Headed to Ireland today with co-pianist David Kaplan to play two programs at the Kilkenny Festival. Both feature Donnacha Dennehy’s brand new two-piano piece Between, which he composed for us this year. It’s a seven movement, 25-minute work of great variety, beauty, and virtu­os­ity. The programs also include music by Meredith Monk, Gabriella Smith, John Adams, Steve Reich, Christo­pher Cerrone, and me (an excerpt from Shy and Mighty).

In other Dennehy news: I’m happy to have conducted an inter­view with him for the liner note of his bril­liant new Nonesuch album, to be released later this month.

Up next: a perfor­mance of the complete Glass Piano Etudes at Tangle­wood July 22. I’ll play nos. 5, 6, 19, and 20, joined by my colleagues Daniela Liebman, Lisa Moore, Chris­t­ian Sands, and Bruce Brubaker. In a nice bit of symmetry, it’s exactly 20 years since my memo­rable six weeks as a compo­si­tion fellow at TMC. Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt both dropped in that summer, still very much repre­sent­ing the govern­ing aesthetic of the Festival of Contem­po­rary Music; much has changed.

Tickets seem to be going fast—see you on the lawn.

I’ve enjoyed contribut­ing record­ings to several scores by my friend Bryce Dessner over the past few years, includ­ing She Came to Me and We Live in Time. You can hear my Bösendor­fer on two recent projects, both of which seem to have struck a nerve (though perhaps with differ­ent audi­ences): the Denis Johnson adap­ta­tion Train Dreams, and the series Love Story, about the rela­tion­ship of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.

Above, the final scene of Train Dreams, from a screen­ing of the film with live music which I performed with Bryce and the Wordless Music Orches­tra, as well as a disem­bod­ied Nick Cave, in January.

Music has survived several millen­nia of societal and polit­i­cal change. But it may not survive you not coming to my several upcoming concerts with fellow pianist Aaron Diehl.

A couple of our collab­o­ra­tions are culmi­nat­ing over the next few weeks. Namely:

Wednesday–Thursday, December 31–January 1, 8:30 / 2:00 PM — Minneapolis, MN

Made of Tunes, the concerto I wrote for Aaron which premiered in 2024 in Los Angeles, comes to the Minnesota Orches­tra for this all-American New Year’s program, conducted by Teddy Abrams. The piece is likely to become a staple of the season; I’m told Alicia Keys will perform its plain­tive second-movement theme just before the ball drops in Times Square next year.

Sunday, January 25, 4:00 PM — Beacon, NY

Aaron and I have been steadily chipping away at our two-piano duo show since we debuted it at the Phillips Collec­tion last spring. We’ll be doing a Hudson Valley preview of the program which a couple days later we perform at…

Wednesday, January 28, 7:30 PM — New York, NY

…Carnegie Hall. The program features music by Billy Stray­horn, Thelo­nious Monk (in exten­sive new re-workings), Julia Wolfe (the Aretha Franklin-inspired banger my lips from speaking), music from my 2010 album Shy and Mighty, and a couple of other surprises.

Thursday–Saturday, February 19–21, 7:30 PM / 11:00 AM / 7:30 PM — Cleveland, OH

Finally, Aaron takes Made of Tunes back out on the road, this time to the Cleve­land Orches­tra. John Adams conducts the program, which also includes his great new mini-symphony Frenzy.

On Thursday, November 13, I’ll be joining my Mannes colleagues Rebecca Fischer and Jia Kim for a perfor­mance of my 2018 Piano Trio. The evening will also feature music by Gubaidulina and Wynton Marsalis, all performed by Mannes faculty. This is a chance to hear some very exciting music played by stellar musi­cians for cheap as free. Come through!

I’ll be joining the faculty for Art Of Piano 2026 at the Banff Centre in Alberta this coming June. Though this program is typi­cally centered around piano perfor­mance, I’ll be accept­ing a limited number of composer–pianists into my “studio” for the two-week session. There are still very few oppor­tu­ni­ties for students with this specific focus, so please apply and help spread the word. Appli­ca­tions are open until December 3, 2025.