Awadagin Pratt Introduces Tüür's Piano Concerto

Awadagin Pratt

As far as recordings go, it’s been a dry spell for pianist Awadagin Pratt -- until recently

His last CD came out in 2002 (“Play Bach” with the St. Lawrence String Quartet).  Then all of a sudden, in April this year, two came out in quick succession.

One of them, Johannes Brahms, Works for Cello and Piano with cellist Zuill Bailey, debuted on the Billboard classical charts at number three April 9 and now stands at number 10.  The other, “Eternal Evolution,” with the Harlem String Quartet, features music by Judith Lang Zaimont.

“It’s funny to have had a ten-year hiatus and then have two things come out in the same month,” said Pratt in his studio at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music earlier this week.

Pratt, who is associate professor and artist-in-residence at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, has been quite active in other ways.  He has a busy studio at CCM (14 students), he founded the new Bearcat Piano Festival (for Haitian relief last year, for victims of the Japanese earthquake this year), and he is starting a brand new master class at CCM, set for July 5-16.  His performance career is thriving (he goes to Juneau, Alaska next week for a recital with Bailey). 

This weekend he will introduce Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür’s new Piano Concerto with Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.  The concerts, Järvi’s last as CSO music director, are 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday at Music Hall (tickets are going fast -- see below).  It will be the North American premiere of the work.  Also on the program is Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.

A frequent guest of the CSO, Pratt was approached by Järvi to perform Tüür’s Concert soon after its world premiere in 2006 by pianist Thomas Larcher and the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra (led by Järvi). 

“It’s a very good piece, kind of spectacular in its orchestration, in the way in which the piano and orchestra interact,” said Pratt, who met Tüür on a visit to the CSO in September, 2009.  “Motives or pitches pass between the orchestra and the piano, which builds up in successions of waves – and not all the waves are benign.  It’s really powerful.”

Performed without a break, “it builds in a very progressive way,” Pratt said.  “There are more than two or three different kinds of material.  It is sort of made organically and it climaxes. There’s a lot of percussion and some really beautiful chords.”

For the pianist the difficulties are “not obvious ones,” he said.  “The piano is definitely busy, but it’s not like there are big bravura octave passages and things like that.  There are things that are rhythmically intricate, and I would say that some of the patterns are unusual, some of the figurations.”

A native of Pittsburgh, Pratt grew up in Normal, Illinois (the title of his very first album in 1994 is “A Long Way from Normal”).  The son of college professors (his father, a nuclear physicist, was a native of Sierra Leone), he began to study piano at age six.  At nine, he added violin.  In 1992, when he was 26, he won the Naumburg International Piano Competition, the first African-American pianist to do so.

One of Pratt’s biggest decisions growing up was deciding whether to pursue tennis or music.  A ranked tennis player, he was offered tennis scholarships, but finally decided on a triple whammy in music.  He was the first student in the history of the Peabody Conservatory of Music (Baltimore) to earn degrees in piano, violin and conducting.

Conducting is a passion that has stayed with him, he said.  He has taken part in American Symphony Orchestra League and Conductors Guild workshops and the National Conducting Institute with Leonard Slatkin.  Guest conducting engagements have taken him to the Toledo, New Mexico and Winston-Salem Symphonies and he is the conductor of the student-organized string band Wired at CCM.

“That’s something that has always been pretty important to me,” said Pratt, “and I need to figure out how to do more of it.  The cool thing about Wired is that there are students that play and also graduates that aren’t getting paid.  They say it’s better to spend time here with people that are really committed and care about what they are doing than to sit in an orchestra somewhere drawing $X an hour.  That’s nice to hear and it’s encouraging, but you can only do that for so long.  After a while the party afterwards is not enough.”

After an initial startup by CCM, Wired is now independently funded.  “It has a home here for a little bit and we’ll see what happens.”  (Plans are in the works for at least two concerts next season, he said.)  Pratt is also artistic director of the Next Generation Festival (chamber music) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Pratt maintains his own blog, http://awadablog.typepad.com/blogginawadagin/

where he likes to post videos dealing with piano repertoire (last fall it was Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto).   He is a well known gourmand and wine fancier and likes to cook, particularly Asian cuisine and grilling, he said.  For him, cooking is “a late-night, finish practicing, go home and start grilling” kind of thing.  You have to decompress somehow,” he said.

Pratt started cooking because of wine.  “When I was living in Albuquerque, I had all this wine I’d collected that I couldn’t drink by myself, so I started having dinner parties.”  He doesn’t collect as much wine anymore, he said, though he has quite a collection of bottles, some in his studio at CCM.  “I have not purchased any wine in a long time.  We did our CD release (Brahms) in Napa, so a few winers sent some wine along, which was nice.”

Pratt’s time away from CCM varies from year to year, he said.  “There are not any restrictions on how many concerts I can play.  This fall was really crazy (he performed at Carnegie Hall in November) and I was gone quite a bit.  Then there are other times like – I did something in early April, but I’ve been here most of this quarter.”

Pratt has been very happy since coming to CCM in 2004, he said.  “I like everything I’m doing here.”  The weather, however, can be a problem.  “This last spell of no sunlight just killed me.  When I first got here – it was October, November – it rained every day and that gets to me.”

Pianist Awadagin Pratt performs Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Piano Concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra led by Paavo Järvi at 8 p.m. May 13 and 14 at Music Hall.  Also on the program is Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.  Tickets, beginning at $10, are available (though going fast) at www.cincinnatisymphony.org or by calling (513) 381-3300.