The UPEI Music Department Recital Series will present “Variations” featuring David Rogosin on piano. The concert is Saturday, February 9 at 7:30 pm in the Dr. Steel Recital Hall of UPEI’s Steel Building. Rogosin divides the program into three sections: a central part consisting of tonal music by Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, flanked on either side by non-tonal works. Two late Renaissance composers precede: the Englishman Orlando Gibbons, and Jan Pieters Sweelinck from the Netherlands. The program will close with post-tonal contemporaries: first the American composer (and Tin Pan Alley aficionado) Milton Babbitt, followed by Kevin Morse of Mount Allison University. “The groundwork for the variations concept was laid by the earliest keyboard composers, and in many ways, their methods prevailed even through the twentieth century,” said Rogosin. “Babbitt’s 1956 Semi-Simple Variations — all two minutes of it — stands out from the others in almost every way, yet even there the variation principle is alive and well. As for ‘semi-simple,’ Babbitt is characteristically tongue-in-cheek. They are insanely complex, though I hasten to reassure you—they are delicate and harmless, and I have come to love playing them as much as the others.” Pianist David Rogosin has performed across Canada, in the American Midwest, the Caribbean and France. Praised for the brilliance, clarity, and passion of his performances, he is highly regarded as a performer, adjudicator, and clinician. Aside from solo recitals, Rogosin is a frequent collaborator and chamber player with a particular passion for the two-piano repertoire. He has released two solo recordings: Incandescence (2005) and Evocation (2012), the latter nominated for an the Classical Recording of the Year at that year’s ECMAs. Professor at Mount Allison University since 2001, he was awarded that institution’s Paul Paré Excellence Award in 2013. His first sabbatical in 2007-08 was spent in Paris preparing a recital program based on Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen for two pianos. A second sabbatical in 2015-16 was used to prepare two new solo programs: Variations and Ludus Tonalis, a program centered around Paul Hindemith’s contrapuntal opus of the same name, a kind of twentieth-century Well-Tempered Clavier. A month of this time was spent as artist in residence at The Banff Centre. Rogosin holds a master’s degree from the Université de Montréal and a doctorate in performance from the University of British Columbia. Apart from classical music he enjoys jazz, world music, cooking and woodworking, and holds the rank of shodan in aikido, a martial art that he teaches on the Mount Allison campus since 2015. Admission is $25 for adults and $10 for students. Tickets are available at the door.