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Composers who are excellent pianists themselves instinctively tap into the piano's best resources. The works they create for the keyboard feel, as well as sound, good. The piano music of Judith Lang Zaimont is a fresh example of this phenomenon. These sure-handed pieces are colorful, expressive, and inviting.
In a remote corner of my music room stands a cabinet, dusted ocasionally by my two cats, containing several hundered 33 1/2 rpm records that I hang onto, mostly for nostalgic reasons. Within this collection is a 1963 recording, introducing the brilliant young duo-piano team of Judith and Doris Land in a program of two-piano music by French and American composers. The liner notes contain a short but prophetic statement: "Judith also has great talent as a composer." At that point in her career Judith Lang Zaimont had won the regional and national composer competitions of the National Federation of Music Clubs for a piano suite, Portrait of an American City, written when she was 12. The title, as well as the recording itself, speaks volumes about the nature of the musical genius of the young lady who, during the 30-plus years since that time, has earned international acclaim as a composer, performer, teacher, and author.
Born in November, 1945, in Memphis, Tennessee, Zaimont exhibited exceptional talent at an early age. Family members recall her singing in her sleep, and one family legend has her singing Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade at the age of three. All the evidence suggests that she evinced, practically in infancy, the passion for sound, vivid colors, and rhythmic vitality that prevail in her music to this day. Many composers begin. writing by imitating the masters whose music exerted the most influence over them in their formative years. At a certain point, the neophyte evolves into a master with his or her own voice, although suggestions of predecessors may linger to the very end. (Witness the Bach and Handel quotes in Mozart's Requiem.) Zaimont's early influences, besides those of her classical, conservatory-style training as a pianist, include Gershwin and the jazz element that reflects her New York upbringing. Combined with a distinct French influence, she has refined and distilled the best elements of her background into a highly individualistic voice. Her musical vocabulary...