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Sunday, May 11, 2025
— a “hybrid” event —
Alex Hassan
piano
PIANO ACROBATICS, SHTICK, SCHMALTZ, ETC ETC ETC, 30s/40s
Alex, our stalwart (so far, so good ) regular pianoodler, as he calls himself, is back again solo with an entirely new program of songwriter medley-fantasies, including Mack Gordon & Harry Revel, and Al Dubin & Harry Warren. There’ll also be an homage to some wonderful melodies written during WWII. As always, a good mix of known, somewhat known, and likely new to all ears.Alex also has a couple of amusing piano novelties, based upon classical original melodies, AND what he calls a choreographed solo, recently notated by his pianistic counterpart AND good friend of many years, Peter Mintun, from a Vitaphone short soundtrack. If the red wine with which we ply Alex, prior to performances, does its trick, he expects this performance to raise a few eyebrows.Be there!
BIOGRAPHY
Alex Hassan has been in total immersion 1920s/30s Tin Pan Alley Popular Piano Styles therapy for over 40 years. A pupil of a pupil of a pupil of a pupil of Franz Liszt (well…it SOUNDS impressive?!), he has been a torchbearer for the melodies of between-the-wars Broadway and Hollywood (and European equivalents), devoting himself more specifically to collecting and resurrecting the great “late Romantic with a beat” popular songs that really never had a chance.
His archival collection of [mostly] popular piano solo and vocal sheet music numbers around 50,000 titles, entirely 1920s/30s. It is a tribute to those heady musical times that there is still so much left to find.
Alex has performed internationally at such venues as England’s Aldeburgh Festival, Husum (2007 & 2015–“Piano Rarities Festival”), Washington DC’s Kennedy Center, the Coolidge Auditorium (Library of Congress), various Manhattan/Baltimore/Washington night spots, and national ragtime festivals. He has recorded prolifically for England’s SHELLWOOD PRODUCTIONS, Los Angeleno label OPERETTA ARCHIVES, and Pennsylvania’s STOMP OFF, and has produced/annotated several reissues of the virtuoso popular pianists of the 78RPM period, for both Shellwood and the Pittsburgh company, RIVERMONT (for which he has also recorded, along with two brilliant singing friends).
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