presents liz story/lisa downing/ kori...

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P E R F O R M I N G A R T S C E N T E RS O K A

S O K A U N I V E R S I T Y O F A M E R I C A

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Liz Story/Lisa Downing/Kori Carothers

Contemporary Piano Music

Saturday, January 21, 2017 at 8:00 p.m.

ENJOY WORLD-CLASS ENTERTAINMENT2

Biographies

LIZ STORY

A native of California, Liz Story began her musical training as a young child, mastering Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 11 by the age of eleven. When her family moved to Germany during her teens, she added languages, philosophy, and poetry to her studies.

On her return to the United States, she continued her formal piano studies at the Juilliard School and also enrolled at Hunter College. After hearing the jazz pianist Bill Evans one night at the Bottom Line in New York City, she decided to learn jazz piano and became a student of Sanford Gold, whom Evans recommended.

Later, after moving back to Southern California, she studied at the Dick Grove Music Workshops in Studio City. During her studies, she took a job playing piano in a restaurant and was suddenly thrust into improvisations when she discovered that the piano she was to perform on had no stand for her sheet music. Over several months, these improvisations developed into compositions.

When Windham Hill’s founder, Will Ackerman, heard a tape of her compositions developed from her improvisations, he signed her to record her debut album in 1983, Solid Colors. Story has since recorded: Unaccountable Effect (1985), Part of Fortune (1988), Speechless (1989), Escape of the Circus Ponies (1990), My Foolish Heart (1992 and reissued 2009 by Valley Entertainment), The Gift (1994), Liz Story (1996), Seventeen Seconds to Anywhere (1998), Welcome Home: The Very Best of Liz Story (2001), Night Sky Essays (2005), and Pure Liz Story (2006).

Story recently signed with DMI Records after recording a number of best-selling, critically acclaimed albums for Windham Hill and RCA Records. Those releases highlighted her classical piano background, fused with a wide range of styles embracing jazz, folk, pop, and impressionistic music.

LISA DOWNING

Solo pianist Lisa Downing believes all of life is A Delicate Balance, also the title of her third album (currently one of the top instrumental airplay recordings in the world). “It’s a fragile existence that we lead,” states Downing. “It is a challenge to balance your job with your personal life, your outer-persona with your inner feelings, working versus having fun, helping your children or doing too much for them, daydreams versus accomplishments. The list is endless and it touches every aspect of our lives.”


Downing took these feelings of the yin-yang of life and used them for inspiration in writing the compositions that especially reflect the years she spent as a single parent struggling to raise her son on her own. “I have discovered that the idea of striving to find balance in life is very important because it encourages you to analyze circumstances and find the middle way. Even the best things in life can become negatively tarnished if there is too much of them. The reason we appreciate the good moments is because of the perspective given to us by the tough times.”

Downing, who earned a university degree in music, has three solo piano recordings: Think on These Things (original material), Christmas for Two (her arrangements of holiday classics), and the new A Delicate Balance, which for the past several months has been in the top five of the international Zone Music Reporter airplay chart (measuring broadcast results of gentle, mostly-instrumental music). Downing has toured with pianists Liz Story and Lee Bartley (previously with the smooth jazz group Images); has performed on single-show concert bills with David Lanz, Peter Kater, Joseph Akins, and Scott D. Davis; and has been joined onstage by top Native American-style flute player Scott August.

Downing was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, and she still lives in the metropolitan area. She saw her first piano when she was two and a half years old and was immediately captivated and began reaching for the keys. A few years later she was playing the xylophone and writing simple songs on it. She began playing acoustic guitar at age nine and piano a year later. Beginning when she was sixteen, Downing took lessons for several years from Bill Alexander, one of Denver’s most prominent jazz players and instructors. In addition, her father was a disc-jockey on both jazz and classical radio stations, so she was surrounded by that music growing up, as well as what played on the pop stations.

In high school Downing was an avowed “metal-head” listening to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Deep Purple, and Yes, but eventually she began listening to some softer pop-rock acts such as Dan Fogelberg. Downing simultaneously attended the University of Colorado at Denver and Metropolitan State College earning a joint, specialized bachelor of arts degree in traditional and non-traditional music with keyboard emphasis. In college she took courses that prepared her for a career of teaching piano including some on early childhood development.

After college when she was in her mid-twenties, Downing became a youth pastor at a church and played guitar and piano in Wings of Faith, a Christian folk-pop-rock band (she also composed most of the material for the group). But her private passion was solo piano music. The first recorded solo piano she heard was jazz improvisor Keith Jarrett, but in the 1980s George Winston emerged, followed by Liz Story. “Hearing these artists was


a personal breakthrough for me,” explains Downing, “because what they were doing was closer to what was in my head than anything I had heard before. It inspired me to get serious about my composing.” She began giving solo piano concerts in Colorado with the first one at an auditorium in suburban Denver at Littleton Town Hall, followed by shows at venues ranging from the Boulder Library to the Arvada Center. Soon she was also in demand to play corporate events and weddings. She balanced her professional music career between composing and performing, teaching piano students, and founding and running Vision Quest Entertainment, a talent agency representing more than 1,200 musicians and event services in Colorado.

Her solo piano performances led to a demand from her audiences for recordings, so Downing released her first album, Think on These Things, with many of the original pieces spiritual in nature and inspired by her active church-life at that time. She followed that album with her Christmas for Two album in 2009 and a christmas tour with Liz Story that included concerts throughout Arizona and a workshop for aspiring pianists. “Working with Liz was a dream come true because I have admired her music for so long.”

Now Downing’s latest recording, A Delicate Balance, has become a smash hit on radio stations and specialty shows that specialize in broadcasting music in the genres of new age, neo-classical, acoustic, and solo piano. Recorded in the studio on a Yamaha C7 acoustic piano, the album contains a dozen tunes written by Downing who is quickly becoming known as a composer of strong melodies, and as a performer active with both hands, often playing counter-melodies or switching hands for rhythm and lead lines.

The image on the cover of A Delicate Balance (and repeated throughout the artwork) is a symbolic photograph of five rocks precariously perched on top of one of another in the midst of waves and swirling water that could topple the stones at any moment. “The concept of that photo is that it represents the challenge of staying balanced within yourself so you can weather storms and adversity. The whole idea of balancing our existence translates to the world of music because good music cannot just be constant sound; there has to be a balance between sound and silence. Someone once said the space between the notes is just as important as the notes themselves.”

Much of the music on the album reflects the theme of balance. “Speaker/Listener” was inspired by a therapy exercise of speaking about feelings balanced by the listener repeating what was heard before reversing the roles; the music reflects this idea with slight pauses and tempo fluctuations. The idea for “Slow Dancing” came from the courtship with her husband. “We made a conscious decision to slow down the rushing romance and take the time to really get to know each other” said Downing. She continues,


“the piece ‘Indecision’ tries to capture sitting on that precipice between not being able to make up your mind and eventually moving forward with your life.”

When Downing first began writing “No Matter What I Do” it was a piece reflecting her extreme frustration, but then she couldn’t finish it so she asked Story for advice. Story pointed out that sometimes no matter what you do you feel frustrated, but there will always be other times in which blessings flow, and that the flip side of pain is a positive feeling. The balance found in nature is demonstrated with the tune “Diaphanous Breeze,” which got its name when Downing noticed delicate cottonwood seeds being blown about by a powerful wind. Downing also understands that childhood is that short-lived time when we were poised and balanced, between being a baby and an adult, a time of summer “Night Games” under the streetlight performed as a fast-paced, rollicking piece. She also explores the world of “Make Believe,” often felt to be the opposite of reality, except that sometimes the made-up world serves as a visualization and helps make dreams come true. This tune starts in the upper registers to give it a childlike feeling and then becomes more complex with numerous tempo changes.

“I have a great love for solo piano music,” Downing states. “I feel there are endless variations available, countless emotional possibilities that can be explored, and numerous textures and colors that can be created. But even with my piano music I am now beginning to seek a balance in concert as I occasionally bring a flutist or cellist onstage for a few tunes.”

KORI CAROTHERS

A musician’s path to her muse is sometimes an easy one. Other times, it is filled with potential pitfalls or unexpected obstacles. Kori Linae Carothers faced just that when, during a kindergarten health screening at the age of five, it was discovered she was deaf in her left ear. Her young peers found out and the teasing began. In addition, throughout elementary and high school, Carothers was constantly told she would never become a musician. Undeterred, she kept learning and practicing, never surrendering her dream. Despite these discouragements, Carothers was passionate about her calling and now, forty-five years later, she is an acclaimed pianist and keyboard player with four albums to her credit. Clearly, she is an example of a person following her muse with courage, humor, and determination.

One of six children, Carothers was born in Cedar City, Utah. Her parents were not musicians but as Carothers recounted, “my parents had a respectable collection of forty-five records from South Pacific and Oklahoma, many LPs from the Boston Pops, and quite a nice collection of Herb Alpert albums” all of which were in constant rotation on the family record player. As far


as performing, perhaps Carothers inherited her spark and talent from her paternal grandmother, who played piano to accompany silent movies. Because her older sister had the radio on all the time, Carothers soon became familiar with big-name artists: Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Carly Simon, Seals and Croft, and James Taylor. In a strange twist, it was not any of these pop/rock stars that caught her early fancy, but the now-iconic John Williams’ soundtrack to Star Wars, which her parents purchased for her on cassette. Yet, the influence that cemented her commitment to music was a more typical source: “The group that made me want to be a musician and compose music was the Beatles. I absolutely loved their earlier material.”

Having taken classical piano lessons since the age of eight, Carothers took the next step and began composing her own songs at the age of fourteen. While some of her siblings also took music lessons on various instruments when they were children, Carothers’ love affair didn’t wane. It propelled her to attend Brigham Young University to pursue a major in music. Her dream had crystalized inside her: she wanted to compose and record her own music. Driven in equal parts to both prove her early naysayers wrong as well as to follow her love of music, she dove in head first to her studies even though she had some difficulty. “I got really burnt out on college and went home and started working at a graphics company and worked on my music on the side.”

Another of Carothers’ tipping points most likely occurred when she discovered the Windham Hill label, featuring legendary artists. Upon hearing the label’s music, Carothers recounts “I thought I had died and gone to heaven.” If the label’s music had that effect, one can only imagine how it was to meet the “founding father” himself. In 2008, while working with producer and musician Jeff Silverman in Nashville, an opportunity presented itself and she was introduced to the Grammy-winning guitarist and founder of Windham Hill Records, Will Ackerman. Upon hearing her music, Ackerman invited her to his Imaginary Road Studios in Vermont to record her next album, Trillium. The two kindred spirits hit it off and Carothers revisited the IR studios in 2014 to record her first solo piano album, Fire in the Rainstorm.

A full-time musician and stay-at-home mother, Carothers continues to be influenced by sources as disparate as nature; people, including past boyfriends; and the fantasy works of noted author Anne McCaffrey. She aspires to record a Christmas album and an album of electronic music accompanied by a live orchestra. When she mulls over why she continues to record music, she admits that more commercial success would be fantastic but “the true goal is to touch people’s lives. Letting them know, when they hear it, it’s authentic, real, and speaking to their souls.”


PKF-Prague PhilharmoniaThu . Jan . 26 . 2017 . 8 PM

The orchestra is led by Emmanuel Villaume who expertly guides the vigor, energy, perfectionism, and tremendous love for the music with which the musicians imbue each performance. Violinist Sarah Chang will be featured in this performance. Program: Semtana - Moldau; Dvořák - Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 53, and Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88.

Muriel Anderson w/ Mino CineluSat . Jan . 28 . 2017 . 8 PM

In this new audio-visual show, Wonderlust, Anderson’s world-renowned guitar and harp-guitar talents and Cinelu’s percussion skills are highlighted by a backdrop of stunning visuals by celebrated photo-artist Bryan Allen. The first woman to win the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship, Anderson has performed with Chet Atkins and jazz great Les Paul.

James Garner’s Tribute to Johnny CashSun . Jan . 22 . 2017 . 3 PM

Garner and his band faithfully recreate Cash’s biggest hits and present historical accounts and personal anecdotes about America’s most beloved singing storyteller. The closest experience to seeing Johnny Cash in person today, this concert is a toe-tapping trip down memory lane, honoring Cash’s life and music.

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Soka University of America Board of Trustees:Steve Dunham, JD, ChairTariq Hasan, PhD, Vice ChairYoshihisa Baba, PhDMatilda BuckLawrence E. Carter Sr., PhD, DD, DH, DRSMaria Guajardo, PhDClothilde V. Hewlett, JDLawrence A. Hickman, PhD

Soka University of America Administration:Daniel Y. Habuki, PhD, PresidentEdward M. Feasel, PhD, Vice President of Academic Affairs & Dean of FacultyArchibald E. Asawa, Vice President for Finance and Administration & CFOTomoko Takahashi, PhD, Vice President of Institutional Research and Assessment & Dean of Graduate SchoolWendy Harder, MBA, APR, Director of Community RelationsKatherine King, PHR, Director of Human ResourcesHyon J. Moon, EdD, Dean of StudentsAndrew Woolsey, EdD, Director of Enrollment Services

We would like to thank our Board of Trustees and our Administration for their extraordinary support of Soka Performing Arts Center

With deepest gratitude to the donors who made Soka Performing Arts Center possible.

www.performingarts.soka.edu | (949) 480-4278 | [email protected]

Kris Knudsen, JDKaren Lewis, PhDDaniel Nagashima, MBAGene Marie O’Connell, RN, MSDavid P. Roselle, PhDYoshiki TanigawaShunichi Yamada, MBA

Soka Performing Arts Center Staff:David C. Palmer, General ManagerRebecca Pierce Goodman, Marketing and Administrative ManagerShannon Lee Blas, Patron Services ManagerSam Morales, Technical Services ManagerSteve Baker, House Manager; Lindsey Cook, Stage Manager; Marcia Garcia, Production Coordinator; Kay Matsuyama, Sound & Video Technician; Ray Mau, Lighting Technician; May Nakatsuka, Stage TechnicianJim Merod, Director, Jazz Monsters Series and Soka University Jazz FestivalStudents of Soka University of America who serve as patron and technical services crew, as well as marketing assistants. Citizens of Aliso Viejo and surrounding communities who volunteer their service as ushers and hospitality aides.

Our Sponsors and Partners:The Orange County Register, KJazz 88.1, KUSC 91.5, California Presenters, and California Arts Council.

presents liz story/lisa downing/ kori...

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