Piano Music

Adolph M. Foerster Collection

Adolph M. Foerster (1854–1927) was a musician, conductor, and music educator. Born in Pittsburgh, he studied voice, composition, and piano at the Leipzig Conservatory. Upon graduation, he taught music at the conservatory in Fort Wayne, Indiana, before returning to Pittsburgh, where he directed the Pittsburgh Symphony Society and the Musical Union Choral Society.

Ahmad Jamal

Date of Birth: 
July 2, 1930
Date of Death: 
April 16, 2023

Jamal, a Pittsburgh native who toured the world, was a composer and virtuoso of jazz piano and cited as as a major influence by none other than Miles Davis.

Autumn Waltz

Artist (Composed By): 
Foster, Stephen C. (Collins)
1990

A manuscript for “Autumn Waltz” was discovered in a binder’s volume in 1988. This presentation copy was prepared for the dedicatee who lived at Freedom (Beaver County) near Pittsburgh in the 1840s. Because the song was unknown in the early 1930s when the Foster Hall Reproductions were made, it is not present in that edition. The song was published for the first time in The Music of Stephen C. Foster: A Critical Edition, by Deane Root and Steven Saunders (Smithsonian Institute Press, 1990).

Black, Robert (Carlisle)

Date of Birth: 
April 28, 1950
Date of Death: 
November 14, 1993

Robert Carlisle Black was an American conductor, pianist, and composer. 

Charles and Frankie Pace Collection

Charles Henry Pace (1886–1963) began his career as a composer, director, and publisher of Black gospel music in Chicago, where he made some of the first recordings of early Black gospel standards with his group the Pace Jubilee Singers between 1926 and 1929. He met and married Frankie (1905–1989) in the early 1930s, and in 1936 they moved to Pittsburgh, eventually establishing their publishing business in the Hill District neighborhood.

Concert Study in G Major

Artist (Composed By): 
Oetting, William H.
ca.
1901

For piano. The manuscript in the William Oetting Collection indicates the piece was “dedicated to Dallmeyer Russell.” The manuscript is dated July 13, 1901.  

Dave Burrell Archive

Dave Burrell (b. 1941) is a jazz pianist and composer currently based in Philadelphia. He emerged as an influential innovator in New York’s free jazz scene in the mid-1960s, playing alongside trailblazing musicians such as Marion Brown, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, and David Murray. In addition to more than forty albums under his own name, he has recorded over eighty albums as a sideman. He continues to be a fixture at international jazz festivals and top clubs around the world.

Dave Burrell at the Entermedia Theater

Artist (Composed By): 
Burrell, Dave
1979

On March 3, 1979, jazz pianist Dave Burrell performed two sets of music from his opera Windward Passages on solo piano at the Entermedia Theater in New York. The sets were recorded for broadcast on NPR. 

Dear Friends Recordings Collection

From 1982 to 2000, the Dear Friends were an ensemble-in-residence at the University of Pittsburgh’s Stephen Foster Memorial devoted to performing nineteenth-century music from the United States.

Emerging Masters Collection, 1954–1989

The Emerging Masters Collection consists of recordings of events sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Music Department, highlighting the various musical groups at the University, as well as concerts by visiting musicians and lectures by noted music scholars. These performances took place in a number of venues, including the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, the Stephen Foster Memorial, and Bellefield Hall. The concerts were free and open to the public.

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