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By Michael Cameron
-
sweeping the musical world in
the year of his
th birthday
(and nowhere more compre-
hensively than at Ravinia), pi-
anist Lara Downes is uniquely
positioned to celebrate his
varied output, from the iconic
to the obscure. Downes has
long been a tireless advocate
for his music speci cally in
the midst of her embrace of
American music at large. She
spoke to
Ravinia
Magazine
from her Sacramento home of
her interest in this repertoire,
fondly recalling the music in
her father’s record collection.
“ e range was very broad.
He had a tremendous love of
jazz, so he had a huge col-
lection of the jazz canon. We
heard a lot of e Beatles, and
he was also a little bit obsessed
with Glenn Gould!”
With a repertoire cover-
ing as wide a palette as any,
Downes has set her sights
most keenly on our nation’s
catalogue, beginning with her
disc
American Ballads
, a
survey of works of Barber and
Copland. “In the program-
ming of my recordings, I’ve
pursued a kind of self-analysis.
I like to think of them as ‘story
albums.’ is disc was actu-
ally my own introduction to
American piano music. I was
trained in Europe, studying
the European masters, but
Lara
Downes
SHERVIN LAINEZ
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 – MAY 11, 2019
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