Keymore Festival for Contemporary Piano
The Festival
Inaugural Concert
Pianoforte Studios (Chicago)
Saturday, December 17, 2022
Program:
Aeryn Jade Santillan: weathering. *2022 Keymore Commissioned Work*
Shi-An Costello: Piano Parents (2022) for piano and recorded voices
Shi-An Costello: encores for piano (2020)
Performers:
Shi-An Costello, piano
Francis Yun, piano
About the works:
Aeryn Jade Santillan’s new work, weathering. (2022) will incorporate themes of nature, pollution and the idea of home. Santillan’s new work marks the Festival’s very first Keymore Commissioned Work.
Shi-An Costello’s Piano Parents (2022) features voice memo recordings of parents reflecting on the experience of parenthood, as it relates to the piano and the unique stories and relationships that intersect with the instrument.
Costello’s encores for piano (2020) are a set of studies in intimacy, time and focus, written during the summer lockdowns of 2020.
Other events
DEC 11
Online PREVIEW
ESS Quarantine
DEC 16
Online PREVIEW
ESS Quarantine
Keymore’s Mission:
Keymore aims to challenge the preconceived notions of the piano as a static and limited instrument of the past. Rather, we assert that the creative capabilities of the piano are expansive and ever growing. The piano is more than just a piano. It is an instrument of definitive cultural utility, and potent symbolic worth. The piano is a unique cultural instrument that has the capability to impact all of society for the better.
Through youth and adult education, the piano can help students grow the essential qualities of self-expression, self-confidence, authenticity, intellect and soul.
Through cross-disciplinary collaborative idea-building, the piano can ignite the thoughts and passions of non-musician professionals, in the arts, humanities, math and sciences, and in the public sphere of social and civic engagement.
Through commissioning new music creators, the piano can offer personal, creative and social empowerment to artists, and through artists’ work, predict and usher in positive change for society at large.
Keymore strives to demonstrate and celebrate the role the instrument has played in society, as well as reveal the instrument’s potential going into the future.
Advisory Board
Katie Adams
Shi-An Costello (Chair)
Jeannette Fang
Jonathan Hannau
Eugenia Jeong
Marianne Parker
Anne Rainwater
Andrew Rosenblum
Miki Sawada
Daniel Schlosberg
Rhapsody Snyder
Maria Sumareva
Francis Yun
Thomas Zoells
Artistic Director, Lead Curator
Shi-An Costello
Proud Partners
Experimental Sound Studio
PianoForte Studios
All inquiries may be sent to keymore.festival@gmail.com