Altars for piano and percussion: Ashlee Mack & Anthony Donofrio

Anthony Donofrio – Altars for piano and percussion,

In late 2021, pianist Ashlee Mack asked me to make a concert-length piece for the two of us to perform. While writing the preliminary sketches, I became drawn towards the Square of Saturn, a magic square in which the sums of all horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines add to 15.

In the first iterations of the piece, these combinations of numbers found themselves in the foreground – particularly in the areas of rhythm, meter, and form. As with much of my music, the material goes through several stages of filtering – severe edits that preserve the initial spark of the piece but gradually shift it to the background. What began as a highly complex set of character pieces eventually matured into a 75-minute meditation on time, timbre, and patience.

The piece was completed in June of 2023, 15 months after I started it.
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The music of Anthony Donofrio reflects a deep interest in delicate and fragile treatments of time
and gesture that are often interrupted or broken. Their work investigates the compositional
intersection of music and experimental literature, specifically in the realm of nonlinearity and
structural distortion. Anthony’s music has been featured nationally and internationally by many
wonderful, generous, and exceptionally talented people.

Anthony teaches composition, theory, twentieth-century music history, and directs the new music
ensemble at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. In addition, Anthony is also the director of the
UNK New Music Series and Festival, which brings specialists in contemporary music to central
Nebraska to present recitals, master classes, and lectures. Anthony holds a Ph.D. in Music
Composition from the University of Iowa; past teachers include Frank Wiley, David Gompper, Paul
Schoenfield, and John Eaton. When spare time exists, Anthony enjoys book collecting, studying
occultism, and cooking.
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Pianist Ashlee Mack has given recitals in Germany, Italy, Czechia, and across the United States. Specializing in contemporary music, she has commissioned many new works and given numerous world-premiere performances. In 2012, Ashlee and Katherine Palumbo founded the Khasma Piano Duo, an ensemble dedicated to performing and recording music by living composers. Her recordings can be heard on Capstone, Innova, Navona Records, Parallax Music Press, Perspectives of New Music/Open Space, and New World Records. An avid hiker and nature lover, she has been artist-in-residence at Everglades, Grand Canyon, and Petrified Forest National Parks, Wupatki National Monument, and Centrum in Fort Worden State Park. Ashlee’s recording of James Romig’s Still, finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Music, was recognized in The New Yorker (“compelling and sure-handed”) and San Francisco Chronicle (“Mack gives the music an eloquent, gently electric charge”). Ashlee is Director of Piano Studies at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.