The Music Department at Mary Baldwin is pleased to celebrate this year’s College-wide theme of “Roots” with a concert on February 24 at 7:30 p.m. The concert, titled “Roots: Real and Imagined,” will feature guest artist David Salvage, a composer and pianist who will discuss and perform several of his own works. The event is in Francis Auditorium and is free and open to the public.
Salvage will perform many of his own compositions for solo piano, including Three Jefferson Pieces (“Poplar Forest,” “Monticello,” and “The Rotunda”); “Wall of Graffiti”; “Porticoes”; Sonata in D; and one of his newest works, Fantasy-Variations on “All the Pretty Little Horses.” He will also perform Robert Schumann’s delightful Papillons, a work which has inspired him as a pianist and composer.
“Almost all the pieces on the program are rooted in specific experiences, some real, some imagined, some my own, some others,” explains Salvage. “I am especially excited to be giving the first public performance of my latest piece, Fantasy-Variations on “All the Pretty Little Horses.” Based on the famous lullaby, it’s a piece rooted in my own experience as a new father.” He goes on to say that “other pieces take inspiration from Thomas Jefferson’s architecture and the colorful life of Bologna, Italy, where I’ve had the good fortune to spend a lot of time.”
Salvage is assistant professor of fine arts at Hampden-Sydney College, where he has taught since 2009. His music has been called “elegant and smartly realized” and “refreshingly eclectic.” He has been a featured performer on the Bologna Estate Festival, a resident artist with the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and he is an alumnus of the Conservatoire Americain in Fontainebleau, France. He has taught at the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music and privately in Bologna, Italy. He is also the creator of the music blog Albumleaves.com. His composition teachers have included Richard Danielpour, David Lewin, and Jeff Nichols, and he has studied piano with Peter Takács and Miyoko Lotto. For more information call 540-887-7294 or visit Music at Mary Baldwin.