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Sunday, February 15, 2026
Alex Hassan
piano
THE LATE ROMANTIC…
WITH A BEAT!
Alex Hassan, the Inevitable (at least at Emerson!), travels up 95 from Richmond yet again, to regale us with his solo pianistic stylings of a more elegant age, when melody was center-stage. With over 50,000 popular songs/solos in his collection, entirely from his fave era, 1920s/30s/early 40s, truth is, most of these titles never had a chance. Alex’s life mission in music, as long as his fingers are doing his bidding, is to rectify this unjust neglect, wherever/whenever possible.
Don’t expect to hear chestnuts. No need! Whether unpublished Vernon Duke or Arthur Schwartz, or less known Harold Arlen or Kay Swift, or unknown writers who never got that big break, it often occurs to Alex that the majority of songwriters of the period could write a grand melody with the best of them. See if you agree!
SOOOOO, this Sunday night, 7:30PM Eastern time, join us at
emersonavenuesalons.com (that would be … here!)
for an hour of romance, sentiment and, yes, a few hot numbers as well…WITH GREAT MELODIES!
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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