DONATE! Watch Salonline Previous Salonlines
Sunday, July 20, 2025
— a “hybrid” event —
Alex Hassan
piano
Connoisseurs of Piano Syncopation:
Ten-Hut!
Our local ( …well….100 miles south… ) retro-pop pianoodler, Alex Hassan, has been lured back to Emerson, to try and keep his audience’s attention for yet another hour. To do that requires a fairly continual updating of repertoire (think: frequently adding goodies to your booth at the antique mall to keep the customers interested), or retouching music from previous concerts. That mix will be on display, Sunday, July 20th, 7:30PM Eastern…
Be there or be triangular!
Amongst highlights: a WIZARD OF OZ fantasy, a replay of his May 11th concert’s HARRY WARREN medley, with an additional toon (he’ll explain why), an unknown Richard Rodgers waltz, and two Harry Revel melodies from 1930 or so, that exist only in manuscript. That doesn’t quite add up to an hour as yet, but it’ll happen! Stay tuned–
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).
If you’d like to receive Emerson Avenue Salon invitations, you can add yourself to the invitation list HERE.