THIS LAND
In 2024, iconoclastic pianist Lara Downes presents THIS LAND, a recording series on the Pentatone label that captures 100 years of American transformation, reflecting the troubles and the triumphs of our past and present while imagining our journey ahead.
Downes launches this ambitious project in February 2024 by celebrating the centenary of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with a radical new arrangement of the piece by the Puerto Rican composer Edmar Colón, expanding Gershwin’s soundscape to reflect the multicultural, global reality of American music in our own time. This recording features Downes as soloist with a next-gen ensemble from the Orchestra and Jazz, Roots and American Music programs of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Subsequent releases in 2024 explore Gershwin’s vision of “a musical kaleidoscope of America” with music that surveys a century, from innovators like Elie Siegmeister and Margaret Bonds to contemporary voices including Arturo O’Farrill, Kian Ravaei, Iván Enrique Rodriguez, Viet Cuong, Quinn Mason, and Derrick Skye - a kaleidoscopic collection that represents many different versions of being and becoming American.
THIS LAND culminates in July 2026 with the premiere of a triptych of new works for piano and orchestra entitled Declaration, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the founding of these United States and contemplating the essence of our national promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.