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In Your Head
Donald Wheelock composer
Lewis Spratlan composer
John LaMontaine composer
Daniel Asia composer
Matthew St. Laurent composer
David Sanford composer
Dana Muller piano
Gary Steigerwalt piano
Acclaimed piano four-hand duo Dana Muller and Gary Steigerwalt come together once more for IN YOUR HEAD, a collection featuring the work of six composers that highlights both fresh compositional talents and earlier successful works. Each piece demonstrates the unique synergy between the two performers. With twice the hands, twice the talent, and twice the interpretation, the piano is pushed to dynamic and sonoric extremes.
Compositions on IN YOUR HEAD span over five decades, but each is brought to new life by the skilled hands of Muller and Steigerwalt. The duo, who have performed extensively across the Western Hemisphere, found inspiration for this compilation in the success of Lewis Spratlan’s Dreamworlds, a piece which they had commissioned in 2015. Using the piano as a canvas, the two paint a psychological landscape exploring the mind within different people, scenarios, and even locations. Sometimes dissonant and flustered, as in Mind Games II. Panic, and other times eerie as in The Silent Hearth which captures the memories echoing like firing synapses inside a dilapidated concert hall, each piece resonates with the complexity of mental activity.
Throughout IN YOUR HEAD, Steigerwalt and Muller compel listeners to zero in on the thoughts of the panicked soul, the trapped bureaucrat, the obsessed dictator, and the mind control of the lucid dreamer. As you follow along, perhaps you’ll ask yourself – whose psyche most resonates with me?
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Artist Information
Lewis Spratlan
Lewis Spratlan was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2000. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Massachusetts Artists Foundations, the NEA, the Tanglewood Festival, and the MacDowell Colony. Recent commissions include Earthrise, for the San Francisco Opera; Streaming for the Centennial Celebration of the Ravinia Festival; Wonderer for pianist Jonathan Biss; Shadow for cellist Matt Haimovitz; a concerto for a consortium of 30 saxophonists; A Summer's Day for BMOP (Boston Modern Orchestra Project), and Process/Bulge for Wet Ink. His opera Life is a Dream received its world premiere at Sante Fe Opera in July 2010. Apollo and Daphne Variations, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, and A Summer's Day are currently in preparation for a BMOP CD, as is his Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano for Albany Records.
Dana Muller and Gary Steigerwalt
Dana Muller and Gary Steigerwalt have performed as duo pianists for more than three decades, creating programs that encompass the historical and stylistic gamut of the piano four-hand genre. As recitalists, they have performed extensively in the United States, South America and Scotland. Festival appearances range from presenting Beethoven’s complete four-hand works at the Beethoven Festival, Oyster Bay, Long Island, to performances at Bethlehem Musikfest (Pennsylvania), Music at Penn Alps (Maryland), and Sevenars Festival and Musicorda Festival (Massachusetts).
