Triadic Memories
Marilyn Nonken, named "Best of the Year" five times by the Boston Globe, has been described by the New York Times as "a pianist from music's leading edge" and a "determined protector of important music." Her repertoire, featuring composers associated with the Second Viennese School, American experimentalism and ultramodernism, Darmstadt, the New York School, Spectralism, and the New Complexity, includes historic works of Ives, BarraquŽ, Stockhausen, and Ligeti as well as the complete solo piano music of Schoenberg, Boulez, and Tristan Murail. Composers who have written for her include Murail, Milton Babbitt, Mario Davidovsky, Chris Dench, Michael Finnissy, and young Americans such as Jason Eckardt, Paul Nauert, Jeff Nichols, and David Rakowski; she has worked closely with James Dillon, Jonathan Harvey, Alvin Lucier, Salvatore Martirano, and Charles Wuorinen, among others. She has been presented as a soloist throughout the United States, Canada, Italy, the Czech Republic, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Also an acclaimed chamber musician, Ms. Nonken plays in New York with Ensemble 21 (of which she is a cofounder and Artistic Director) and has appeared as a guest artist with the Group for Contemporary Music, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Elision. For two consecutive seasons, she was featured on Carnegie Hall's "When Morty Met John," a series devoted to the music of Feldman and Cage curated by Joan La Barbara. Ms. Nonken has recorded for New World Records, Albany, Lovely Music, CRI, and Metier Sound and Vision; American Spiritual, a CD of works written for her, was a CRI release. A student of David Burge at the Eastman School, she received a Ph.D. degree in musicology from Columbia University. Her writings have been published in many international journals, and she is the guest editor of "Performers on Performance," an issue of Contemporary Music Review. Ms. Nonken is a Steinway artist.