Lara’s solo recordings have met with tremendous critical and popular acclaim. Her debut CD, "Invitation to the Dance", was called "magical" by NPR, and her second release, "American Ballads", was ranked by Amazon among the best recordings of American concert music ever made. "Dream of Me" was praised for "exquisite sensitivity" by American Record Guide. "13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg" was called “addicting” by the Huffington Post, and “magnificent and different” by Sequenza 21. Her chart-topping "Exiles’ Café", featured as CD of the Week by radio stations from WQXR New York to KDFC San Francisco, was called “ravishing” by Fanfare Magazine. "Some Other Time" (2014) was called "luscious, moody and dreamy" by The New York Times. 
Her chart-topping release America Again was included in NPR’s “10 Albums that saved 2016” and called “a balm for a country riven by disunion” by the Boston Globe. 
Downes’ newest release and Sony Music debut album FOR LENNY is an intimate centennial tribute to Leonard Bernstein and his American legacy. The album was awarded the 2017 Classical Recording Foundation Award and debuted in the Billboard Top 20. Classical Candor writes, “Downes’ sensitive, nuanced playing brings out the best in everything… Her poignant artistry is first-rate, and she makes an exemplary communicator of all things Bernstein and all things American.”

Lara Downes: Listen

LARA DOWNES
featuring
Will Liverman, baritone
Joe Brent, mandolin and vihuela
Adam Abeshouse, violin
and the
Brooklyn Youth Chorus
with The Band
Judy Kang and Chiara Fasi, violin
Tia Allen, viola
Yves Dharamraj, cello
 Kevin Sun, clarinet and saxophone

Chart-topping American pianist Lara Downes reflects on the music of Scott Joplin through a 21st-century lens, revealing its many layers of genre-blurring subtlety and nuance. Joplin is revered as The “King of Ragtime". He’s acknowledged as a classically-trained composer of concert music whose ambitions were denied in his own time. He was both of those things, and more - an innovator who merged traditions and histories to make music at the crossroads of the American future. His story is ready to be retold. 

The fullness of Joplin’s artistry shines through in Downes’ open-hearted interpretations, heard in arrangements for piano and instrumental ensemble that transcend genre and historical boundaries. The album is book-ended with music from Joplin's opera "Treemonisha", and features a fluid suite of rags and drags that include collaborations with mandolinist Joe Brent, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and baritone Will Liverman in the world premiere recording of the heart-wrenching ballad "A Picture Of Her Face".

In Lara’s words: "There's a multi-faceted, timeless beauty to this music - a world of emotion and expression waiting to be experienced and embraced. I'm profoundly moved by Joplin's innovative creative vision, the depth of his blended musical roots and the breadth of what grew from them."

Produced and Engineered by Adam Abeshouse. 
Brooklyn Youth Chorus- Produced and Engineered by Jeremy Kinney 
Edited, Mixed and Mastered by Adam Abeshouse
Associate Engineer - Jeremy Kinney

SOLACE (with Joe Brent, vihuela)

MAPLE LEAF RAG

The transcriptions and concert pieces collected here are all big, beautiful examples of nostalgic American music. But this is timeless music too, and its romanticism, spirit of adventure, playfulness, and purity tap into our collective memory, our underlying, ongoing, deeply American nostalgia for what we all know as, simply, some other time. />
“Bailey reaches from the soul of his instrument to our own." – San Francisco Classical Voice

“Lara Downes has created the perfect hyperlink from composer to performer to listener." – Examiner.com

R E V I E W S

"Here, performed by a notable young cellist and pianist, is a burgeoning mutual admiration society in American classical music... Lovingly and superbly performed." -- Buffalo News

"...there is a pleasant interconnectedness among the works: a short one by Bernstein is For Lukas Foss, a brief one by Foss is For Lenny, and another brief Bernstein piece is For Aaron Copland. Actually, there is more “serious” Bernstein (as opposed to “popular” Bernstein) here than usual: yes, the CD includes Dream with Me, Some Other Time and In Our Time, but it also includes the Clarinet Sonata, a substantial work that deserves to be better known – and that is certainly effective in this version for cello and piano. Foss’ Capriccio for Cello and Piano is also a piece of some depth, and although one Barber work here, Sure on This Shining Night, is rather trivial, the other, his Cello Sonata, is anything but: it is impressive in construction and really shows the skill with which Bailey and Downes plumb some genuine musical depths... it is exceptionally well played: both performers treat the lesser works with the same care and skill that they bring to the more-imposing ones. Not every track here will appeal to every listener, but the disc as a whole is certainly intended to reach out both to audiences interested in very well-played classical music and to those who would like to hear something beyond the standard repertoire and written in a more overtly popular vein." -- Infodad.com 

Leonard Bernstein: Some Other Time (Arr. For Cello And Piano)

 Sonata for Piano no 2 in E major, Op. 2: 1st movement, Moderato by Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Performer:  Lara Downes (Piano)
Period: 20th Century 
Written: 1910; Vienna, Austria  
Date of Recording: 9/2012 
Venue:  Sono Luminus Studios, Boyce, Virginia 
Length: 8 Minutes 48 Secs. 

Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Piano Sonata #2 in E, Op. 2

 Lost in the Stars: Lost in the stars by Kurt Weill
Performer:  Lara Downes (Piano)
Period: 20th Century 
Written: 1949; USA 
Date of Recording: 9/2012 
Venue:  Sono Luminus Studios, Boyce, Virginia 
Length: 4 Minutes 27 Secs. 
Notes: Arrangement: Jed Distler  

Kurt Weill (arr. Distler): Lost in the Stars

 Chasing Goldberg, for piano by Fred Lerdahl
Performer:  Lara Downes (Piano)
Period: Contemporary 
Length: 2 Minutes 8 Secs. 

Fred Lerdahl: Chasing Goldberg from 13 WAYS of Looking at the Goldberg

 Anniversaries (7) for Piano: no 1, for Aaron Copland by Leonard Bernstein
Performer:  Lara Downes (Piano)
Period: 20th Century 
Written: 1942-1943; USA 
Date of Recording: 9/26-9/28/2013 
Venue:  Sono Luminus Studios, Boyce, Virginia 
Length: 1 Minutes 35 Secs. 

Leonard Bernstein - Anniversary For Aaron Copland

Pianist Lara Downes presents “Study In Blue,” a preview of her forthcoming Rhapsody In Blue Reimagined project (Pentatone, 2/2/24) that reflects on 100 years of immigration and transformation since the iconic work by George Gershwin premiered in New York City in February 1924. 

“Study In Blue” is a stand-alone recording featuring Downes at the piano, with Edmar Colón on soprano saxophone.  This romantic duet is a fantasy on the slow theme from Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue, unexpectedly and beautifully mashed up with Chopin’s Etude in E Major, Op 10 #3 in a nod to Gershwin’s Romantic-era inspiration.  
In Lara's words: "Is there anything more beautiful, hummable, lovable than the slow theme from Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue? It's one of the greatest tunes of all time. When Edmar Colón and I started our process of reimagining Gershwin's masterpiece, we agreed that we wanted to expand and celebrate this romantic melody - and we found a precursor (and possibly Gershwin's original inspiration??) in Chopin's "Tristesse" Etude, another one of the greatest tunes of all time! What emerged is this Chopin/Gershwin mash-up, our tribute to two great romantics, this duet that is a Study in Blue."

STUDY IN BLUE - Lara Downes with Edmar Colón


Polonaise from Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin", S 429 by Franz Liszt
Performer:  Lara Downes (Piano)
Period: Romantic 
Written: 1880; Rome, Italy 

Liszt/Tchaikovsky: Polonaise From Eugene Onegin

"Possibly the most intriguing Holiday tribute may be this one by pianist Lara Downes. The adroit pianist goes solo in interpreting songs associated with the vocalist. At times she gives rococo hints of Art Tatum, other times a classical straightforwardness comes in." - Jazz Weekly

A special project commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the legendary Billie Holiday. Lara brings her radiant sensitivity to an intimate exploration of the songs forever associated with Lady Day's iconic interpretations.

A Billie Holiday Songbook: Blue Moon (arr Wilson)

Steinway & Sons celebrates the centenary of iconic jazz singer Billie Holiday with an album of songs she made famous,
arranged for solo piano by New York-based composer and pianist Jed Distler and performed by Steinway artist Lara
Downes. The result is a musical portrait of the singer's life.

Body And Soul

I Don't Stand The Ghost Of A Chance With You

God Bless The Child

I Wished On The Moon

When pianist Lara Downes was 8 years old, she wrote in her diary that her favorite song was Billie Holiday’s I Cover the Waterfront. Downes, praised by the New York Times for “loving attention to mood and color”, has been enthralled ever since with “the distinctive qualities of mood, phrasing, line and color” of  Holiday’s singing.
Now Downes offers A Billie Holiday Songbook, a centenary tribute performed with intimate sensitivity and deep affection.
Downes first heard Holiday’s recordings with her father, who was born and raised in Harlem, steps from the iconic clubs where Lady Day sang in the 1930s and ‘40s. “I learned from Billie Holiday to make something completely personal from music,” says Downes, “something unexpected, perhaps complicated, but beautiful. To take a chance. As the song says: “But beautiful to take a chance, and if you fall, you fall. And I’m thinking I wouldn’t mind at all.”


Strange Fruit

Willow Weep For Me

From "A Billie Holiday Songbook" - a centenary tribute to Lady Day, available March 2015 from Steinway & Sons Records

Billie Holiday: God Bless the Child (arr. Distler)

from Exiles' Cafe (STEINWAY & SONS 30016)

American pianist Lara Downes' Exiles' Café is "a place both real and metaphorical, a place where individuals gather from all over the world to find a home away from home. It is filled with dream-chasers: travelers, nomads, explorers, gypsies, and vagabonds -- as well as refugees thrust on journeys undesired." To put together an entire program under this rubric seems a tall order at first, yet exile was a theme running all through the music of the 19th and 20th centuries, and rare were composers who ended up where they started. The charm of Downes' program lies in how she brings together music by such a variety of composers yet finds a very specific elegiac yet somehow adventurous mood in all of it. The notes dance around the fact that not all these composers had been exiled by the time the works involved were written. Bartók's limpid Hungarian Folksongs from the Csik District, Sz 35a, were composed in 1907, years before the composer left Hungary. Yet they might easily have been performed by Bartók upon arriving in the U.S., and the quiet, delicately sad tone of the whole. It is actually surprising to see how many composers fit in, given that the period is generally taken to be one of storming artistic barricades. It's not often that you would find Rachmaninov, Paul Bowles, Bohuslav Martinu, and William Grant Still on the same program, but here they happily coexist. Yet they don't sound the same, which is what gives this collection of 21 pieces on a single emotion its variety. Downes keeps very tight control over the material, rarely letting the music rise above moderate volume or the emotional temperature above melancholy. The result is that this exiles' café really comes alive with the sounds of 100 years ago, and the sadness of upheaval. A wonderful release from the Steinway & Sons label, which has taken the attitude that one way to perpetuate piano-playing is to offer recordings that imaginatively explore piano repertory.

-- James Manheim, All Music Guide

William Grant Still: Africa, Land of Romance

In the late 1920’s, after a lynching too close to home in Little Rock, Price and her husband migrated north to Chicago with their two little girls. Fantasie Negre was the first piece she wrote there, a passionate fantasy based on the Spiritual Sinner, Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass. It was the start of her involvement in the creative flowering of the New Negro Arts Movement. Her collaborations with that group of artists, including Langston Hughes and Marian Anderson, awakened the world to the folk traditions of black America.

Florence Price - Fantasie Negre

Shulamit Ran: Exuberance/for Lenny

EVE BEGLARIAN- ANOTHER TIME(for Lenny)

Lara Downes is among the foremost American pianists of her generation, a trailblazer on and off-stage whose musical roadmap seeks inspiration from the legacies of history, family, and collective memory. 

Downes’ playing has been called “ravishing” by Fanfare Magazine, "luscious, moody and dreamy” by The New York Times, and "addicting" by The Huffington Post. As a chart-topping recording artist, a powerfully charismatic performer, a curator and taste-maker, Downes is recognized as a cultural visionary on the national arts scene.Lara's forays into the broad landscape of American music have created a series of acclaimed recordings, including America Again, selected by NPR as one of "10 Albums that Saved 2016", and hailed as "a balm for a country riven by disunion" by the Boston Globe. Her recent Sony Classical debut release For Lenny debuted in the Billboard Top 20 and was awarded the 2017 Classical Recording Foundation Award.

Her Sony Masterworks recording Holes in the Sky, a celebration of the contributions of phenomenal women to the past, present and future of American music, was released in March 2019, debuting at the top of the Billboard charts. Her newest release For Love Of You marks her concerto recording debut, and celebrates the 200th birthday of the great pianist and composer Clara Schumann.

 Downes enjoys creative collaborations with a range of leading artists, including multi-instrumentalist/composer/singer Rhiannon Giddens, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Simone Dinnerstein, folk icon Judy Collins, baritone Thomas Hampson, writer Adam Gopnik, and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove. Her close partnerships with prominent composers span genres and generations, with premieres and commissions coming from Jennifer Higdon, John Corigliano, Stephen Schwartz, Paola Prestini, Clarice Assad, Michael Abels, and many others. 

Downes’ fierce commitment to arts advocacy, mentorship and education sees her working in support of non-profit organizations including PLAN International, the Sphinx Organization, the Lower Eastside Girls Club, Washington Performing Arts, and NPR’s From The Top, where she appears as a rotating guest host. 
Lara Downes is a Yamaha Artist.

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