Bruce Hornsby Solo Concerts
Captures Acclaimed Singer-Songwriter Alone on Piano,
available on Vanguard Records August 25th
Live two-CD set fuses his classical, jazz and pop influences,
including hits “Mandolin Rain,” “The Valley Road” and
Three New Songs
July 14, 2014 – Virginia-born pianist, composer and singer-songwriter Bruce
Hornsby has long been fascinated with old-time American roots forms – hymns,
blues, country, bluegrass, old folk, shaped-note religious songs and the like. His
Vanguard Records two-disc set, Bruce Hornsby – Solo Concerts, - his first for the
label will be available August 25th and allows him to explore that fusion of styles,
along with classical music, jazz and pop. The album’s 21 tracks are culled from solo
concerts performed by Hornsby in the U.S. over 2012 and 2013, bringing together
disparate “information” from musical languages often thought to be opposed:
Americana roots music, folk-pop, film scores and modern classical, what Hornsby
calls an “unholy alliance.”
Solo Concerts offers an opportunity for Hornsby to show off his chops on piano in a
variety of settings. There are solo renditions of his radio hits, songs like “Mandolin
Rain” and “The Valley Road” as well as forays into the kind of old-timey music he
performed at the start of his career – playing accordion in a band that featured
fiddles, banjos and dulcimers. Hornsby also explores modern classical music with
the dissonance and expressive chromatics of 20th century 12-tone experimental
composers like Austrians Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, as well as
American modernists like Elliot Carter, the Hungarian György Ligeti or the French
mystic Olivier Messiaen.
Hornsby champions on this set what he calls “two-handed independence,” a phrase
to describe a piano performance where one hand doesn’t just accompany a melody
played by the other, but rather, as in boogie-woogie, simultaneously achieves a
parallel compositional and musical life and vitality of its own.
The album starts with “Song E (Hymn in E-Flat),” from a Spike Lee score Hornsby
composed several years ago, then segues into “Preacher in the Ring,” a boogie tune,
“an old pattern I was shown by a longtime cohort, so I wrote the song based on that
pattern, which illustrates that two-handed independence.”
“I think I’ve found a middle ground,” Hornsby says, “where you’re reaching and
broadening your language but still connecting with someone perhaps used to
hearing — for an entire lifetime — only those seven white notes and those simple
chords.”
LISTEN TO “LIFE IN THE PSYCHOTRIPICS” HERE:
https://soundcloud.com/vanguard-records/04-life-in-the-psychotropics
Bruce Hornsby Solo Concerts represents an emotional musical merger of American
history and European daring, in which the various elements of his songwriting and
instrumental styles align in highly personal ways.
Bruce Hornsby will embark on a 16 city tour with Pat Metheny which begins July
16th and runs through August 8th. On July 25th, He will be performing with Ricky
Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder at the RockyGrass Festival in Lyons, Colorado
followed by a solo tour in support of Solo Concerts. Tour dates listed below with
more to be added soon. For updates visit: www.brucehornsby.com.
2014 Tour dates:
*with Pat Metheny Unity Group
** Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby with Kentucky Thunder
***solo performances
July 16
July 17
July 18
July 19
July 21
July 22
July 24
July 25
July 26
Saratoga, CA – Mountain Winery*
Santa Rosa, CA – Wells Fargo Center for the Arts*
Los Angeles, CA – Greek Theater*
Temecula, CA – Thornton Winery*
Salt Lake City, UT – Red Butte Garden*
Eagle, ID – Eagle Park Pavilion*
Jackson, WY – Center for the Arts*
Lyons, CO – RockyGrass Festival**
Kansas City, MO – CrossroadsKC*
July 29
July 30
August 1
August 2
August 3
August 6
August 7
August 8
August 13
September 20
September 23
September 24
September 26
September 27
Milwaukee, WI – Potawatomi Casino*
Grand Rapids, MI – Meijer Gardens*
Chautauqua, NY – Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater*
Katonah, NY – Caramor Center for Music and the Arts*
Nantucket, MA – Nantucket Music Festival***
Vienna, VA – Wolf Trap*
Kennett Square, PA – Longwood Gardens*
Newark, NJ – NJPAC – Prudential Hall*
Steamboat Springs, CO – Strings Music Pavilion***
Spartanburg, SC - Zimmerli Amphitheatre At Barnet Park***
Lebanon, NH – Lebanon Opera House***
Boston, MA – The Wilbur Theatre***
New York, NY – Rose Theater***
Princeton, NJ - McCarter Theatre Center***
CONTACT: Lucy Sabini (lsabini@vanguardrecords.com) (310) 829-9355 ex. 137