Lansing Symphony Orchestra's season finale features pianist Clayton Stephenson

Ken Glickman
·4 min read

Last year at the Lansing Symphony Orchestra’s final concert, a young, charismatic and ferociously talented pianist by the name of Clayton Stephenson was the featured soloist. The program listed “Beethoven Piano No 1” as the music he would perform. Instead, he asked if he could switch to Florence Price’s “Piano Concerto in One Movement”.

At the concert, Stephenson's brilliant performance wowed the Lansing audience — and LSO's composer-in-residence Patrick Harlin.

He and Stephenson shared a lengthy conversation afterward and exchanged ideas about their love of jazz, hip-hop and the future of classical music. Harlin said he knew they'd be collaborating sometime soon.

That time is Friday — for the final concert of the 2022-23 LSO season. The 23-year-old Stephenson is back to play a new work Harlin composed for him. It's Harlin's last work composed under his residency contract.

By all criteria, Harlin’s time with the orchestra has been a success. As the orchestra’s first composer-in-residence he was required to write one new piece for the LSO during the three-year contract. But Harlin made it known that he wanted to be involved in as many things as he could with the orchestra.

“It was a dream assignment for me." he said. "I had a full orchestra for me to learn about and it became a laboratory for my musical ideas.”

LSO Maestro Timothy Muffitt treated Harlin more like an artistic director. Along with Muffitt, Harlin provided the programming for the new concert series at Lansing’s Robin Theatre, arranged music for various events, spoke about music and art in Lansing schools and wrote three new works for the orchestra and modified three others.

LSO tacked on another year to Harlin's contract because of lost time during the COVID pandemic.

“I loved everything about the job," Harlin said. “As a composer, I am interested in different ways of presenting sounds. Here, I had the opportunity to try out new ideas and orchestrations with sections of the orchestra. It made a huge difference in my music.”

Harlin said he enjoyed getting to know the musicians as individuals and learning about their musical idiosyncrasies. He composed new music using that knowledge.

The name of the new piano concerto is “The Fourth Pedal” and it brings together Harlin’s four years with the LSO, his skills as a pianist, and his friendship with Stephenson.

In pop music there is a piece of technology called a fourth pedal, which enables the performer to record sections of the music (a loop) as it’s being played, and then the pianist can press a pedal and replay the music as he improvises or plays other music on top of it.

Harlin said, “Clayton will actually have five pedals on his piano; three that were already on the Steinway, the pedal for my piece and he uses another one to turn pages on his iPad where he reads the music.

"The grand piano as we know it was invented in 1880 and nothing has changed since then," he said. "The piano is pretty mechanical technology. This may be the first time this 'loop' technology is used in the classical world.”

Harlin said that there is a push in the music world to do more with less. Using this kind of technology will add another element to the music.

“Clayton is already a superstar pianist, but this technology allows him to do even more," he said. "This is not a gimmick and the loop is inserted at key moments in the piece. This is a full concerto.”

How will the Lansing audience enjoy this new, high-tech music?

“I felt like the audience has always been genuinely open to new music. I expect them to give this new work their attention as well," Harlin said. "Also, I appreciate Tim for allowing me to talk about the music before the orchestra performs it. We both feel that it is important to keep the art from moving forward.”

If you go

Lansing Symphony Orchestra, Masterworks Series, “The Fourth Pedal”

  • Timothy Muffitt, Conductor and music director,

  • Clayton Stephenson, Piano soloist

  • Edvard Grieg, “Lyric Suite, Op.5”

  • Patrick Harlin, “The Fourth Pedal” (World Premiere), Clayton Stephenson, Piano.

  • Jean Sibelius, “Symphony No. 2”

  • 7:30 p.m., June 2

  • Wharton Center

  • Tickets and information: lansingsymphony.org, 517-487-5001.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Lansing Symphony Orchestra finale features pianist Clayton Stephenson