Joseph Kubera | Pianist

Programs

PIANO MUSIC OF LAURIE SPieGEL

Laurie Spiegel, composer of well-known and highly-regarded electronic music, is lesser known for her body of piano music.  Joseph Kubera has recorded many of these pieces and is pleased to offer them in concert.

  • A History of Music in One Movement
  • The Unquestioned Answer
  • Winter Energy
  • Returning East
  • A Prelude and a Counterpoint
  • Viroid
  • A Musette
  • A la recherche du temps perdu
  • 12-Tone Blues

and other short pieces

JULIUS EASTMAN AND HIS CIRCLE

From Kubera’s work with Eastman at the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts at SUNY Buffalo to their later collaborations in New York City, this concert celebrates the work of Julius Eastman and other composers whose work Eastman admired.

  • Julius Eastman:  Piano 2 (1986)
  • Lukas Foss:  Solo (1981)
  • Ann Silsbee:  In and Out the Window (1983)
  • Ann Silsbee:  Bagatelle (1962)

Plus works by Rocco Di Pietro, David Borden and Tania León

RECITAL

  • Matthew Goodheart:  New Work (In progress 2026)
  • Barbara Monk Feldman:  Piano (2025) (Premiere)
  • Jessie Cox:  Origin Story KB (for Joseph Kubera) (2023)
  • Paul A. Epstein:  Landscape Variations (2005)
  • Conrad Winslow:  Dry County (2022)
  • Robert Ashley:  Van Cao’s Meditation (1994)

RECITAL

  • Roscoe Mitchell:  8-8-88 (1988-90)
  • Stuart Saunders Smith:  Thicket (2010)
  • Muhal Richard Abrams:  Then, Now and Forever
  • Daniel Rothman:  Queens Plaza (2007)

MICHAEL BYRON:  DREAMERS OF PEARL

Joseph Kubera and Michael Byron have enjoyed a close collaboration for twenty years.  Here is the monumental hour-long work for solo piano.

Dreamers of Pearl (2006)
I. Enchanting the Stars
II. A Bird Revealing the Unknown to the Sky
III. It Is the Night and Dawn of Constellations Irradiated

THE MUSIC OF JOSEF MATTHIAS HAUER

Largely unheard today, the Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer developed a unique 12-tone system of composition at the same time as Schoenberg, but creating a totally different sound world  — one that settled into familiar harmony but without the the expectations of Western harmony.  Its musical language anticipates aspects of what today we call minimalism.

This concert replicates a duo concert of Joseph Kubera and David Tudor at The Kitchen, New York, circa 1979.

  • Nachklangstudien
  • Atonale Musik
  • Collected Zwoelftonspiele

BOB & BLUE (with Sarah Cahill, second piano)

A concert in memory of composers Robert Ashley and “Blue” Gene Tyranny, who worked together and passed away in 2014 and 2020, respectively.

The program includes works for one and two pianos, some written specifically for Joseph Kubera and Sarah Cahill, and has been performed on the East and West Coasts.

Robert Ashley:

  • Sonata (Christopher Columbus Crosses to the New World in the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria Using Only Dead Reckoning and a Crude Astrolabe) (1959/1979/1985)
  • Viva’s Boy (1991) from El Aficionado
  • Details (2b) (1962)

“Blue” Gene Tyranny:

  • Decertified Highway of Dreams (1991)
  • The Drifter (1994)
  • Nocturne With and Without Memory (1989)
  • Spirit (1996/2002)
  • A Letter from Home (2002)