John Salmon

Recital Program

Workshops

Improvising in Beethoven

In "Improvising in Beethoven," John Salmon will explore the various ways that Beethoven improvised and illustrate ways that present-day pianists might interact creatively with Beethoven's scores.

Dave Brubeck's Classical Piano Compositions

In "Dave Brubeck's Classical Piano Compositions," John Salmon and co-presenter Annie Jeng will perform several of Dave Brubeck's fully notated pieces, including the duets Four by Four and They All Sang Yankee Doodle as well as the solo works Reminiscences of the Cattle Country and Nocturnes.

Biography

Pianist John Salmon (https://johnsalmon.com), on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has distinguished himself on four continents, as both a classical and jazz artist.

His performances have been heard on many radio stations in the U.S., including National Public Radio, WNYC in New York, WFMT in Chicago, and KUSC in Los Angeles; and on the national radio stations of Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Moldova, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Ukraine.

Salmon is a frequent guest performer at festivals in the U.S. and Europe, having appeared at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival (Charleston, South Carolina), Piano Festival Northwest (Portland, Oregon), Interlochen Piano Festival (Interlochen, Michigan), Festival for Creative Pianists (Denver, Colorado), Festival Internacional de Música del Mediterráneo (Cartagena, Spain), and the International Bartók Festival (Szombathely, Hungary). He has toured China six times, with concerts in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang, and Hangzhou.

Other special appearances include an all-Liszt recital in Mexico City for the American Liszt Society and an all-Brubeck recital in Washington, DC for the Music Teachers National Association, after which he jammed at two pianos with Dave Brubeck in a spontaneous version of Duke Ellington's "Things Ain't What They Used to Be."

He has also been the featured artist for the Music Teachers National Association state conferences in California (CAPMT), Virginia (VMTA), and Minnesota (MMTA).

He has recorded four compact discs of Dave Brubeck's classical piano music, on the Phoenix, Naxos, and Albany labels. Brubeck dedicated two compositions to Salmon: "The Salmon Strikes" and "Bach Again." Salmon's CD of piano pieces by Nikolai Kapustin is also on the Naxos label, and his CD of his own jazz compositions, Salmon Is A Jumpin', was released by Albany Records in November 2010.

As guest lecturer, Salmon has spoken on a wide array of topics including "Beethoven's Shadow" (The Juilliard School), "September 1828: Schubert's Last Three Piano Sonatas" (Boston Conservatory), and "Adding Notes to Classical Scores" (Conservatorio de Música, Morelia, Mexico).

As author, he has covered such subjects as "What Brubeck Got From Milhaud" and "Urtext, que me veux tu?" and his articles have appeared in American Music Teacher, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Clavier, College Music Society Newsletter, Piano & Keyboard, and Piano Today. His book, The Piano Sonatas of Carl Loewe, is published by Peter Lang. Add On Bach (https://addonbach.com), called "playful, creative, and unique" by Clavier Companion, contains Salmon's added lines, varied reprises, and cadenzas to keyboard works of J.S. Bach. Jazz Up the Inventions (https://jazzuptheinventions.com) and Jazz Up the Sinfonias (https://jazzupthesinfonias.com) have Salmon's jazzy accompaniments to J.S. Bach's Two-Part Inventions and Three-Part Inventions. Jazz Standards (https://salmonstandards.com) has his arrangements of twelve classic pieces from the American songbook, including "All of Me," "Blue Moon," and "Over the Rainbow."