Peter Scott Lewis: Pacific Triptych Peter Scott Lewis & Blair McMillen

• Peter Scott Lewis (b. 1953): Pacific Triptych:
• 1 Lewis: Pacific Triptych: 1. Following the Sunrise 08:16
• 2 Lewis: Pacific Triptych: 2. Travelling Music 06:16
• 3 Lewis: Pacific Triptych: 3. Toccata 06:52
• Seven Nuggets:
• 4 Lewis: Seven Nuggets: 1. Fire Opal 02:48
• 5 Lewis: Seven Nuggets: 2. Carved Jade 02:27
• 6 Lewis: Seven Nuggets: 3. Gleaming Chrysocolla 02:41
• 7 Lewis: Seven Nuggets: 4. Rough Diamond 03:05
• 8 Lewis: Seven Nuggets: 5. Raw Sapphire 03:16
• 9 Lewis: Seven Nuggets: 6. Emerald, Uncut 02:58
• 10 Lewis: Seven Nuggets: 7. Lapis, with Gold Crystals 03:36
• An American Travelogue, Book 1:
• 11 Lewis: An American Travelogue, Book 1: 1. Chief Seattle Walks the Pike Place Market 06:13
• 12 Lewis: An American Travelogue, Book 1: 2. Dancing in New Orleans 02:11
• 13 Lewis: An American Travelogue, Book 1: 3. Austin Sun 02:44
• 14 Lewis: An American Travelogue, Book 1: 4. Beyond the Golden Gate 02:51
• Total Runtime 56:14

Info for Peter Scott Lewis: Pacific Triptych

Pacific Triptych for piano was completed in August of 2019. It is based on an earlier unperformed version for full orchestra completed in 2006. So, the piano version recorded here acts as a premiere. As implied by the title, it’s a three-movement score based on contrasting sections that reflect the majesty of the Pacific Coast, especially the drama of the ocean and the endless sky above.

Seven Nuggets was completed on April 25, 2023. It was inspired by a group of uncut, yet brilliant gemstones. Each “nugget” or movement ends with a low bass note. Those same notes are then played in sequence - at mid-range - at the end of the seventh nugget before being resolved into a sixth chord in the final nine bars.

An American Travelogue (Book 1) was completed on May 3, 2023. This four-movement piano suite was inspired by various American locations in the western, southwestern, and Gulf Coast of the United States. (Book 2 continues this exploration in locations in the rest of the country.)

Blair McMillen, piano

Blair McMillen
Hailed by the New York Times as “prodigiously accomplished and exciting” and as one of the piano’s “brilliant stars,” pianist Blair McMillen has forged a musical life that is unbounded by convention. He is well-known for his advocacy of living composers and contemporary music, as well as for championing very early keyboard music and more recent neglected masterpieces. For more than two decades, McMillen has divided his time as piano soloist, chamber musician, music festival director, and educator/teacher.

Blair McMillen has performed in major concert venues in New York, throughout the United States, and around the world. Recent appearances include concertos with the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, solo appearances with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and a 3-week solo tour of Brazil sponsored by the US State Department. He is a member of several prominent ensembles, including the American Modern Ensemble, the six-piano “supergroup” Grand Band, and the Perspectives Ensemble, among others. For 10 years he was pianist for the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players. He has also performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Knights, and the LPR Ensemble.

As a teacher and pedagogue, McMillen is in high demand. He has taught at Bard College and Conservatory since 2005, and he serves on the piano and collaborative piano faculty at Mannes at the New School in New York City. He regularly adjudicates at competitions and festivals throughout the United States and abroad. In past summers, McMillen has taught at the Elm City Chamber Festival, the Xi’an Festival, the Wellesley Composers Conference, the Samuel Barber Institute, FEMUSC (Brazil), and the Bennington Chamber Music Festival, to name a few.

His first solo CD “Soundings,” was released to critical acclaim in 2001. Since then, Blair McMillen has been featured on dozens of commercially-released solo, chamber, and orchestral recordings. An album of two-piano music with Stephen Gosling, “Powerhouse Pianists II,” was declared “one of the finest piano recordings of the year” by NPR. An ECM recording with violinist Miranda Cuckson was hailed by The Guardian for “...playing that is frank and urgent, with powerfully stripped-back quiet passages and gritted-teeth ecstatic climaxes.” McMillen was featured on a recent release, Harold Meltzer’s Grammy-nominated “Songs and Structures.” And in 2021, Naxos released McMillen’s recording of Joan Tower’s piano concerto “Still/Rapids” with the Albany Symphony Orchestra.

Blair McMillen is the co-founder and co-director of the Rite of Summer Music Festival. Rite of Summer is a free, outdoor contemporary-music series held on New York City’s Governors Island. The festival has presented boundary-pushing artists such as the JACK Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Tigue, Theo Bleckmann, Todd Reynolds, Contemporaneous, and Don Byron’s New Gospel Quintet. Celebrating its twelfth season in 2023, Rite of Summer is the only annual music festival on Governors Island, a place the New Yorker has called “an enormous playground for the arts.”

Blair McMillen holds degrees from Oberlin College, Manhattan School of Music, and The Juilliard School. While at Juilliard he was selected as concerto soloist on a tour of Japan with the Juilliard Orchestra. While there, he won the school’s Gina Bachaeur Competition and the Sony “Elevated Standards” Career Grant. McMillen’s principal teachers have included Jerome Lowenthal, Robert McDonald, Sophia Rosoff, Joseph Kalichstein, and Byron Janis. He lives in New York with his wife Kay and son Conor. In his spare time he enjoys biking, skiing, film, and the occasional semi-competitive game of table tennis.

Peter Scott Lewis
is a San Francisco-based, yet internationally active, composer of modern classical music. His music has been commissioned and/or performed by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Conspirare, New York Virtuoso Singers, Orion String Quartet, Alexander String Quartet, Ciompi Quartet, Bakken Trio, Merling Trio, Dorian Wind Quintet, members of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, Chamber Symphony of Princeton, Seattle's Intiman Theater, and many distinguished soloists and conductors including Kent Nagano, Alan Gilbert, Craig Hella Johnson, Kees Hülsmann, Sasha Cooke, Jason Vieaux, Susan Narucki, Keisuke Nakagoshi, Blair McMillen, Stephen Gosling, Miranda Cuckson, William Winant, and David Tanenbaum. He has also worked closely with poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Robert Sund on his vocal projects. His music has been performed throughout North America, Europe, and Japan, and has been broadcasted over National Public Radio in the United States, the BBC in England, World Broadcasts, and various other stations and programs throughout the world.

His major compositions include Pacific Triptych (for orchestra or piano solo), two violin concertos, two cello concertos, Guitar Concerto, Where The Heart Is Pure (for mezzo soprano and chamber orchestra or piano), two string quartets (Night Lights and River Shining Through), Beaming Contrasts (for guitar and string quartet), two piano trios (Rhapsodic Images and Second Piano Trio), Serenade for Winds (woodwind quintet, with or without bass clarinet), two cello and piano duos (Through The Mountain and Duo Concertante), A Whistler’s Dream (flute and piano), The Changing Light for vocal quartet (SATB) and piano or soprano and piano), Five Love Motets for vocal quartet (SATB), as well as other compositions for orchestra, various chamber ensembles, and solo instruments including 6 suites and Sun Music for piano, 3 suites and a partita for guitar, and Petite Suite for violin.

Sono Luminus, Naxos, New Albion, and Lapis Island Records (Naxos) have produced numerous albums devoted to his music. They are Pacific Triptych, Home Stretch, The Four Cycles (composer, conductor, and lyricist), River Shining Through, Atlantic Crossing/Rhapsodic Images, Three Suites for Guitar (composer and soloist), Where the Heart Is Pure, and Beaming Contrasts. (Pacific Triptych features pianist Blair McMillen performing Pacific Triptych, Seven Nuggets, and American Travelogue - Book 1. It will be released by Sono Luminus Records on July 11, 2025.)

‍Peter Scott Lewis was born on August 31, 1953, in San Rafael, California, and grew up in both the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington State. A graduate of the Yale School of Music and San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he studied composition with Andrew Imbrie, Jacob Druckman, Nicholas Maw, and Morton Subotnick; studied guitar with Alirio Diaz and Carlos Barbosa-Lima; and conducting with Arthur Weisberg.

He has taught at the University of Washington and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In addition, he has completed composer residencies at Yaddo Corporation, MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, and has been composer-in-residence at Seattle’s Intiman Theater, Festival for New American Music, SFMOMA, among others. In addition to his composer activities, he has worked as a conductor, classical and jazz guitarist, clarinetist, lyricist, and producer. His music is published by Theodore Presser Company and Lapis Island Press (SMD).

This album contains no booklet.