James Tocco
INFO
James Tocco is a recitalist, orchestral soloist, chamber musician, and educator. He has performed many American and European masterworks, including Bernstein's Age of Anxiety, which he recorded with Leonard Slatkin and the BBC London Symphony Orchestra, and John Corigliano's Piano Concerto.
His performances included his Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra debut, performing the MacDowell Concerto and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, both conducted by Leonard Slatkin. An especially accomplished recitalist, Tocco has performed interpretations of Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt, as well as 20th-century composers, and he regularly programs the keyboard works of Handel. Other performances include Bernstein's Age of Anxiety with Marin Alsop and the New York Symphony, and Leonard Slatkin and the London-based BBC Symphony orchestra.
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MAKE HIS MODERN
PIANIST JAMES TOCCO, CONTEMPORARY CHAMPION
By Joseph McLellan (The Washington Post)
February 22, 1993 at 7:00 p.m. EST
"I didn't become a pianist because I want to sell tickets," says James Tocco. "I became a pianist because I want to express myself through piano music, including the music of my own country and my own time."
Perhaps this attitude explains why Tocco, at 49 one of the most critically acclaimed pianists of his generation, is playing piano music of Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland tonight in the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater, which holds 500 people, rather than Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff in the Concert Hall, which can hold five times as many. He believes audiences can and should be won for contemporary American music, even if they are not as big as the audiences for long-dead foreigners. Tocco also plays the piano music of Roger Sessions, George Rochberg, John Corigliano and Ned Rorem -- music that is modern but in touch with tradition, easy to integrate into programs with the classics of previous centuries and accessible to audiences once they actually hear it.