OCTOBER 29-30 CONCERT

POWERFUL NATURE

SOLOIST SPOTLIGHT:

KYLE ADAM BLAIR

Kyle Adam Blair, D.M.A. is an active solo and collaborative pianist, music director, and vocal coach, specializing in the performance of American contemporary art music. Currently residing in San Diego, California, his major pianistic focuses include the performance of new works in collaboration with composers, and the performance of works from the American art music repertory of the 20th and 21st centuries (e.g. music of Charles Ives, Ruth Crawford, Carl Ruggles, George Crumb, Elliott Carter, etc.)

           Outside of his frequent engagements in southern California, Blair has recently performed at the San Francisco Center for New Music, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Hartt School of Music, the University of Buffalo, and Santa Clara University. Among these performances included the world premieres of all twelve of Bruno Ruviaro’s Pos-Tudos piano etudes, the world premiere of Stuart Saunders Smith’s Family Portraits: Sylvia at 70, and a faculty recital with soprano Tiffany DuMouchelle, performing songs by William Harvey, Joseph Schwantner, and George Crumb.           

           Blair released his solo debut record Palm Sunday in 2018, featuring four premiere recordings of recent solo piano works composed by Stuart Saunders Smith, including the namesake title piece, which Blair commissioned. Under the duo name Minderbinder, In 2012, Blair also collaborated with percussionist Chris Golinski to release No One is Going To Kill You Sweetheart on Edgetone Records, composed of three free jazz recordings described as “extended improvisation that can tunnel between jazz sets and Death Waltz soundtrack reissues.” Twice Blair has been credited as a producer on Bridge Records releases, namely recent recordings of Morton Feldman’s “Violin, Viola, Cello, Piano” and “For John Cage”.

           Beyond concert music, Blair’s passion for text and theatre often leads him into collaborations with actors, singers, and dancers. He has often worked closely with the kallisti vocal ensemble led by Grammy-winning soprano Susan Narucki in the creation of contemporary operatic projects, most notably acting as the rehearsal pianist and vocal coach the premieres of Lei Liang’s Inheritance and Stephen Lewis’s Noon at Dusk, as well as serving as the music director for Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera. Blair has also been a mainstay within the acclaimed Department of Theatre and Dance at UC San Diego for a number of years; whether musically directing new musicals by Deborah Stein and Nadine George-Graves, composing music for new plays written by graduate student playwrights, or playing a role as an on-stage performer in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice

Though multifaceted, Blair’s passions for music and performance all inhabit the realms of complexity, dissonance, and lyrical storytelling. In 2018, Blair received his Doctor of Musical Arts in Contemporary Music Performance (piano) from the University of California, San Diego under the mentorship of Aleck Karis.