On 10 September Janice Carissa premieres Carl Vine’s Gothic Fantasy at the Wellspring Theater in Kalamazoo, MI, as part of the Gilmore Rising Stars Season. Carissa was appointed a Gilmore Young Artist at the 2022 Gilmore International Piano Competition. As her prize she chose to commission a fantasy for solo piano from Vine, with assistance from The Gilmore. The Gothic Fantasy will be the first of Five Fantasies by Vine for solo piano. Vine’s Second Piano Sonata has become a regular fixture of her recital programmes.
The title of the 6-minute piece reflects its brooding character. Vine draws out the darker aspects of the fantastical in the piece, opening with quiet, mysterious tolling chords, before a restless, searching melodic line gets underway.
Vine is a celebrated composer for piano. In September 2022 Lindsay Garritson, who premiered Vine’s Piano Sonata No.4 at Carnegie Hall, gave the first performance of Three Pieces at the University of Miami, Florida. Movements from Three Pieces would go on to form Five Intermezzi (2022), which also included ‘Resolve’, composed for the Olga Kern International Piano Competition in October 2022. In August 2022 the ZOFO Piano Duet premiered Zofomorphosis, a 23-minute concerto for piano four hands, at the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago. A recording of his complete piano sonatas was released in May 2022 on Dynamic, performed by Xiaoya Liu.