Internationally renowned pianist Vladimir Stoupel performed Mr. Mansker's 2 Ballades, Op. 41 on September 23 at the Deià International Music Festival on Mallorca as part of a program that also included music by Schubert, Schulhoff and Ravel.

Carl Mansker's 11 Japanische Lieder for soprano and piano will be performed twice in Poland by soprano Agnieszka Drovbzewska and pianist Anna Rutkowska-Schock on October 28 in Oborniki and on November 3 in the Concert Hall of the Academy of Music in Wroclaw.

Josè Luis Castillo, the conductor of the Orquestra Sinfonica de la Universidad de Guanajuato in Mexico has requested the scores of the Overture for the King of Naples, the Piano Concerto and the Concerto Jalisco for flute and orchestra, so performances there will be forthcoming.

Carl Mansker's has completed a new piece - Danza y Fuga X for large orchestra.

The rhythm of the Danza X is 2 dotted quarters, 3 quarters, 2 dotted eighth notes and a dotted quarter, 4 sixteenth notes and 2 eighth notes and a quarter. This pattern is repeated like an ostinato. The melody over this is basically a 6/8 rhythm.

The Fugue starts as a 6-voice fugue in 4/4, using the rhythm of the theme of Bach's Art of the Fugue. Then comes a 3-voice fugue for winds, then a 4-voice fugue for Glockenspiel, Xylophone, Bongos and traps. The finale is a free fusion of the 3 fugues and the melody of the dance.

As the composer writes, "Now starts the job of editing, correcting and finishing the orchestration."

The next immediate project is a commission for a work for 2 flutes and piano he has been asked to write for a concert in Copenhagen next year. One of the flutists has played his Danza y Fuga for flute and piano several times.

Another major project has been the finishing of the last of four songs for soprano and piano to poems by the Mallorcan poet Josep Maria Llompart (who wrote the libretto for his opera El bon senyor Karnak).

Another of Carl Mansker's upcoming projects is a commission for a work for violin and harpsichord. After this, he will be composing another solo piece for his friend and close musical associate, pianist Suzanne Bradbury (who has recorded a disk of his piano works for the Balance label).

Eventually, he will also create another Piano Concerto for her, especially considering the success of her recording of his 1st Piano Concerto with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava under the direction of Maestro Kirk Trevor. (This CD will be released in Summer 2005 on Albany Records - keep an eye on future issues of Blaue Boten as well as the composers website for details).

If you're still not familiar with the music of Carl Mansker, you need to be. His works have been characterized as having, "the delightful quality of being both unabashedly emotional and abstractly cerebral; in a word: 'fulfilling'". We think you'll agree.

Carl Mansker, born in Los Angeles, California in 1935, started to learn piano at the age of nine. From the beginning he preferred to improvise rather than practice. His teacher at that time, Samuel Ball, encouraged him to write down these improvisations.

Years later, following a short stint in the U.S. Navy and a year in New York City he went to the University of California and made his bachelors degree in music. After a further year of study in New York City he went to Munich where he received a scholarship from the Bavarian State to study piano with Professor Rosl Schmid at the Musikhochschule München. After graduating (1967) he spent several years concertizing throughout Europe.

In 1965, during a concert tour of Spain, he fell in love with the mountain village of Deià on Mallorca.

He has actively participated in the Deià International Music Festival, since its' founding in 1978, as a composer and performer. In 1987 he was commissioned to write an opera for the festival's tenth anniversary. He composed El bon senyor Karnak to a libretto in Catalan by Josep Maria Llompart, based on the radio play Hunger by Jakov Lind. It was premiered in June 1988, opening the music festival in the Teatro Principal in Palma de Mallorca. Since 1969 Carl and his wife, the Swiss painter Antoinette Mansker, divide their time between Münich an Deià.

Though he still teaches and concertizes, he devotes himself mainly to composition. His works have been performed in many countries from Australia to Turkey and many have been recorded by the Bavarian State Radio and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, the latter conducted by Kirk Trevor. In addition to the opera, he has written many songs (including 23 settings of Japanese Haiku), chamber music, a Piano Concerto, a Concerto Grosso and the Sinfonie Algabal.

If you'd like to hear some of Carl Mansker's music on the web, his Piano Trio is available at the MP3 site.

For more information about composer Carl Mansker, visit him online at http://jamesarts.com/carlmansker/ or http://www.jamesarts.com.

For any other information about Carl Mansker, please contact Jeffrey James Arts Consulting at 516-586-3433 or jamesarts@worldnet.att.net.