KEYED UP. Pianist Nicholas Phillips, an associate professor of music at UW-Eau Claire, has released a new album of commissioned pieces titled American Vernacular.

While some audiences are apprehensive about a piano recital if the set list doesn’t include Bach or Chopin, UW-Eau Claire associate professor Nicholas Phillips thinks that his latest album, American Vernacular: New Music for Solo Piano, will bring an embraceable and familiar sound to concert halls.

That familiar sound is America’s musical heritage, and the album title was the theme that 10 different composers used to inspire new works. Phillips, who recorded last summer, plays these pieces in a 16-track album that has garnered national attention since its Jan. 7 Internet release: It has already been named Album of the Week by Q2, an online contemporary classical music station in New York.

“The album as a whole has a great narrative quality to it,” Phillips said. “The composers came through with a wide variety of works.” That variety stretches from emulating the finger-picking of guitarist John Fahey to interpreting the words of poet Langston Hughes through the keys of a piano, from riffing on the works of singer-songwriter Billy Joel to paying homage to jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal.

“You never know what you’re going to get when you commission a composer. American Vernacular is very broad. I could have ended up with 12 jazz pieces, but I didn’t.”
– Pianist and UWEC associate professor Nicholas Phillips on his new album

Phillips came up with the idea for the album over a year ago and started contacting composers around the country. Some of the composers are friends, while some are people Phillips hasn’t even met. “I guess the common denominator is that they’re all composers whose music I appreciate and respect, and thought that others would enjoy also,” he said. “But I didn’t want to dictate what they composed.”

To avoid that, Phillips gave them the album title and nothing more. The composers – among them former UW-Eau Claire composition professor Ethan Wickman, world-renowned composer Mohammed Fairouz, and other great American composers – went to work interpreting what the “American vernacular” was and putting it on the page: Wickman’s piece, “Occidental Psalmody,” is a musical description of frontier America on the West Coast; Mark Olivieri’s three-movement “Spectacular Vernaculars” pays homage to jazz greats such as Billie Holiday and Ahmad Jamal; while music like David Maslanka’s “Beloved” and John Griffin’s “Playin’ and Prayin’ ” take a less specific approach in their interpretations. The results are far-reaching from coast to coast in musical style – exactly what Phillips was looking for.

“You never know what you’re going to get when you commission a composer,” he said. “American Vernacular is very broad. I could have ended up with 12 jazz pieces, but I didn’t.”

This is the third album for Phillips, who has been teaching in Eau Claire for almost seven years. His previous albums are Portals and Passages (music composed by Wickman) and Boris Papandopulo: Piano Music. He grew up in Indiana, where he took lessons at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. After getting his doctorate, his teaching career has been a great complement to his career as a performer.

“It’s something that I’m used to,” he said, referring to being both a teacher and performer. “As an applied performance faculty member, I regularly give recitals. It’s definitely a balancing act, but I think it’s important for students to see (teachers) being active beyond the campus.”

Phillips will continue to perform the works from American Vernacular around the world – including a free Feb. 9 recital at Gantner Hall in the Haas Fine Arts Center at UW-Eau Claire – and will release the CD version of the album on Jan. 28. The program won’t look familiar to his audiences – but the sounds coming from his piano will give listeners the recognizable vernacular that is American music.

“Some of the composers in this album even introduced me to new music,” Phillips said. “But playing and listening to a lot of different kinds of music helps you realize what speaks to you and what doesn’t.”

Volume One will be hosting A Conversation With Nicholas Phillips on Feb. 27 at 7pm, where we’ll chat with Phillips about the album and classical music and play recorded selections.