An intimate evening in the company of Allen Shawn, author, pianist, and composer whose six-year sojourn in the West Village marked a creative turning point when – influenced by his friendship with clarinetist Benny Goodman – he began blending classical music with elements of jazz. His lively music is characterized by emotional directness and an openness to a variety of idioms. “Notes from a Life” is a sonic diary featuring chamber pieces from across four decades by this multifaceted musician celebrated for his “distinctly urban energy.”
The son of legendary New Yorker editor Wiliam Shawn and brother of actor and writer Wallace Shawn, Allen Shawn began composing at a young age, though he considers that his mature works date from 1977, just before he moved to the West Village, where he came to know Benny Goodman, a fixture at Village clubs. The two men met weekly to play chamber music for fun, and Goodman commissioned from Shawn a concerto which he sadly never played, considering it too demanding so late in his career. It became Shawn’s “Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano,” a composition heavily tied to those Greenwich Village years. In addition to composing a large body of orchestral, choral, and chamber music, as well as music for piano and voice, Shawn is also a prolific author, having written biographies of Schoenberg and Bernstein, as well as memoirs, notably Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life.
