Clipper Erickson, piano, doesn’t like to sit still. As a performer and as a recording artist, he is seemingly everywhere at once.
In the past month or so, he has performed at least two solo recitals, on top of George Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F, with the Warminster Symphony Orchestra, and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 – twice – with the Knox-Galesburg Symphony in Illinois and locally with the Capital Philharmonic of New Jersey. He’s also anticipating his latest CD release, “Tableau, Tempest and Tango,” due out on Navona Records, PARMA Recordings, on July 13.
The indefatigable pianist, who is on the faculty of Westminster Conservatory of Music in Princeton and Boyer College of Music and Dance – Temple University, is gearing up to present his latest program in a crusade to resurrect the half-forgotten music of R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943).
Erickson will be joined by soprano Deborah Ford, baritone Gregory Hopkins, and Mostly Motets, for a mixed program of Dett’s music at St Michael’s Church, Trenton NJ, on June 10 at 3 p.m.
Dett was born in what is now Niagara Falls, Ontario. The grandson of Underground Railroad refugees, he became an important figure in American music of his time. Yet he is remembered today, if at all, for a lone piano suite, “In the Bottoms,” or perhaps only for its two-minute concluding dance, “Juba,” which was championed by Percy Grainger, among others.
Erickson was the first to record Dett’s complete piano works. His performances have been issued on an album titled “My Cup Runneth Over,” also on Navona, for which he provides his own liner notes. The two-CD set was made possible, in part, through the financial backing of St. Michael’s, where Erickson serves as organist.
You can read more about Dett’s debt to Erickson, the Revolutionary history of the church, and more, in my article in this week’s U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo, out today. Here’s the online version:
http://www.princetoninfo.com/index.php/component/us1more/?Itemid=6&key=6-6-18erickson
Erickson plays “Juba:”
