TT 323: RIP Jeffrey Farrington
Pianist and scholar
Stunned and saddened to hear that Jeffrey Farrington passed away this morning after having a heart attack.
Farrington was a fellow student of Sophia Rosoff’s, and we shared an interest in relatively challenging midcentury American composers like Roger Sessions and Robert Helps. I had no idea that Edward T. Cone was a composer of note — Cone’s name comes up as a critic but less often as a composer — until Farrington’s advocacy. From the Westerhoff School of Music page:
During his time at Princeton, he discovered the music of Edward T. Cone, now late Professor of Music at Princeton University. At the time, there were no commercially available recordings of Professor Cone’s music. To remedy this, Farrington produced Composers Recordings Inc. CD 737: The Music of Edward T. Cone and subsequently several concerts dedicated to Cone’s music.
Farrington’s Soundcloud page has many of Farrington’s own concert recordings. He brought a lot of passion to his performances. I doubt that Farrington himself would have claimed to have a big technique, but at an important concert he would absolutely deliver the message.
The live recording of Cone’s Prelude, Passacaglia & Fugue (1957) is really pretty amazing. This is a huge work requiring hours and hours of practice to play well, and Farrington nails it. Farrington told me, “Ed said it was his best piano piece. I think he was pretty much right.” Cone’s colorful and engaging music should be heard, and those of us who have heard it owe thanks to Jeffrey Farrington. (I included this piece in my survey, “Write It All Down.”)
Opening pages from Prelude
Passacaglia
Fugue
Only yesterday Jeff emailed me looking for a scan of the Mel Powell Sonatina for Piano. This morning I sent the PDF to him — or rather, I sent a message that was never received…