Chilled: Chillin' With Piano Duo Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe

Chilled
Cydnee Murray

The power of duos permeates the performances and creative processes of Anderson & Roe. They’ve even thought to couple cocktails with concertos. What began as a blog feature called “Musical Mixology,” which according to Anderson, sprung from the premise that “the effective pairing of music and cocktails can enhance the potency of both” has developed into a live concert model. In the same manner that those with synesthesia perceive color while listening to music, Anderson & Roe may be aiming for their wrapped audiences to taste sound and hear taste. Chilled sat down to chat with the duo.

Read the interview here.

International Piano: Call for submissions – New Music • New Video

International Piano
Lucy Thraves

The Anderson & Roe Piano Duo has announced the New Music • New Video composition competition.

The duo is seeking new works for piano duo – either for two pianos or for one piano, four-hands – of up to five minutes, to feature in a fully produced Anderson & Roe music video.

The deadline for submission is 1 September.

Further details can be found at https://www.andersonroe.com/newmusic

Minnesota Public Radio: New Classical Tracks: Anderson and Roe Piano Duo honors mothers with musical tribute

Minnesota Public Radio (MPR)
Julie Amacher

"Motherhood might be perhaps the ultimate form of creation, but as artists we are giving birth to new pieces, to performances, to new ideas all the time. And so, it felt like a fitting sort of theme and tribute to the wonderful maternal figures in our lives," says Elizabeth Joy Roe, pianist and one half of the Anderson and Roe Piano Duo. Mother, a musical tribute, is the latest recording from Roe and duo partner Greg Anderson.

The idea for the project came to the duo while they were performing at the Gilmore Festival.

"Initially, this kind of got under way when we performed on Mother's Day at the Gilmore Festival a couple of years ago, and we wanted to pay tribute to our mothers who were attending that concert. We saw just the huge variety of ways mothers have been portrayed in music over the years, and that really got us excited and got us thinking about what it means to represent motherhood through music," explains Anderson.

An important part of the project was representing the diverse aspects of mother figures.

"And also, we like to tap into the diverse aspects of women or of people that serve as mothers you know. Mothers aren't merely beautiful beings who emit tenderness but they can also be saucy women or saucy figures like Mrs. Robinson, and so we took that classic Simon and Garfunkel tune and lovingly added it to the mix because sometimes mothers are only seen in one way," says Roe.

"When I think about my mother, there are times like in Bohemian Rhapsody when the singer just sings, 'Mama!' That closeness one might get with their mother. And I mean I certainly have many instances in my life where it's just like I want that. All of these emotions, certainly as we were putting the album together you know, just kept coming up in us and we kept remembering our own histories and pasts with our mothers," adds Anderson.

Read or listen to the full interview here.

San Francisco Chronicle: Classical Music Picks, June 3

San Francisco Chronicle
Joshua Kosman

Anderson and Roe: The energetic and increasingly popular piano duo performs a program of music by Rachmaninoff, Bizet, Mozart and more. 3 p.m. Sunday, June 3, Del Valle Theatre, 1963 Tice Valley Blvd., Walnut Creek; 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 4, Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto; 8 p.m. Tuesday, June 5, Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., S.F. www.chambermusicsf.org

For the full week's listings, click here.

KDFC: Anderson & Roe's Album, Mother, Named Album of the Week

KDFC

Album of the Week – Week of April 30

Anderson & Roe
Mother – A Musical Tribute

Mother’s Day is coming up on May 13. Celebrate with queens and saints, homemakers and lawmakers, scientists and artists, goddesses and mortals: the rich complexity of motherhood inspires this musical tribute from the piano duo of Anderson & Roe. The collection includes music by a diverse group of composers from Dvorak, Rachmaninoff, and Grieg, to Freddie Mercury, John Lennon, Paul Simon!

Crazy or brilliant? Anderson & Roe's reimagining of The Rite of Spring

“They turn the Rite Of Spring back into theatre - you could reach out and touch it. One of the most exciting performances I've ever seen”
- Stephen Tobolowsky, actor and director

Outside of Hollywood action movies, it is not usual to announce the release of a trailer as though it were news. In this case, though, we venture to suggest that it is. Classical pianists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe have been reinventing the art of the classical music video for years, building a seven million-strong following on YouTube and winning an Emmy nomination (with their version of Schubert's Erlkönig) through their bold and wildly creative imaginings.

We learn some of the vivid details about their latest, THE RITE OF SPRING, through the trailer - snatches of fantastical images are seen, insects crawling on the pianists' hands as they play, dancers cavorting hypnotically around the musicians, lights, colours, streamers, petals ascending into the wind, a gallery's-worth of images that promise to brand themselves on the viewers' memories. In a shoot that crossed the United States and saw its protagonists filmed, variously, from an airplane in the Californian desert and naked in the ocean at night, there has rarely been a classical music film that has gone to anything like these lengths to get close to the composer's own shockingly vivid creation.

The trailer can be viewed here.

As previously announced, THE RITE OF SPRING will be released in segments (as it is composed), one every two weeks starting from the date of the work’s centenary, It will be free to view on YouTube at Anderson & Roe’s channel from May 29..

Experience Anderson & Roe's breathtaking new film of The Rite of Spring

“An epic journey
of struggle and sacrifice,
risk and renewal,
and the worlds that exist without and within.

Two outsiders shed their exterior identities,
unveiling their true selves.

Brave the elements
Shed the material
Become one with Nature”

Classical pianists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe are different. A piano duo who have attracted legions of new fans with their virtuosic and acclaimed arrangements of popular hits (such as their “Billie Jean” cover or their Star Wars Fantasy), they are musicians who bring the care and stunning imagination of brilliant indie filmmakers to their YouTube music videos, pushing the form forward. Case in point: their Schubert Lied-turned-horror-film Der Erlkönig – which, as we go to press, has just been nominated for an Emmy Award.

If they attract full houses across the US and internationally with their live shows, they have made an art of presenting classical music on YouTube, producing and directing videos that have been viewed by millions. “We cater our performances to the venue, whether it be a concert hall or online, and as such, we design our YouTube videos to potently deliver the spirit of the music in a bustling graphic environment,” says Anderson. But even they have never previously attempted anything on the scale of The Rite Of Spring.

To be released in segments (as it is composed), one every two weeks starting from the date of the work’s centenary, Anderson and Roe’s Rite takes the viewer on an epic journey but one that finally mirrors the primeval nature of the work itself. Starting in traditional concert trappings, the performers become gradually sucked into a ritualistic spiral that sets them immersed in a troupe of dancers, crawled on by insects, lost in a hallucinatory world, naked in the ocean, or alongside an antique instrument ablaze in the desert. What is real? What is imaginary? One thing is for sure - theirs is a striking, strident view of music that ripped apart the culture of its time, and this film proves it can still unsettle and thrill us today. In this year of the Rite’s centenary, this interpretation will leave a mark – a scar? – and, perhaps, help to redefine it.

THE RITE OF SPRING will be free to view on YouTube at Anderson & Roe’s channel from May 29… Watch Anderson & Roe’s Emmy-nominated video Der Erlkönig here.

Notes for Editors:

* California-based Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe are among the most exciting, groundbreaking piano duos performing today, with nearly seven million page views on their YouTube channel and a busy national and international touring schedule

* Their YouTube music video, Der Erlkönig, has just been nominated for an Emmy Award

* THE RITE OF SPRING uses a cast of 21, and involved a shoot that criss-crossed the U.S., from Los Angeles and New York to Palm Beach, South Carolina and a Southern Californian desert, even involving filming from an airplane – a “Making Of” documentary will be released at a later date

* THE RITE OF SPRING is conceived, edited, co-filmed, produced and performed by Anderson and Roe. As if that weren’t enough, while filming a scene with an organ in the ocean, Greg Anderson’s large toenail was completely ripped off! No animals were harmed while filming. Just the toenail.

* Their most recent album, “When Words Fade,” was released by the Steinway label and spent nearly a dozen weeks at the top of the Billboard classical charts

* They recently announced an “Anderson & Roe”-branded publication deal for their piano duo arrangements with Alfred Music Publishing

* Alumni of The Juilliard School (where they met), they have broadcast on MTV’s Total Request Live, NPR’s All Things Considered and From The Top, APM’s Performance Today, and KBS’ Classic Odyssey. They left an indelible mark at their alma mater, directing the 2004 performance project “Life Between The Keys” and appearing on the Sounds of Juilliard CD celebrating the school’s centennial year