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I presented a 20-minute paper on form and temporality in the music of Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru.
To read my paper abstract, click here.
For more information on the conference, click here.
Alison Yun-Fei Jiang, "Yun Shui" (2025, world premiere)
Waleed Howrani, "Alma Mater" (1998)
Alexander Maloof, "Ruins of Balbaak" (1917)
Anis Fuleihan, Sonata No. 1 (1940)
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Pianist Thomas T. Feng presents a benefit recital in solidarity with the people of Lebanon. The four works on the program conjure memories and landscapes, from Victoria to Beirut. Clouds, mountains, waters. University halls and clock towers reopening after disaster. Ancient ruins, still standing, amidst new ones. Imagined folk tunes from somewhere – anywhere – between the Salish and Mediterranean Seas.
Admission by donation. All proceeds go toward Humanitarian Coalition, a Canadian-registered group of charities providing humanitarian aid in Lebanon and across West Asia.
To RSVP for the concert, click here.
If you can’t attend but would like to donate anyway, click here.
A solo recital of music by Emahoy and Chopin, part of a 7-day festival at PS21 titled The Dark.
As a musician, and as a nun, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou found peace in the night. At times she composed and played the piano into the early hours of the morning or woke as early as two o’clock to pray: “Everything is silent, quiet,” she explained, “so you are more close to God.”
In Night Prayers, pianist Thomas Feng performs compositions by Guèbrou alongside beloved works by Chopin that she kept in her room until her passing. Set amongst an immersive starscape installation by Andrew Schneider, this program conjures the rarefied stillness and spirituality of Guèbrou’s nights.
Tickets and more information here.
I am co-curating and performing a program of music by Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru for Monday Evening Concerts, in Los Angeles.
More information and tickets here.
My dear friend richard valitutto performs my cover of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” as part of piano.night.songs, “a candlelit journey at sunset, from Chopin to Sondheim.” More information here.
An evening of nocturnal piano music. As daylight gives way to candlelight, Chopin's impromptus and nocturnes give way to more modern night-pieces by Britten, Poulenc, Respighi, Beach, Barber, and Cage. Imaginative arrangements of songs by Radiohead (arr. O'Riley), Robyn (arr. Feng), and Sondheim (arr. Hersch) round out the program, as well as my cover of Alanis Morissette's "Hand in my pocket" as an etude for left hand alone.
I am one of 50 pianists performing the North American premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas’s 11,000 Strings at the Park Avenue Armory.
More information and tickets here.
My final solo recital at Cornell.
Halim El-Dabh: Mekta’ in the Art of Kita’, Books I-IV
Joshua Uzoigwe: Abigbo
Edward MacDowell: Woodland Sketches
Eve Beglarian: as syllable from sound
7:30pm, Barnes Hall Auditorium, free admission.
Diamanda Galás performs her De-Formation: Piano Variations, a substantial solo piano work that I assisted with transcribing. The program also includes Maryanne Amacher’s piano duo, Petra, performed by Marianne Schroeder and Stefan Tcherepnin. More information here.
Over two nights at Bourse de Commerce–Pinault Collection, Blank Forms presents two artists whose work takes orthogonal approaches to notation. Using the archival notes and sketches of Maryanne Amacher (1938–2009), several of the artist’s longtime collaborators reconstruct GLIA and Petra, two pieces from her oeuvre which are notable exceptions to Amacher’s ethos of ephemerality; the majority of her work has too many undocumented but temporally and spatially specific parameters to be restaged posthumously. Meanwhile, Diamanda Galás, Amacher’s friend and fellow traveler through the extremities of the music world, performs De-formation, a solo piano work about the plight of gueules cassées, disfigured WWI veterans referred to in the French as “broken faces.” Galás improvised De-formation in 2019; in 2023, she transcribed it with the help of Thomas Feng, making the piece reproducible for the first time.
Charles Ives – Three Quarter-tone Pieces for Two Pianos (with Jack Yarbrough)
Tui St. George Tucker – Little Pieces for Quartertone Piano
Jack will also perform Georg Friedrich Haas’s “Hommage à Josef Matthias Hauer”.
12:30pm
B20, Lincoln Hall, Cornell University
Free admission.
Thomas Feng gives the premiere performance of Tui St. George Tucker's contrapuntal tour-de-force, Ave Verum. An evening-length work unfolding in three large parts, Ave Verum interweaves an ambitious set of variations on an original hymn with traditional chorales and Jazz-Age Broadway songs – a tapestry-like microcosm of the composer's unique musical world.
Part of a two-day celebration of Tui St. George Tucker’s centenary, at Appalachian State University. Full schedule and more information available here.
The concert will be livestreamed here. Concert also includes two of Tucker’s choral works, performed by Springhouse Farm Choir, an ensemble she herself once directed.
Music of the Americas
Skaneateles Festival Orchestra; Nicholas Hersh, cond.
Music by Alberto Ginastera, Gabriela Lena Frank, Arturo Marquez, George Gershwin, and James P. Johnson
Saturday, Aug. 3, 8pm
Westhill High School, Syracuse, NY
Thomas Feng and Jack Yarbrough present Maryanne Amacher's cyberpunk-inspired piano duo, Petra, in a new realization based on the composer's archival materials.
Morton Feldman – Two Pianos (1957)
Maryanne Amacher – Petra (1991)
Mississippi Records & Dada Strain Present:
An album release celebration for
Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru's "Souvenirs"
&
"la espalda y su punto radiante" by sinonó
(Isabel Crespo Pardo, Lester St. Louis, Henry Fraser)
Featuring the piano of Thomas Feng
and very special guest LARAAJI
Wednesday, March 13
St Mark's Church on the Bowery, NYC
Doors: 6:30 pm
$20 adv / $25 doors
Laura Cetilia’s “layers, not liquid”, a new work composed for 2 pianos, 2 cellos, and video projection.
With Laura Cetilia, Hannah Soren, and Jack Yarbrough.
A two-day symposium (Nov. 30-Dec. 1) celebrating the music and life of the legendary Ethiopian composer, pianist, and nun, Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru. The events will include panel discussions about Emahoy’s life and archive, and presentations of Emahoy’s music (some never yet performed) in live concert performances, and from her upcoming record Souvenirs. All events will be free and open to the public, and hosted on Cornell’s campus.
Nov. 30: Emahoy’s organ works; a panel discussion about Emahoy’s archive; listening party for Souvenirs
Dec. 1: a panel discussion about Emahoy’s life and family; a piano recital featuring works by Emahoy and Chopin
Honored to join in the centenary celebrations for Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru, for the benefit of the Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Music Foundation. More information here.
Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru: Wagaye, Don’t Cry Anymore; Quo Vadis; Grande Valzer Improvisata
Joining Jeff Gavett and David Friend for works by Taylor Brook, Eve Beglarian, and Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Shawn Jaeger, and mannfishh for baritone and two microtonal keyboards.
$20 suggested admission; students and artists pay what you wish.
My recording of the terrific new piece Eve Beglarian wrote for me was used in performances of You Are a Root. More information below:
You Are A Root is a pluridisciplinary performance work combining dance, theatre, visual arts and music. This project, inspired by mycorrhizal networks, explores the interconnectedness of human society. You Are A Root poses the question, how can we react constructively after a catastrophe?
Ivan Wyschnegradsky – Étude sur le carré magique sonore
Piano students of Xak Bjerken present works of the Rachmaninoff/Scriabin coterie.
Eve Beglarian: An Unearthly Booty (2023; world premiere)
James Newton: The Revelation Diptych (2010; world premiere)
Kurt Rohde: circling/revealing (2018-22; world premiere)
Sam Wu: Aria (2021; world premiere of version for piano)
Barnes Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Free admission.
My concerto debut, premiering my dear friend Josh Biggs’s “spool” for piano and wind orchestra.
For more information, click here.
Father Mine – Bosba Panh
with Brian Sengdala, baritone
Dither performs from my transcription of Laurie Spiegel’s “Patchwork”, among other pieces from her album The Expanding Universe.
More information here.
Joining the annual Cornell Festival Chamber Orchestra for premieres by Michele Cheng and María Bulla.
Milton Babbitt – Semi-Simple Variations
Juri Seo – More Semi-Simple Variations, Intermezzo, and Fugue on a Theme of Milton Babbitt (with Jack Yarbrough)
A concert curated by Elizabeth Ogonek, featuring different approaches to lyricism and instrumental vocality. Program also includes works by Matthew Kaner, more music by Juri Seo, and Toru Takemitsu.
Barnes Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Free admission.
Richard Valitutto plays Sarah Hennies’s hour-long work for prepared piano, SOVT [Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract] (2017); Thomas Feng’s trace of hope (variations); and Linda Catlin Smith’s Thought and Desire.
More information here.
Thomas Feng (DMA candidate in Music) honors the extraordinary life and music of Ethiopian composer and nun, Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru. Biography, cultural history, original archival research, and performances of three of Emahoy's compositions interweave into an expansive lecture-recital presentation, in commemoration of the composer's upcoming 99th birthday.
House concert of works by dear friend Piyawat Louilarpprasert, with the Tacet(i) Ensemble.
Dino (2022) for trombone and cello
Tremor of Love (2019) for guitar and piano
Selections from 7 Constructions (2014-15) for solo piano
Tikatikatok (2018) for clarinet, saxophone, and piano
I’m playing a magical-realist cat-themed recital.
Daniel Pesca: “A Pair of Cats” from Watercolors
Obadiah Wright: Short Stories for Cats and Keys (premiere)
Hiromi: The Tom and Jerry Show