Charles Ives “was welded into my DNA, ever since I’d heard the record mysteriously appear as background music for one of my finest trips. The piece is made from simultaneously sounding layers … all woven together within a fantastical flux of sound.” -Phil Lesh
Presenting the 12th chapter of Bear’s Sonic Journals, Concordance —150 Years of Charles Ives. Piano Sonata No. 2: “Concord, Mass., 1840 – 1860.” This 2 CD set is a tribute to Phil Lesh, featuring one of Phil’s greatest influences, composer Charles Ives, as personally recorded by Phil and Bear.
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Owsley Stanley Foundation Presents Bear’s Sonic Journals:
Concordance —150 Years of Charles Ives.
Piano Sonata No. 2: “Concord, Mass., 1840 – 1860.”
Concordance —150 Years of Charles Ives.
Piano Sonata No. 2: “Concord, Mass., 1840 – 1860.”
Deadheads and Ivesheads meet at this unexpected crossroads. Phil Lesh called avant-garde composer Charles Ives one of his main influences. So, in 1974, Ives’s centennial, he enlisted Bear to record this performance of Ives’s Concord Sonata by John Kirkpatrick, the pianist who put this masterwork on the map. Now we celebrate Ives’s 150th by pairing it with the Concord Concord, a new live performance of Kirkpatrick’s final student, Donald Berman, performing in Concord, Mass.
Featuring:
- A live performance of the Concord Sonata recorded by Bear and Phil Lesh, alongside a 2025 performance of the Concord — the first new live recording produced by the Owsley Stanley Foundation
- Bound 112 page booklet profiling Phil Lesh and one of his muses, Charles Ives, plus interviews with pianist Donald Berman, the last student of John Kirkpatrick
- Original artwork by Concord-area artist Susan Richards and Grammy Award winner Susan Archie
- 2 CDs with 12 tracks and nearly 2 hours of music
- Includes the world premiere recording of Concord Legacy: Other Transcendentalists, a group of new compositions commissioned by Donald Berman to celebrate four female Transcendentalists in the spirit of Ives.
Disc 1: John Kirkpatrick, Piano,
Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium, March 7, 1974
1. Piano Sonata No. 2: “Concord, Mass.
1840-1860” Charles E. Ives (1874-1954)
Disc 2: Donald Berman, Piano,
Concord, Mass., February 8, 2025
1. Piano Sonata No. 2: “Concord, Mass. 1840-1860”
2. Concord Legacy: Other Transcendentalists
i. As Syllable from Sound (2023), Eve Beglarian
ii. Underground (2020), David Sanford
iii. The Piano at the Palace Beautiful (2019), Marti Epstein
iv. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (2018), Elena Ruehr
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The "Save The Music!" campaign seeks to raise money to enable the digitization, preservation, and release of Bear's Sonic Journals, a trove of over a thousand live concert recordings from the heart of the psychedelic era. Donations are much appreciated, and are in fact essential to our ability to preserve and release future recordings!
You can donate via our secure form, or send checks made out to the Owsley Stanley Foundation to: Owsley Stanley Foundation PO Box 625 Occidental, Ca 95465. We were officially granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status by the IRS in December 2012. All donations to the Owsley Stanley Foundation are fully tax deductible.
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