South Florida Classical Review

Pianists Glen Inanga and Rebeca Omordia performed Saturday night in Aventura for the 40th anniversary of Dranoff 2 Piano Fusion. Photo: Gregory Reed

Four decades ago, pianist and educator Loretta Dranoff founded a two piano competition and occasional concert series in Miami to honor the memory of her late husband Murray Dranoff. The Dranoffs were a duo piano team that toured the country widely from the 1940’s through the 1960’s. 

On Saturday night at the Aventura Art and Culture Center, Dranoff 2 Piano Fusion celebrated the 40^th anniversary of Dranoff’s first event.

The team of Glen Inanga and Rebeca Omordia were the evening’s featured artists. In honor of the occasion, the Dranoff organization commissioned a new work by California based-composer Adam Schoenberg. 

Schoenberg’s Scene Study: A Love Story received its world premiere and proved a winner in every respect. Scored for two pianos and string quintet and lasting just over ten minutes, Schoenberg’s opus portrays the stages of love in nine continuous sections.

Schoenberg’s idiom is appropriately lush and romantic but the score brims with consistent invention and unexpected turns of mood and thematic paths. The sweeping opening melody began solo from Omordia’s keyboard and swept through the entire ensemble. An aura of tension alternates with motifs of cinematic grandeur. String tremolos suggest drama and moments of driving energy eventually lead to a poetic conclusion. A professor at Occidental College, Schoenberg is a composer of exceptional talent and one looks forward to hearing more of his output.

The performance had to be a composer’s dream come true. Whether racing across the keyboard or producing surging varieties of tonal shading, Inanga and Omordia were totally connected to the score’s shifting moods. The Amernet String Quartet and bassist Paola García blended wonderfully without overwhelming the pianists and produced rich floods of lustrous sonority. Wistful and elegant solos by violinist Misha Vitenson and cellist Jason Calloway were especially notable.

The Schoenberg premiere was surrounded by music of African-American, Caribbean and African composers, affording an opportunity to hear scores rarely programmed on concert stages. 

Jamaican-British composer Eleanor Alberga was represented by two contrasting works. Her Two Piano Suite mixes jazz- tinged inspiration with a touch of minimalism. Fleet and rhythmic, the suite culminates in a blazing, knuckle-busting finale. Inanga and Omordia were equal to the music’s challenges, sweepoing through the concluding pages in high- octane fashion. 

Alberga is a post-modernist, freely mixing dissonance, consonance and multiple compositional techniques. Her 3-Day Mix is based on the same Jamaican folk tune as Arthur Benjamin’s oft played Jamaican Rumba. In Alberga’s virile palette, that theme is not always obvious. The treatment played to the duo’s penchant for producing a large scale cacophony and broad sonic spectrum.

William Grant Still (1895-1978) was the dean of black American composers and the best known creator on the program. A prolific creative artist of scores, large and small in almost every genre, Still’s music is notable for its qualitative excellence and variety. 

The duo played three separate Still scores as a de facto suite. “Kaintuck’” (as in Kentucky) sings in ruminative tones. “Summerland” freely mixes hints of the blues and  artful contemporary classical patterns. The Scherzo from the Afro-American Symphony, Still’s most played work, gives reference to Still’s formidable skills as a Broadway, Hollywood and dance band arranger. Inanga and Omordia’s enthusiasm for Still’s oeuvre was  clear and irrepressible, flowing from stage to audience.

Fred Onovwerosuoke was born in Ghana to Nigerian parents. His music is notable for translating African drumming into pianistic terms. Onovwerosuoke’s Sonata for Two Pianos No. 3 displays a distinctive voice while channeling the Stravinsky of L’Histoire du Soldat. Pulsing rhythms threaten to turn into a melody that never comes. The team’s fluent, rapid fire, zestful articulation proved a delight.

Pianist-composer Thomas H. Kerr, Jr. (1915-1988) pioneered a black college concert circuit in the United States. Based on the spiritual “My Lord Deliver Daniel,” his Concert Scherzo inverts and repurposes the tune in a series of imaginative variants. The pianists’ energetic spirit was palpable but they retained the tone of the spiritual through Kerr’s permutations.

Belize-born, London-based Errollyn Wallen is the first black woman to be appointed Master of the King’s Music. Stride piano, avant-garde angularity, cluster chords, Bartokian pounding and down-home pop all find their way into Wallen’s The Girl in My Alphabet. Based on the Jobim classic, The Girl from Ipanema, that familiar song only gets played at the very end.  All very cleverly conceived, Wallen’s mix and match provided a nice palette cleanser.

Florence Price’s Three Little Negro Dances is one of the now ubiquitous composer’s most appealing scores. Catchy dance tunes are treated to decorative pianistic flourishes, all played with skill and panache by Inanga and Omordia.

Nigerian Sir Victor Uwaifo’s Joromi was a 1965 hit record and is considered an example of “high life music.” With Inanga nodding his head to the beat and the skillful arrangement by Sean Owoaje, the breezy vignette offered a light-hearted ending to a consistently interesting program that was true to the eclectic spirit of Loretta Dranoff.

Prior to the concert, a video detailing the history of the Dranoff Foundation was presented, including comments from Loretta Dranoff herself. Alexis Mosley, a member of Miami-Dade County Commissioner Mickey Steinberg’s staff presented Dranoff president and board chairperson Gabriele Fiorentino with a plaque honoring the group’s 40-year celebration. A video by Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniela Levine Cava offered praise for Dranoff’s far-sighted vision and accomplishments.

Dranoff 2 Piano Fusion presents Duo Scarbó playing works by Spanish composers with dancer-choreographer Africa Ramirez February 5 and 6, 2027 at the Sanctuary of the Arts in Coral Gables.   dranoff2pianofusion.org

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