Deconstructed Anthems performed by pianist Dr. Bryan Stanley

Deconstructed Anthems is an ongoing series of music performances in which a musician and/or music ensemble plays a deconstructed score of “The Star-Spangled Banner” created by artist Ekene Ijeoma by removing notes and repeating at the rate of mass incarceration. For the performances at Bemis, Ijeoma created Deconstructed Anthems: Nebraska 12 (2015). In 2015, Black people in Nebraska were incarcerated 6x more than whites. The number is doubled to 12 to extend the duration of the performance which ends in silence.

RSVP: This performance will take place in-person. Due to limited capacity, an RSVP is required.

STREAM: This performance will also stream live at facebook.com/bemiscenter.

Dr. Bryan Stanley (b. 1972), accomplished pianist-composer and collaborator, is published by Hal Leonard, Boosey & Hawkes, and G. Schirmer, which include concert arrangements of American folksongs and adaptations of Copland’s music. The Music Teachers National Association granted Dr. Stanley Honorable Mention in the 2019 Distinguished Composer of the Year Competition with his Three Concert Etudes for Piano commissioned by the Nebraska Music Teachers Association. His original compositions for piano, concerto, vocal, and chamber groups have been performed with Caritas Symphonia of San Francisco, Siaulei Piano Duo Festival in Lithuania, Harpa Symphony Hall in Iceland, Riverton Utah Symphony Orchestra, University of Nebraska in Omaha and Kearney; St. Louis Community College Orchestra, Indiana University-Southeast, Simpson College, Park City Beethoven Festival, Utah Opera, Park City Community Church, Lewis University, and KBYU radio. Last year, tenor Kyle Stegall premiered his Three Songs on Poems of Carl Sandburg at UNO. His madrigal, “Orpheus and his Lute,” was performed with the University of Nebraska Chamber Singers in 2018. His Four Songs, musical settings of poetry by Kansas Poet Laureate Wyatt Townley, were featured at Waldorf University in 2017.

He performed his first piano concerto with the University of Oklahoma Chamber Orchestra in 2000; and his second concerto with Caritas Symphonia in San Francisco in 2016. His four-harp concerto was premiered at the Salt Lake City Mormon Tabernacle in 2011. In 2007, he was a featured pianist at the Gina Bachauer International Summer Piano Festival. In 1997 the Des Moines Metro Opera premiered his one-act chamber opera, Cask of Amontillado, the result of winning a national chamber opera competition. The premiere, which he conducted, was enthusiastically reviewed in Opera News magazine.

Dr. Stanley studied piano with Robert Larsen at Simpson College (BM); Joanne Baker at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (MM); composition with Carolyn Bremer and piano with Ed Gates at the University of Oklahoma (DMA), and Robert Spillman at the Aspen Summer Music Festival. Bryan teaches piano in West Omaha and frequently collaborates with Opera Omaha. He and his wife Kristín Jónína Taylor form Atlantic Piano Duo and concertize regularly across the country while the cats stay at home. Their two-year old son Magnús listens to a lot of piano music.

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Image: Artist Ekene Ijeoma on the set of "Deconstructed Anthems" at Houston's Day For Night Festival in 2017. Photo: Katrina Barber.