Dream of Me: American Piano Music by Bolcom, Kernis, Barber, Silverman, Coleman, Andre/Schwandt Lara Downes, p Tritone (no number) 58 minutes This is an appealing program of contemporary American piano nocturnes. The tradition invoked by pianist Lara Downes is not the surrealism of Bartok or Crumb but the dreamscapes of Field, Chopin, and Debussy. Thus we get pieces by Bolcom, Kernis, and others that explore their most poetic, quiet moments. The mother of two small children, Downes’ own nocturnal reveries are ruled by “the rituals and rhythms of childrens’ bedtimes.” Kernnis’s "Before Sleep and Dreams", a lovely depiction of a child being prepared for bed, is thus a perfect choice. Twelve years ago, I had two infants of my own to put to bed: I could have used this album, though Delius’s "Hassan", especially the final, fading chorus, worked wonderfully. Most of this music is tonal. Adam Silverman’s "Nocturnes and Reveries", written for Downes in 2004, evokes the rhythms of a sleeper’s body. Samuel Barber’s haunting "Nocturne", composed in 1959 at the height of serialism, defied the expectations of the time. William Bolcom’s "Dream Shadows" has modernist accidentals and inflections but is basically a hazy version of an old fashioned rag, as if overheard in a dream. The closest thing we get to a modernist sound is Dan Coleman’s "Burden of Dreams", which explores Western composers’ collective unconscious by recapitulating fragments from different historical periods. Even here, an all-pervasive note of A flat creates stability. The program closes with Downes’s imaginative transcription of the irresistible Fabian Andre/Wilbur Schwandt standard, ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me.’ Downes plays with exquisite sensitivity; the recording, made at the University of California at Davis, is exceptionally intimate, as it needs to be. SULLIVAN

Interview with Lara about the release of "Dream of Me", 6/06

Sure, pianist Lara Downes plays all of that Beethoven, Mozart and Bach music in recitals, but now she’s taking the sounds of young composers like Lowell Lieberman and Pablo Ortiz to the rock and jazz clubs.

Piano shown in film to take center stage at performance by Lara Downes

By Doug Pullen / El Paso Times

It's not every day you get to see a documentary film on the handcrafting of a piano, then see and hear that piano in concert.

But some El Paso classical and chamber music fans will be the first to do just that.

A Sunday concert by pianist Lara Downes will come on the heels of last Wednesday's screening of "Note by Note -- The Making of Steinway L1037," a documentary film about the piano's 12-month creation, at the Philanthropy Theatre.

It's the first time the film has been shown and the piano will be played, pianist Downes said.

Both events are part of El Paso Pro-Musica's El Paso Chamber Music Festival, which continues through Jan. 31.

Downes will perform works by Frederic Chopin and Samuel Barber on the 9-foot Steinway grand at 2 p.m. Sunday at Western Hills United Methodist Church.

She'll follow the concert with a question-and-answer session and give audience members a chance to play the celebrated piano, which is being shipped in today by Charles Pianos of Albuquerque, where it's now on display.

"The idea is to have a different understanding of what this piano does," said Downes, artist-in-residence at the University of California-Davis's Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. She has an endorsement deal with Steinway and Sons.

Downes, who prides herself on presenting classical music in unusual ways, and her team pitched the movie-concert concept to Zuill Bailey, Pro-Musica's artistic director, who performed a free recital with Downes last Thursday.

"He loved it and everything came together nicely," Downes said of the yearlong process that will culminate with Sunday's concert.

"That's a stroke of genius and luck that a piano like this was documented ... (and) we can get it, the same piano," said Bailey, who first heard about the piano at Alaska's Sitka Summer Music Festival.

The spruce tree used in the making of the piano was cut down in a forest near Sitka.

"It's funny how the degrees of separation work. I was also in Sitka and they were talking about the same thing," said Bailey, who will take over as artistic director of the Sitka festival in 2012.

Downes first heard about director Ben Niles' movie from her Steinway representative in Sacramento. The pianist had visited the Steinway factory in Astoria, N.Y., where Niles made much of his film, in 2003.

"I had this tour and I was absolutely blown over by this place and what happens there," she said of the factory where Steinways have been made since 1853.

"It's totally dilapidated on the outside," the pianist said. "It looks like it was used for a horror movie. ... (It's) just this vast labyrinth of a place, and at every different room there is one guy who's building one piece of the piano by hand. Every single piece is made by hand."

The piano's celebrity is such that Steinway dealers vie for the chance to have it in their showrooms.

"Various dealers sort of compete to have it," she said. "It's a selling point for them, depending on where it is."

Downes is eager to get her hands on the L1037 on Sunday. She'll perform a program titled "The Romantics," which celebrates the 200th anniversary of Polish-born French composer Chopin's birth and the 100th birthday of American composer Barber.

"The more I work on this stuff, the more I appreciate them," she said of the two composers. "Both have this incredible lyrical gift and wrote these long, soaring melodic lines."

Downes is working on doing more film-concert presentations with the celebrated piano.

"This is the first time," she said of the El Paso combo, "but we're going to continue events like through through the spring and next season."

Doug Pullen may be reached at dpullen@elpasotimes.com; 546-6397. Read Pullen My Blog at www.elpasotimes.com/blogs.