Isata Kanneh-Mason, Summertime Review

Classical pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason is back with a new album titled Summertime. The album is the follow-up to her 2019 award-winning debut album, Romance. It includes a world-premiere recording of a Samuel Coleridge-Taylor piece and has the vibrant young pianist bringing her signature flair to a diverse program. The performance is centered around Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata in E flat minor and the lively music of George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Earl Wild, Amy Marcy Beach, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Kanneh-Mason says, “I am delighted to be presenting my second solo album, Summertime, which features a rich array of pieces from many of my favourite American classical composers. The Barber’ Piano Sonata’ forms the anchor around which the rest of the album was developed; I fell in love with the piece the first time I heard it, and it’s a real pleasure to have recorded it for Decca. I wanted this album to illustrate the diversity of music in America at that time, and so it was important to me to include the more familiar Gershwin songs, as well as the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor spirituals to which I feel a personal connection.”

The album includes a world-premiere recording of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Impromptu no.2 in B minor, released 110 years after it was initially published in London, and three of his transcriptions of American spirituals, including “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” Coleridge-Taylor was inspired by traditional African-American music and sought to integrate it into the classical tradition like Brahms did with Hungarian folk music, Dvořák with Bohemian music, and Grieg with Norwegian. Coleridge-Taylor came to England from Sierra Leone, mirroring Kanneh-Mason’s mother’s heritage.

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