Please enjoy the following musical selections, recorded at various live performances.

Solo Piano

Felix Mendelssohn - Rondo Cappriccioso, Opus 14

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Dumka, Opus 59

Organ

François Couperin - Mass for the Convents: Dialogue


Ensemble - Collaborative

Johannes Brahms - Hungarian Dance No. 1 in g-minor

Danielle Ingram, primo Krysta Hawkley, secondo



To contact Ms. Ingram, please click HERE.

​Etude #63: Killer B's (Etude on a pedal)

Composed by David Rakowski

"To Danielle - An unequalled first performer and my new best friend. ~David Rakowski"

Program Notes
(Written by Danielle Ingram)

David Rakowski currently resides in Massachusetts and is on the theory and composition faculty at Brandeis University. Rakowski has been writing etudes since 1988 (published by C. F. Peters), and enjoys composing them under the following guidelines:

"An étude must be written in six days or fewer,
it cannot be revised (only restarted),
and there is no 'a priori' thinking that goes into any of them."

He sites the études of Chopin and Debussy as inspiration for his own works. Killer B's, from the 7th book of piano etudes, was composed in September 2004 while Rakowski served as the Music Department Chair at Brandeis. As with all of his etudes, the title hints to the compositional technique that comprises the piece. In this case, it is an ostinato (a repeated pitch/rhythm pattern) on the musical pitch 'B'. It first starts on a single middle register B in the left hand and later expands to include the extreme ranges of the piano with octaves and leaps. There is no set meter for the piece and the rhythmic values shift between divisions of two and three.