CHAMBER MUSIC

"Making music alone is fun, but making music with your friends is even better!" That pretty much sums up Danny Holt's attitude toward chamber music. The more the merrier. Here are some of his ongoing chamber music collaborations...

4handsLA

4handsLA is L.A.’s “dazzlingly young” (Los Angeles Times) piano duo. First seen and heard on the acclaimed Jacaranda: Music on the Edge of Santa Monica series, the energetic duo of Steven Vanhauwaert and Danny Holt was introduced to audiences in 2009 in a performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The Huffington Post wrote that the duo’s performance “created a sensation”, and LAOpus said of their Stravinsky performance: “The four-hand piano Sacre blazed like a comet through the hall. Both illuminating and liberating, one could only stand mute at the work’s astounding musical structure. Vanhauwaert and Holt tore into this piece like furies, undeterred by daunting challenges. It was a performance at turns propulsive and precise, aggressive and tender. What aplomb these two demonstrated!” 4handsLA was recently among seven finalists at the Liszt 200 Chicago International Duo Piano Competition, and were Artists-in-Residence at the L.A. Musical Salon from 2013-2015. The duo’s 2013 debut CD, Paris 1913, features their signature Stravinsky alongside other contemporaneous four-hand works from Paris by Ravel, Satie, and Poulenc. Their 2014 follow-up CD includes the rarely-heard piano four-hands version of Stravinsky’s Petrushka.

TRIOS FOR TWO

Spectacular feats of multi-instrumentalism. Unique sound worlds. An aural and visual spectacle. In Trios for Two, violist Molly Gebrian teams up with Danny Holt, who plays piano and percussion simultaneously. Over 25 composers have contributed works to Holt’s Piano/Percussion Project since 2003, and Trios for Two includes works for viola and piano/percussion by Chiayu Hsu, Karl Blench, Daniel Corral, Christopher Goddard, Ingrid Lee, and Casey Cangelosi. Gebrian and Holt were recently featured in Los Angeles at REDCAT (in Walt Disney Concert Hall) and at colleges and universities throughout the U.S. Their self-titled CD is available on Innova Recordings.

MERIMA KLJUCO & DANNY HOLT

Concert accordion and piano: Eastern-European folk music, classical music, and the avant-garde collide in the hands of this remarkable pairing of keyboards. http://merimakljuco.com/