INTERVIEW: Pianist Jeni Slotchiver on her new album, ‘American Heritage’
Image courtesy of ZOHO / Provided by official site.
Celebrated pianist Jeni Slotchiver has built a career out of musical exploration. She has interpreted many well-known composers in the classical music realm, particularly from the 20th century. Her new project is a survey of songs from the vast African-American musical tradition. Her album’s title speaks to this expansive journey into the past: American Heritage: From the Civil War to Civil Rights.
On the recording, which has recently been released by ZOHO, Slotchiver includes compositions by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Margaret Bonds and Louis Moreau Gottschalk, among several others. The selections range from the traditional folk song “Shenandoah” to Frederic Rzewski’s “Down by the Riverside”.
“This is music I have been close to practically my whole life,” the pianist said in a recent phone interview. “I was exposed to all kinds of music when I was younger. Clearly I’m a classical music nerd, but I loved gospel, blues, jazz. I love popular music, and I heard all kinds of music in our home. I did spend my early years in the South, and so there were some quite memorable moments of experiencing the music live there.”
Slotchiver has been playing piano music almost her entire life, and she has studied the many histories and intricacies of the art form. Her recording projects and performances over the years speak to this diversity and curiosity. For example, she previously explored the works of Ferruccio Busoni, an Italian composer from the late 19th century and early 20th century. She also studied under Maestro German Diez, the well-respected Cuban pianist, and Joseph Bloch, of The Juilliard School. She has performed at Lincoln Center in New York City and at the World Piano Conference in Serbia, and everywhere in between, according to her official biography.
For this new project, the pianist leaned on her years of interpretation and education to understand and address the selected pieces for American Heritage. “I studied the spirituals for a very long time,” she said. “They’re magnificent, they’re beautiful, and I began to discover the different ways they were set. … I began to appreciate so much more what they could say to many people.”
The musical explorations included interpreting the gospel blues coda at the end of “Down by the Riverside,” understanding the dance sequences in Florence B. Price’s work and the blues harmonies of Bonds. “I had an opportunity to be involved with this music directly as a classical musician, so that was very important to me,” Slotchiver said. “These are pieces I’ve lived with for a long time. When trying to decide what to put on the album, it started out to be just a very American album. I have so much American music, but these pieces in particular tell a story. Each one in some ways is very much a part of history, and it was organic in the way it came together.”
The pianist wanted to use these songs to honor the music that came to the country during the horrific times of slavery, and how some of these tunes have changed over the ensuing generations. She was after a modern-day interpretation of melodies, rhythms, harmonic inventions and various stylistic elements that are part of the American story — a story that is often painful to consider, but important to never forget. “It became an album that really had to do more with that cultural element,” she said. “I always like to include new and rarely heard compositions in my concerts. At a young age, I was expected to play a lot of standard repertory — Chopin, and I love Bach — but I was always looking to introduce the audience to something provocative, new, exciting.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Jeni Slotchiver’s new album from ZOHO is American Heritage. Click here for more information.
