The People United Will Never Be Defeated! - 36 variations on a Chilean revolutionary song by Sergio Ortega 2014 Spotify Best Classical Record!! 2014 Best Classical Recording Western Canadian Music Awards!! "Corey Hamm Joins the Elite in Rzewski - There are, arguably, three supremely great recordings of this modern masterpiece: the composer's own on Hat Art (way out of print), Stephen Drury's on New Albion, and Marc-André Hamelin's on Hyperion. This version joins them" - David Hurwitz Classicstoday.com "TPUWNBD! can be (and is) performed in many different ways: as an abstract post-serial exercise, as a realist statement with emphasis on its political references, or simply as a piece of neo-Romantic piano music with (or without) an internal program.  Much depends on the performer's individual approach to tempo and rhythm.  I think the secret of Corey Hamm's excellent interpretation is his choice of consistently lively tempi.  This simple principle not only communicates the fundamental idea of revolutionary optimism and refusal to give up or go back, but also makes it possible for the listener to grasp the basic form: just as in classical music the asymetries of Mozart and Beethoven (for example, not sequences of 8 + 8 bars but 7+ 9, as in placement of pieces in the game of Go) can only be perceived when the tempo is fast. Listening to his version, I feel that he never gets lost in his own private world, but constantly focuses on the theme of revolutionary unity, in which both the new and the old share equally; a unity without which no true revolution can be realized." - Frederic Rzewski "Corey Hamm's deep commitment to The People United Will Never Be Defeated! is evident in every note. This is a brilliant and moving tour-de-force of a performance that communicates Rzewski's iconic work directly to the heart." - Jon Kimura Parker Composer: Frederic Rzewski Performer: Corey Hamm, solo piano Recorded at: Pyatt Hall, Vancouver Symphony School of Music. July 2012 Producers: Don Harder and Corey Hamm Recording Engineer: Don Harder Stage Manager: David Humphrey Photography: Brian Hawkes (Hamm), Frank Röth (Rzewski) Cover Art: Where the Wyrm Dieth Not (2013) by Mark Takeshi McGregor Graphic Design and Manufacturing: Digital Media Group www.dmadiscs.com Special Thanks: Don Harder, Frederic Rzewski, Mark Takeshi McGregor, Stephen Drury, Garnet Ungar, Angelique Po, Darrin Lehman, UBC, UBC School of Music, VSO School of Music, British Columbia Arts Council, Jordan Nobles, Redshift Records, Dave Pay, Music on Main, Dave Humphrey, Scott Harker, Scott Godin, Tom Clarke. This recording was made possible through the assistance of a University of British Columbia and Humanities and Social Sciences grant (HSS). THE COMPOSER Frederic Rzewski was born in 1938 and began playing piano at age 5. He attended Phillips Academy, Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt. In 1960, he went to Italy, a trip which was formative in his future musical development. There, in addition to studying with Luigi Dallapiccola, he began a career as a performer of new piano music, often with an improvisatory element. A few years later he was a co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum. MEV conceived music as a collective, collaborative process, with improvisation and live electronic instruments prominently featured. In 1971 he returned to New York. In 1977 Rzewski became Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liège, Belgium, then directed by Henri Pousseur. Occasionally he teaches for short periods at schools and universities throughout the U.S. and Europe, including Yale University, the University of Cincinnati, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, San Diego, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and Trinity College of Music, London. Many of Rzewski's works are inspired by secular and socio-historical themes, show a deep political conscience and feature improvisational elements. In addition to TPUWNBD!, some of his better-known works include Four North American Ballads; Night Crossing with Fisherman; Fougues; Fantasia and Sonata; Le Silence des Espaces Infinis, which uses graphic notation; Les Moutons de Panurge; and Antigone-Legend, which features a principled opposition to the policies of the State, and which was premiered on the night that the United States bombed Libya in April 1986. Among his most recent compositions are the Nanosonatas (2006~2010) and the Cadenza con o senza Beethoven (2003), written for Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. Rzewski played the solo part in the world premiere of his piano concerto at the 2013 BBC Proms. Nicolas Slonimsky says of Rzewski in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1993): "He is furthermore a granitically overpowering piano technician, capable of depositing huge boulders of sonoristic material across the keyboard without actually wrecking the instrument." THE PIANIST Corey Hamm has commissioned, premiered and recorded over two hundred solo, chamber and concerto works from such Canadian composers as Brian Cherney, Keith Hamel, Jordan Nobles, Dorothy Chang, Jocelyn Morlock, Aaron Gervais, Scott Godin, Howard Bashaw, James Harley, Chris Paul Harman, Malcolm Forsyth, as well as such international composers as Dai Fujikura, and Kim Helweg. He is pianist for The Nu:BC Collective, and was a founding member of Hammerhead Consort, the NOWAge Orchestra, Lost in the Stars Ensemble, and has performed as guest pianist with Aventa Ensemble and Land's End Ensemble. Recent performances have featured Hamm in the World Premiere of Jordan Nobles' Piano Concerto with conductor Bramwell Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Claude Lapalme and the Red Deer Symphony, as well as Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, Fauré's Fantasie for piano and orchestra, and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. In addition to concerts, there are recent recordings with The Nu:BC Collective, clarinetist Cris Inguanti, PEP, and a solo piano CD of commissions by Hamel (Touch), Chang (Five), Nobles (Idée fixe), Godin (Cadenza), and Morlock (Corybantic), all on Redshift Records. Hamm premiered Jocelyn Morlock's Vulpine with VSO violinist Nicholas Wright (for an upcoming Naxos CD), and played Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire with the Music on Main All Stars, and with Valdine Anderson and the VSO under Bramwell Tovey. With erhu virtuoso Nicole Ge Li, Hamm has commissioned, premiered, recorded, and toured over forty new Chinese and Canadian works for piano and erhu as part of their exciting cross-cultural Piano and Erhu Project (PEP). Dr. Corey Hamm is an internationally performing pianist and joined the faculty of The University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver in Fall 2005. Currently he is Associate Professor of Piano and Chamber Music, Acting Chair of the Keyboard Division and Co-Director of the UBC Contemporary Players. In 2008 Dr. Hamm won the Killam Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is on the Piano Faculty of the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at the New England Conservatory in Boston. He is also active in masterclasses and as competition judge internationally. His beloved teachers include Lydia Artymiw, Marek Jablonski, Stéphane Lemelin, Ernesto Lejano, and Thelma Johannes O'Neill.