Composer Thomas Cabaniss and pianist Michael Shinn (D.M.A, ’10) announce the release of their second collaborative album, Sketches of Venasque: Six Pieces for Piano, now available digitally. Recorded at Schroeder Hall at the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University in 2019, Sketches of Venasque is a 6-movement set of miniatures for solo piano inspired by Cabaniss’s trip to southeastern France with his wife Deborah in 1990. Each movement serves as a tour de France, from the Bells of St. Siffrein to the peaks of Mont Ventoux, and offers listeners a chance to escape to the south of France from the comfort of their own living rooms.

“Venasque is a beautiful hilltop village in the south of France, just east of the Rhone,” says Cabaniss. “It was the nearby summer home to the Popes of Avignon during their reign in the 14th and 15th centuries; it overlooks groves of olive and cherry trees and the vineyards and villages of the southern valley of Mont Ventoux. These pieces were composed in a hilltop studio there, inspired by the daily rhythms of the village and the surrounding vistas.”

Sketches of Venasque is released on the heels of Tiny Bits of Outrageous Love, a 7-movement piano four hands work by Cabaniss, performed by Shinn and wife Jessica Chow Shinn. Tiny Bits and Sketches will be included in a 4-volume compilation of Cabaniss’s music to be released in Winter 2022.

Watch Michael perform The Mistral/Mont Mont Ventoux 

Click to listen digitally. 

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