Archived News
New York Times
A Pianist Strolls Her Harlem History, and Scott Joplin’s
NEw York Times
3 New Albums Retell the History of Black Composers
Recordings by the pianist Lara Downes, the Catalyst Quartet and the baritone Will Liverman aim to correct the canon.
NPR Music
With Her Recording Series 'Rising Sun,' Lara Downes Re-Centers Black Composers
You might know her as the host of NPR Music's web series, Amplify with Lara Downes, or by her work as a concert pianist – through each, Downes' goal has been to elevate the work of Black artists. Her new project, Rising Sun Music, is something of a combination: Downes will release a mini-album every month, for as long as she can keep it up, to highlight overlooked and forgotten compositions by Black artists in the classical music tradition.
NPR MUSIC
In Lara Downes' New Series, Black Musicians Rise To A Pivotal Moment
How can a moment of protest and isolation inspire creative rebirth? That's the question renowned pianist Lara Downes is exploring as the host of a new video series for NPR Music, simply titled Amplify With Lara Downes.
NPR
Reconsidering Scott Joplin's 'The Entertainer'
Like pretty much every other piano student in America, I set about learning how to play "The Entertainer." Everyone was playing it. The sound of that piece, performed hesitantly and unevenly, with stumbles over the tricky parts, is burned into my memory.
NPR Morning Edition
Songs to believe in: A Juneteenth playlist
This Juneteenth, I'm finding it hard to celebrate.
It's hard to reflect on freedom in this deafening swell of discord, this crescendo of threats to our most basic human and civil rights. It's hard to stand upright in this storm of unending violence, to find footing on ground riven by such deep and jagged divisions. It's hard, in such darkness, to believe in the dawn of a better day.
NPR Tiny Desk Concerts
Lara Downes: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
Lara Downes thrives on collaboration. Her new album features Toshi Reagon, the vocal ensemble MUSICALITY and the string quartet called PUBLIQuartet. But in this intimate piano recital from her home in Sacramento, Calif., her only collaborators are her son Simon, who takes on cinematography duties, and her beloved pooch, Kona.
CBC
Today on Q: Ethan Hawke, Amy Millan, Lara Downes, Neko Case and Carl Newman
Award-winning pianist Lara Downes talks about her new label, Rising Sun Music, which showcases the work of overlooked or forgotten Black composers.
Here & Now
Pianist Lara Downes reconsiders composer Scott Joplin on new album
Pianist Lara Downes joins Here & Now's Celeste Headlee to discuss her new album "Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered," and why Joplin should be known as more than just the 'King of Ragtime.'
WHYY
Lara Downes celebrates the diversity of artists in classical music
The classical artist and producer celebrates Black composers and musicians, and highlights those from the past who didn’t receive recognition.
LoS ANGELES TIMES
New KUSC evening host Lara Downes is ‘not going to pretend to be a DJ—I’m just going to be myself’
“Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony” can be a tongue-twister, especially if you’re reading those words on air. But Lara Downes, the new evening host on the Los Angeles classical music station KUSC-FM (91.5), was unfazed one recent night when she saw it slated as the next piece on the playlist. It was, she told herself, nothing she couldn’t handle.
Learning for Justice
Music Reconstructed: Lara Downes’ Classical Perspective on Jim Crow
From concertos to operas, Black composers captured the changes and challenges facing African Americans during Jim Crow. Renowned classical pianist Lara Downes is bringing new appreciation to the works of artists like Florence Price and Scott Joplin. In our final installment of Music Reconstructed, Downes discusses how we can hear the complicated history of this era with historian Charles L. Hughes.
SMithsonian Magazine
How Black Composers Shaped the Sound of American Classical Music
A new project seeks to elevate artists like Harry T. Burleigh and Florence Price, whose work has been ignored by white audiences
WNYC
Pianist Lara Downes
Pianist Lara Downes joins us to discuss her creative practice. You can watch her new music video for the song, “Ellis Island,” here.
Your Classical
Lara Downes reflects on the music of Scott Joplin
Pianist Lara Downes is reconsidering Scott Joplin, who he was and what he did. Joplin was an incredible innovator who really brought American music into the 20th century. Downes digs deeper into his legacy in her latest recording, Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered.
The Arts Fuse
Classical Album Reviews: “Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered” and New York Youth Symphony plays Price, Coleman, and Montgomery
Pianist Lara Downes is on a roll. Following – or, rather, building – on last year’s New Day Begun, a revelatory survey of music by overlooked Black American composers, comes an effort to rethink Scott Joplin’s place in the canon.
TEXTURA
Lara Downes: Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered
Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered sits comfortably alongside much else the NYC-based pianist has done in celebrating the work of esteemed American artists such as Leonard Bernstein and Billie Holiday.
Classical Candor
Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered (CD review)
Remarkably, this is the ninth album I’ve reviewed by American pianist Lara Downes. I suppose that is a reflection of the great admiration I have of Ms. Downes’s talent.
The New Yorker
A Bernstein-Lerner Broadway Standard Warns Anew of a White House in Peril
The song “Take Care of This House,” from a misbegotten musical, reminds us of Trump’s degradation of the White House, and of the importance of protecting our home.
The New York Times
Clara Schumann, Music’s Unsung Renaissance Woman
September brings the 200th birthday of a composer whose name is familiar, but whose creative legacy deserves far greater recognition.
NPR
NPR Music's Top 14 Albums Of April
Lara Downes, 'Some of These Days'
NPR
Celebrating Juneteenth And Black Music Month With Classical Classics
We last spoke to pianist and Amplify co-host Lara Downes in March, when she announced her Rising Sun Music project, through which she would release an EP every month for as long as she could keep it up. The goal: to resurface and revivify classical works by Black artists.
DC Metro Theater Arts
Pianist Lara Downes and the mainstreaming of fully American music
Imagine if great music by diverse composers were presented not as special but rather as totally normal.
Modern Luxury DC
9 Things to Add to Your November To-Do List
Washington Performing Arts has a tremendous winter season on tap, including Tomorrow I May Be Far Away. The evening features pianist Lara Downes (pictured), Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rita Dove and the Thalea String Quartet.
NPR
Lara Downes And NPR Music Announce AMPLIFY With Lara Downes
NPR Music and Lara Downes announce the launch of AMPLIFY With Lara Downes, a new bi-weekly series of intimate and deeply personal video conversations with visionary Black musicians who are shaping the present and future of the art form, premiering Saturday, October 17 on NPRMusic.org, YouTube, and social media platforms.
San Francisco Chronicle
Review: Oakland Symphony’s triumphant season opener begins new chapter
Chen’s extravagantly physical podium style tugged a little at this music’s essential serenity. But it proved ideal for Price’s Piano Concerto, which followed in an exuberant and vivid performance featuring Lara Downes as soloist.
Classical Voice
Lara Downes and a Cavalcade of Stars Ask You to “Take Care of This House”
Leave it to Lara Downes to get out the vote with style and grace and great music.
Classical Voice
Lara Downes Explores the Many Resonances in Roots Music
In liner notes for her new album, Some of These Days, pianist Lara Downes expresses the 14-track CD’s origins and significance.
Boston Globe
Zoe Madonna and Jeremy Eichler’s Top 10 classical albums of 2019
“FOR LOVE OF YOU” Lara Downes
Boston Globe
Boston music series honors the ‘incredible genius’ of Clara Schumann on her 200th birthday
Classical Voice
Lara Downes Celebrates Women Composers on Her New Album
Pianist Lara Downes leaves no room for doubt. Given the choice as a professional musician to rant about male composers’ dominance in music history, the repertoire of orchestras, chamber ensembles and soloists, and jazz, pop, funk, R&B, folk, and other playlists, or to rave about brilliant, overlooked women composers, Downes chooses the latter.
PBS
Lara Downes: Concert Pianist
Concert pianist Lara Downes believes music can be an open door through which communication & connection can be made.
NPR
A Year Of Listening Desperately: 10 Classical Albums That Saved 2016
Lara Downes' powerful album America Again isn't so much an escape as a revealing look in the mirror.
Boston Globe
Lara Downes casts a wide net on beautiful album ‘America Again’
WQXR
Songs for Lenny: A Leonard Bernstein Conversation
NPR
Review: Lara Downes, 'America Again'
What defines America? There's been a lot of talk about that this election season. Pianist Lara Downes has a musical answer in her upcoming album America Again.
Classical Voice
Lara Downes Is Showing Us How to Make Music Matter
Awarded a 2016 Sphinx Medal of Excellence given each year to distinguished, emerging classical artists of color, American pianist Lara Downes says the $50,000 career grant “just fell from the sky.”
SoundCloud
George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue - Live in Louisville
A live performance in studio for WUOL-FM Lunchtime Classics, Louisville KY, April 15, 2015
The Washington Post
Pianist Lara Downes gives insightful performance of Czech composers
Franz Kafka may have been ignored in his own lifetime, but his novels — and the sense of dread and alienation they evoke — came to have an extraordinary impact on the 20th century mind. So it was intriguing to hear pianist Lara Downes at the Embassy of the Czech Republic on Thursday evening, playing music by Czech composers who endured the rising totalitarianism that Kafka’s writing seemed to presage — and who were either killed by it or forced into decades of exile.