Ithaca College

Ithaca College double bass professor Nicholas Walker will present a free recital on Tuesday, September 15 at 7pm in the Hockett Family Recital Hall.  The program includes three American sonatas with jazz influence. 

Pianist Josh Oxford joins Walker in presenting German composer Paul Hindemith's Sonata for Double Bass, a work composed while Hindemith was on vacation in Taos in 1949.  Walker explained: “While the influence of jazz is more veiled in Hindemith’s jewel of a piece, Frank Proto's Sonata 1963 includes a swinging pizzicato bass movement and a true mid-century "crossover" esthetic.  Proto's sonata was influenced by Bill Evans and former Ithaca College student, Scott LaFaro, and was written the year Hindemith died.”   The evening will conclude with a trio sonata by Nicholas Walker featuring fellow faculty members John Stetch, piano, and Elizabeth Simkin, cello.  Walker's sonata features Stetch's lyrical solo improvisations in its premise, modern odd-meter contentious jazz groves, yearning cello and double bass melodic soliloquies, and a four-voice counterpoint fugue to bring the work to its affirming conclusion.