88 KEYS® is a series of recitals with commentary that
offer a pianist’s unique perspectives into the context and connections around the music, enhancing the concert experience with personal insights for any audience. “A voyage of discovery, and fun!” raves the Sacramento Bee about this popular series, which has been presented annually since 2004 at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis.
Charmingly personable, intensely musical, and brilliantly virtuosic, pianist Lara Downes is an exceptionally engaging artist dedicated to creating thematically designed programs that run the gamut of emotions and musical styles. Lara presents her listeners with things that are totally new and takes them on exciting adventures into territory they thought they already knew.
The "unique blend of musicianship and showmanship" (NPR) that Lara brings to 88 KEYS® attracts both seasoned music lovers deepening their understanding and appreciation of familiar repertoire, and new audiences engaged by the entertaining, accessible nature of her programs. Lara’s remarkable rapport with audiences creates a sense of dynamic energy in the concert hall, culminating in a lively Q&A dialogue at the end of each performance.
For the 2008-2009 season, 88 KEYS® highlights Lara’s affinity for American music in Coming Home, a two-part series celebrating distinctly American voices of the 20th century. This vibrant and atmospheric music, dating from the 1920’s-1950’s, documents the climate of a rapidly changing America. The big-city sounds of the jazz age, the windswept, dusty sounds of the prairies, the lean folk music of the Appalachian Mountains, and the stoic self-reliance of the devotional are all heard in the music of Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, and others. Lara presents these recitals against
a backdrop of projected photographs by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and other artists who, like these composers, focused their lens on the diversity and drama of the day-to-day American experience.
These programs are offered with a wide range of complementary K-12 and community outreach options.
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