BELLOWS FALLS — Stone Church Arts presents poet and concert pianist Oni Buchanan in a program she calls “Looking Glass Music: Reflection & Resonance.”
The concert is at Immanuel Episcopal Church, “The Stone Church on the Hill,” at 20 Church St., Saturday, March 2, at 7:30 p.m.
Buchanan's program gathers a diverse group of fantastical piano works that create their own landscapes through reflection and resonance, exploring the piano's rich palette. The works reflect the world and allow the audience to pass “through the looking-glass” (to borrow from Lewis Carroll) into strangely familiar realms of resonance.
Opening with a selection of études from Sergei Rachmaninoff's haunting “Études-tableaux,” the program veers into the enchanting Oriental landscapes of sound in Claude Debussy's pour les quartes, the impetuous, mercurial bursts of witty aphorism in pour les degrés chromatiques, and the extroverted exuberance and pointillistic splendor of pour les octaves.
The centerpiece of the program follows Cindy Cox's “Hierosgamos” (2003) for solo piano, a striking commentary on the Rachmaninoff and Debussy works, and transforms the virtuosic Ravel “Miroirs” suite that follows.
According to Russel Sherman of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, “Oni Buchanan (www.onibuchanan.com) is a species unto herself. Her playing is informed by a persuasively lyrical touch in the service of great poise and charm. No less affable than intelligent, her combination of brains, devotion, and personality produces a highly principled and attractive approach to art and to music.”