Our guest for this episode of the Music at Pitt Podcast is composer/pianist Eric Moe, the University of Pittsburgh’s Andrew Mellon Professor of Music and co-director of Music on the Edge. He is a composer of what the New York Times calls "music of winning exuberance,” and as a pianist and keyboardist, has premiered and performed works by a wide variety of composers. His playing can be heard on the Koch, CRI, Mode, Albany, New World Records, and Innova labels.

Eric joins us today to discuss his recently produced, live-to-video piano recital of music by J.H. Kwabena Nketia and Akin Euba. Both Nketia and Euba served at Pitt as Professors of music in ethnomusicology and were Moe’s predecessors as the Mellon Professor. Nketia passed away in 2019 and Euba passed away in 2020.

Along with being leading scholars in African music, Nketia and Euba were renowned composers. Among their creative contributions is the development of a style of piano music they described as “African Pianism.” Eric’s program will include representative works by each composer such as Euba’s Themes from Chaka and Study in African Jazz 3, and Nketia’s Dagarti Work Song, Dagomba, and Volta Fantasy among others.

The video and audio were recorded at Bellefield Hall Auditorium and will go live on the Music at Pitt YouTube Channel on Thursday, February 11 at 7:30 p.m.