Student Rush: Julian Lage + What Makes It Great? with Rob Kapilow

Julian Lage is of the “highest category of improvising musicians, those who can enact thoughts and impulses as they receive them” (New Yorker). The California-born, now New York-based guitarist has evolved from collaborator (with such giants as Gary Burton, Jim Hall, David Grisman, Béla Fleck, and Charles Lloyd) to band leader. On Modern Lore, Julian Lage’s second studio recording with his trio, the composer and guitarist focuses on the groove, building his melodies and solos around the work of the prodigious rhythm section.

Rob Kapilow and recent Debut Series artist pianist Orion Weiss take on one of Beethoven’s greatest and most technically challenging piano works, Sonata No. 23, Opus 57, the “Appassionata.” The demonic intensity and daring harmonic sense of this sonata foreshadowed Beethoven’s so-called second creative period. Kapilow and Weiss’s descriptions, dissections, and insights will culminate in a full performance of this magnificent sonata.