sisask, The Spiral Final, Spiral Symphony

program offerings

PHOTO BY JANE HIGGINS

ZOFO duet one piano, four hands

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program offerings (cont.)

ZOFOMOMAThe ZOFOMOMA live concert experience unfolds as an aurally and visually stunning walking tour through a virtual museum of modern art. Against an ever-changing backdrop of contemporary paintings, 15 new ZOFO-commissioned compositions are revealed throughout the 60-minute continuous performance. In a nod to Mussorgsky, this 21st century “Pictures at an Exhibition” leads viewers and listeners from one gallery to the next accompanied by a re-imagined Promenade Theme by ZOFO’s Keisuke Nakagoshi. For this cutting-edge project ZOFO solicited new works from top composers around the globe, and requested each to select a painting representative of his or her culture as a springboard to the creative process. The result is a rich tapestry of sights and sounds reflecting the cultural, musical and artistic diversity of our world community.

Works to be performed on the “ZOFOMOMA” program include:

Dancing with the Torah at Mount Meron, composer: Avner Dorman (1975, Israel), artist: Reuven Rubin (courtesy Rubin Museum Tel Aviv)

The arrival of implacable gifts, composer: Carl Vine (1954, Australia), artist: James Gleeson (courtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales)

Wendung, composer: Cécile Marti (1973, Switzerland), artist: Verena Marti-Buchmann

Night Sea, composer: Samuel Carl Adams (1985, USA), artist: Agnes Martin

Fangor, composer: Paweł Mykietyn (1971, Poland), artist: Wojciech Fangor (title of painting: “SM 34”, courtesy of Gallery Stefan Szydłowski)

Holy Peaks of Chichibu at Spring Dawn, composer: Kenji Oh (1982, Japan), artist: Yokoyama Taikan (The Museum of the Imperial Collections )

Inspector’s Scrutiny, composer: Sahba Aminikia (1981, Iran), artist: Nicky Nodjoumi (Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York)

Street Solace, composer I Wayan Gde Yudane (1964, Indonesia), artist: I Made Budhiana

Viajeros, composer: Keyla Orozco (1969, Cuba), artist: Douglas Pérez Castro (courtesy von Christierson Collection, London)

Paisaje, composer: Pablo Ortiz (1958, Argentina), artist: Eduardo Stupia

Untitled Skeleton, composer: Jonathan Russell (1979, USA), artist: Stormie Mills (London street art)

Le Bassin d’Argenteuil, composer: Gilles Silvestrini (1961, France), artist: Claude Monet (courtesy Musée d’Orsay, Paris)

Landscapes, composer: Lei Liang (1972, China), artist: Huang Binhong (courtesy of Elna Tsao)

Spring Morning in Baku, composer: Franghiz Ali-Zadeh (1947, Azerbaijan), artist: Sattar Bahlulzade (courtesy of Azerbaijan National Museum of Art)

TBA, composer: Gabriel Prokofiev (1975, UK)

Promenade Theme, Keisuke Nakagoshi

ZOFOMOMA has been made possible through generous funding and support from the Van Dyke Family Foundation.

PHOTO BY ARON PRUIETT

ZOFO duet one piano, four hands

www.arielartists.com G booking@arielartists.comSPIRITS TO ENFORCE art to enchant

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ONE-PIANO-FOUR-HANDS: THE ORIGINAL ITUNES

What were people doing for entertainment before there were LPs, CDs,

or iTunes? Why was playing piano duets was so hot? What does English

composer Gustav Holst have to do with Star Wars?

Wait — these sounds came from a piano?

What happens when you break the territorial boundaries of one-piano-

four-hands playing?

How can you prevent fights between the two players?

How can we help give birth to new piano duets?

In this interactive and fun 45-minute program, children and young adults

ages 12-18 are introduced to the history of the piano duet—from its

inception to its future.

Excerpts from the following works are played during the presentation:

Ludwig Van Beethoven, 5th Symphony, arranged for piano duet

Franz Schubert, Fantasy in F-Minor

Gustav Holst, The Planets, arranged for piano duet

Allen Shawn, Hard-Edged

Urmas Sisask, The Milky Way

Tomohiro Moriyama, Let’s Play a Duet! (video)

Gabriela Lena Frank, Karnavalito from Sonata Serrana No.1

additional offerings

PHOTO BY DIANE MITCHELL