Suite No.1 For Piano Solo by Max Alpha King21st century classical piano solo pieces, although actually composed in 1999. Like all piano pieces byMax Alpha King, they are intended to appeal to both the pianist and the listener. These pieces are for intermediate to advanced pianists. They will broaden your musical horizon, and arouse your appreciation of musical elements, structure and expression.Max Alpha King's Suite No.1 for piano solo starts with a Prologue and finishes with an Epilogue. TheEpilogue is like a reminder of the Prologue, but with an added sense of conclusion. Between the two are four movements namely: Atmosphere, Fantasia Ragtime, Nature Dance, and Solace. Together they offer the combination of coherence and variety that makes the Suite a rewarding piece of music to play and listen to. Although unashamedly rooted in tonality and modality, it does not sound like ancient music, probably because of features like modern rhythms, chromatic "blue" notes, etc.
About the Author: CONCERT PIANIST-COMPOSER MAX ALPHA KING In today's world of specialisation, or over-specialisation, there are many, many accomplished concert pianists, too many in fact for all of them to gain public recognition. Much, much rarer are those who can credibly be called concert pianist-composers. They are those who can perform entire concert or recital programmes either of only standard classical repertoire by the great masters of the past, or only their own original solo or concerto works. Max Alpha King (born Akinola B Akinyele) is one of the latter. He attended school at King's College, Lagos, Nigeria. Making exceptional and as yet unmatched progress he secured a scholarship to study piano and composition at the Royal College of Music, London. There, he reached the top grade for concert pianists, winning the Cornelius Fisher Memorial Prize along the way. He often included his own compositions in exam, competition and recital programmes, receiving comments such as "exceptional playing of the highest standard". In his final year at the RCM he composed a Concertino for Piano and Orchestra, which he played in a public concert with a semi-professional orchestra the following year to local media praise. He has since written four more piano concertos. Max Alpha King went on to obtain BMus Honours (London University), MusM in musicology (Manchester University), FTCL piano performance, and a postgraduate certificate in education. A holder of many other qualifications, awards and title, he is also a multimedia author-publisher, an educator and a philosopher. In his musical compositions, Max Alpha King has travelled a long way from tonality, to full atonality and back. He now believes that composers, in developing their own unique styles, should be able to choose freely from the huge palette of compositional techniques developed throughout musical history, across different styles and cultures. Max Alpha King makes every effort in his compositions to strike a balance between seriousness and accessibility, between complexity and comprehensibility. In his piano music he aims to appeal to both performer and listener.