Fellows of the American Pianists Association

American Music Teacher, Feb-March, 2005 by John Salmon

One is a raving Red Sox fan (but resident of New York) who prefers his coffee from a French press. Another is a sucker for every kind of wacko exercise gadget, most lately the "Gazelle," who goes vegan when he can (but has a weakness for chocolate chip cookies). The third likes to surf (real waves, not television channels) and likes Beckett as much as Beethoven. This is the diverse group also known as the Fellows of the American Pianists Association (APA): Adam Birnbaum, Michael Sheppard and Thomas Rosenkranz. MTNA National Conference attendees will have the chance to hear all three in concert April 3, and their musical fare will likely be as varied as their personal predilections.

"... anything but predictable ..."

On the surface, Sheppard (the vegan chocoholic) and Rosenkranz (the theatrical surfer) would seem to be linked by their titles as the current Classical Fellows of the APA, and both will, undoubtedly, offer piano music that, for want of a better word, is classical. Birnbaum (the New Yorker who rooted for Manny Ramirez) holds the Cole Porter Fellowship from APA, awarded in May 2004 at APA's sixth Triennial American Jazz Piano Competition, and he will play jazz.

But this concert will be anything but predictable. Consider that Birnbaum, the jazz pianist, is comfortable playing Ravel's Jeux d'eau, not a piece for hacks or beginners; that Thomas, one of the two classical pianists, often improvises in concerts; and that Michael, the other Classical Fellow, evokes Broadway with his performances of Porgy & Bess Fantasy or My Favorite Things. One thing's for sure--it won't be your typical piano concert.

Joel Harrison, APA's artistic director, is proud of that diversity. "I believe the paradigm of the classical piano recital is changing. Gone are the days of programming a Bach prelude & fugue, a Beethoven sonata, a Chopin ballade and then ending with the Prokofiev Toccata. We cannot continue to restrict our programming to the standard '200-plus years' of the piano canon."

Harrison, himself a concert pianist and former university piano teacher, is particularly proud of these three Fellows, precisely because they show such a wide range. "This is one of the ways," continues Harrison, "APA can be set apart from other organizations. There is no imposed repertoire for applicants." Rather, each pianist is asked only to play what he or she does best.

Thomas Rosenkranz

That freedom is what propelled Harrison to suggest to Thomas Rosenkranz, upon the latter's first full-length recital in Indianapolis, home to the APA, that he program Frederic Rzewski's massive The People United Will Never Be Defeated/, a tour-de-force whose very mention nowadays sends a cold chill down pianists' spines, just like the words "Hammerklavier" or "Petrouchka" did for an earlier generation of pianists. Rosenkranz has a knack for such massive knuckle-busters (to say nothing of what they do to your brain), having championed Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jesus, which he studied in Paris with the composer's widow, Yvonne Loriod, as well as works by John Adams, Martin Bresnick and George Crumb.

As if that weren't enough to distinguish Rosenkranz from the herd, he often includes improvisation in his public performances, taking a few notes, a theme or a well-known tune and then letting his imagination roam. He has done this recently with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "Georgia On My Mind," though his most distinctive performance to date was arguably his rendition of "Star-Spangled Banner" with native musicians in Tunisia, in which Rosenkranz incorporated Arabic scales. (Talk about cultural exchange....)

Rosenkranz was the 1999 national winner of the MTNA Collegiate Artist Piano Competition and has been guest artist at the Georgia, Pennsylvania, Hawaii and Washington state Music Teachers Association conventions. His performances have been broadcast worldwide as part of the WGBH Boston Program, Art of the States, and he has recorded for Nonesuch Records with the group Alarm Will Sound and for Warner Bros. Records with the Eastman Wind Ensemble.

Michael Sheppard

Michael Sheppard is equally unusual. While he focuses more on traditional repertoire than Rosenkranz, he is just as adept at contemporary or offbeat literature. His recent recitals include healthy doses of Chopin (Fantasy, Polonaise-Fantasy, mazurkas, Grand Polonaise in A-flat Major) and Mozart (sonatas), alongside works of the contemporary canon like Crumb's Makrokosmos and Corigliano's Etude-Fantasy. But Joel Harrison cites Sheppard's hypervirtuosity as a distinguishing trait.

"Michael is one of the real Titans of the keyboard," says Harrison. "He does things no human being should be able to do." Harrison might have had in mind Sheppard's rendition of "Flight of the Bumblebee," arranged by Gyorgy Cziffra, in a version that rivals Volodos for sheer daring and adrenalin. Sheppard also makes a convincing case for such crowd pleasers as Pavel Pabst's arrangement of themes from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Leopold Godowsky's transcription of Strauss's Wein, Weib und Gesang and Stephen Hough's version of Richard Rodgers's "Carousel Waltz." Indeed, Sheppard sounds like a throwback to a bygone era of piano recitalists--one thinks of Liszt, Paderewski, Horowitz--whose exuberance and warmth wowed the crowds. Like those earlier virtuosi, Sheppard also is a composer in his own right, who often programs his original compositions. He trained at the Peabody Conservatory, where his teachers were Ann Schein and Leon Fleisher, and made his Kennedy Center debut in 2003. Sheppard also has been a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and the La Gesse Foundation and was a prize winner in the National Federation of Music Clubs National Competition.