Tenement Rhapsody

Harberg’s TENEMENT RHAPSODY brings both the percussive and the expressive potential of two pianos to life in a work depicting her experience living in New York City. Subway is a jagged, jazzy dance full of virtuosic and contrapuntal interplay. At Home offers the emotional center with melodic and lush materials. At Play features a humorous energy inspired by life behind the composer’s apartment door as her 14-month-old explored his universe with eager eyes and the swagger of a drunken sailor. A recording of TENEMENT RHAPSODY can be found at https://youtu.be/EOTlYTKeZi8 .   "It's a perfect example of a voice that marries a lifetime of inhaling the world's piano literature, with jazz idioms and propulsive rhythm. Like the first movement, a whirlwind of Prokofieff-spiked colors peppered with chunky blue notes ... or the lyrical second movement, soaked in open mid-century American-harmonies-almost like a rippling reflection of Barber's Nocturne... or the energetic closing movement's homage to Mr. Gershwin." (Jonathan Newman)