Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason is set to release her second album Summertime, featuring works by American composers. This comes after the 25-year-old pianist's debut album Romance was awarded a four-star review by BBC Music Magazine and launched her to the top of the UK Classical Charts.
The album is centred around 20th-century American works, including the world premiere recording of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Impromptu No. 2 in B minor, 100 years after it was first published in London.
As well as Barber's Piano Sonata, which, Kanneh-Mason says, 'forms the anchor around which the rest of the album was developed', the album will also include arrangements of music by Gershwin, a miniature by Amy Beach and a short piece by a young Aaron Copland.
'I wanted this album to illustrate the diversity of music in America at that time, and so it was important to me to include some of the more familiar Gershwin songs, as well as the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor spirituals to which I feel a personal connection.'
Summertime will be released on Decca Records on 9 July 2021.
Summertime by Isata Kanneh-Mason: track listing
Earl Wild: Summertime from Grand Fantasy on Porgy and Bess (after G. Gershwin)
Earl Wild: 7 Virtuoso Etudes: 1. I Got Rhythm (after G. Gershwin)
Samuel Barber: Nocturne, Op. 33
Samuel Barber: Piano Sonata in E-Flat Minor, Op. 26
George Gershwin: The Man I Love (Arr. Grainger)
George Gershwin: 3 Preludes
Amy Beach: By the Still Waters, Op. 114
Aaron Copland: The Cat and the Mouse
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Impromptu No. 2 in B Minori
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Deep River
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: The Bamboula
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child