ROBERT MCDUFFIE & ELIZABETH PRIDGEN TEAM UP FOR NEW RELEASE ICONS

Renowned violin virtuoso Robert McDuffie and pianist Elizabeth Pridgen are set for the release of their latest collaborative album ICONS: Philip Glass, John Adams, & John Corigliano November 4 via Orange Mountain Records. The record is available in a Dolby Atmos mix via Apple Music; pre-save/pre-order the record HERE.

Long champions of new music, McDuffie and Pridgen fix a spotlight on three masterpieces of the violin/piano repertoire, by three of the most celebrated American composers of the past half century: Philip Glass’ Sonata for Violin & Piano, John Adams’ Road Movies and John Corigliano’s Sonata for Violin & Piano.

Receiving accolades for his landmark recording of Glass’ Violin Concerto No.1 in 1999, a decade later McDuffie was the commissioner of Glass’s Violin Concerto No.2, The American Four Seasons, which became one of the most successful recordings of its time thanks to McDuffie’s extended international touring of the piece including over 100 live performances of the concerto all over the world. On ICONS, the artists extend their expertise in the music of Philip Glass with his Sonata for Violin & Piano from 2008, infusing the work with an energy and charm for which both are known as the foremost interpreters in the world.

John Adams, hailed by The New York Times in September 2022 as “arguably our greatest living composer,” wrote his seminal Road Movies for violin and piano in 1995 and it quickly became a staple of the repertoire.  Evoking the vast expanse of the American continent and the archetypal “American Road Trip,” the piece captures the landscape passing by the car windows.

Perhaps his most famous piece, John Corigliano’s Sonata for Violin & Piano was written when the composer was in his mid-20s back in the 1960s when his father, the famous violinist John Corigliano Sr., was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. Despite writing the sonata for his father, it was years before Sr. would take the piece on, and only then because the sonata organically became an unmitigated success. Since then, it has never stopped being admired as one of the best pieces ever written for the medium of violin and piano.

Robbert McDuffie is a Juilliard-trained, Grammy-nominated violinist who has appeared as a soloist with numerous major internationally-acclaimed orchestras including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics; the Chicago, San Francisco and National Symphonies; and the Philadelphia, Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras.

Pianist Elizabeth Pridgen has distinguished herself as a soloist and chamber musician and has appeared in concerts at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, Merkin Hall, the Tilles Center on Long Island, Spivey Hall in Atlanta and the “Rising Stars Series” at the Ravinia Festival. She has also performed at Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and the Kosciuszko Foundation, and in recitals in London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Washington D.C., Miami, San Francisco and throughout the Southeast and Caribbean. Recently appointed Artistic Director of the Atlanta Chamber Players, Pridgen was formerly a Distinguished Artist and Piano Chair at the McDuffie Center for Strings and held the G. Leslie Fabian Piano Chair at the Townsend School of Music at Mercer University.