An intimate evening in the company of Allen Shawn, author, pianist, and composer whose six-year sojourn in the West Village marked a creative turning point when – influenced by encounters with clarinetist Benny Goodman – he began blending classical music with elements of jazz. His lively music is characterized by emotional directness and an openness to a variety of idioms. “Notes from a Life” is a sonic diary featuring chamber pieces from across four decades by this multifaceted musician celebrated for his “distinctly urban energy.”

The son of legendary New Yorker editor Wiliam Shawn and brother of actor and writer Wallace, Allen Shawn grew up with the music of Bach, Bartok, Stravinsky, Berg, Copland and Leon Kirchner, as well as the jazz greats he heard at the Half Note and the Five Spot. He began composing at a young age, though considers that his mature works date from 1977, just before he moved to the West Village, where encountered Benny Goodman. The two men met weekly to play chamber music for fun, and Goodman commissioned from Shawn a concerto which he sadly never played, considering it too demanding so late in his career. It became Shawn’s “Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano,” a composition heavily tied to those Greenwich Village years, which also included music for some half-dozen Joseph Papp productions and the chamber opera The Music Teacher to a libretto by his brother. In addition to a large body of orchestral, choral, and chamber music, as well as music for piano and voice, Shawn is also a prolific author, having written biographies of Schoenberg and Bernstein, as well as memoirs, notably Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life.

Allen Shawn, piano
Curtis Macomber, violin
Laurel Zucker, flute
Joan Forsyth, piano
Yoshiko Sato, piano
Caleb van der Swaagh
Dan Lippel

Contact the host of Notes from a Life: An Evening with Allen Shawn