Pianist, Poet Oni Buchanan Performs at College

Caldwell College continues its spring concert series with performances of Pianist/Poet Oni Buchanan. Buchanan's performance "In the Moment: Women Composers of the 21st Century," will be held Tuesday, April 13 at 8 p.m. 

She will present some of her own poetry in a reading on Wednesday, April 14 at noon. Both events will take place in the Alumni Theatre on the Caldwell College Campus.  

"In the Moment: Women Composers of the 21st Century," features solo piano works written by women composers since the year 2000. For this series, Buchanan conducts comprehensive research into the music of living women composers.

These works all share a level of authenticity that demands embodiment in performance and Buchanan brings the works to the stage in all their individuality and nuance.

The music varies widely in texture and transparency, sound and approach as well as duration; some works last fewer than 60 seconds while others are extended outpourings of more than 30 minutes.

Some use only the traditional sounds of the instrument, some use extended techniques and others include outside resources ranging from electronic sound on pre-recorded CDs to video projections on the inside of the raised piano lid.

Several of the composers work at the boundary between sound and silence, others have a strong interest in importing musical source material from children's songs, salsa, blues, rave music, and alternative rock, while still others explore and re-invent older musical forms such as the sonata, ballade, toccata and etude.

Inspiration is often found well outside the typical musical sphere, in sources as distant as baseball, Sudoku, factory machinery and schizophrenia. When this diverse music is brought together in the concert hall, patterns emerge, creating fascinating correspondences between the works.

The audience too forges connections with the music, as each listener is a living contemporary of these works, able to hear and understand "in the moment" of the music's own composition.

The program for "In the Moment: Women Composers of the 21st Century," will include Joan Tower's "Vast Antique Cubes/Throbbing Still" (2000), based on John Ashbery's poem "No Longer Very Clear," and Cindy Cox's "The blackbird Whistling/Or Just After" (2001), based on Wallace Stevens' famous poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

General admission is $20; admission for students and seniors is $15. The poetry reading is free and open to the public. A reception hosted by The Friends of Music at Caldwell will follow the concert. 

Concert tickets are available on Caldwell College's Web site or by mail from: Laura Greenwald, concert tickets, music department, Caldwell College, 120 Bloomfield Ave., Caldwell, NJ 07006. Tickets may also be purchased at the door.