THIS LAND

Coming on Pentatone August 23, 2024

Iconoclastic pianist and cultural visionary Lara Downes presents THIS LAND, a recording that travels a vast landscape to find the crossroads of our American journeys.

Downes launched this ambitious project in February 2024 with her single release Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined, celebrating the centenary of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with a radical new arrangement by the Puerto Rican composer Edmar Colón. This exuberant performance by Downes, with a next-gen ensemble from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, conducted by Edwin Outwater, reflects the multicultural, global reality of American music in our own time.

Coming in August, THIS LAND centers Gershwin’s vision of the “musical kaleidoscope of America” within a full album that represents many different versions of being and becoming American, with works by Paul Simon, Margaret Bonds, Arturo O’Farrill, Michael Begay, Kian Ravaei, Samora Pinderhughes and others set into a multi-dimensional musical collage that interweaves archival and environmental sound artifacts to explore a broad and diverse American landscape.

TRACK LISTING

Michael Begay: Adéihozhdílzin/Know Who You Are

Traditional: 900 Miles

Paul Simon: America

Kian Ravaei: Variations on “This Land is Your Land”

Joseph C Phillips Jr.: Never Has Been Yet

Jake Heggie: Facing Forward

Samora Pinderhughes: Transformation

Margaret Bonds: I Believe in Liberty

Arturo O’Farrill: Kaleidoscope

Gershwin/Colón: Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined