Praised by the New York Times for his “Lisztian thunder and deft fluidity,” and the San Francisco Chronicle as “ferociously virtuosic,” pianist Paul Barnes has electrified audiences with his intensely expressive playing and cutting-edge programming. He has been featured seven times on APM’s Performance Today, on the cover of Clavier Magazine, and his recordings are streamed worldwide.

Celebrating his twenty-four-year collaboration with Philip Glass, Barnes commissioned and gave the world premiere of Glass’s Piano Quintet “Annunciation.” The work is Glass’s first piano quintet and first work based on Greek Orthodox chant. In a Journal Star interview, Glass stated: “You have a world-class pianist in Paul Barnes. He’s a pure piano virtuoso.” The Journal Star described the world premiere performance as “meditative… striking… touchingly played by Barnes and the Chiara Quartet, ‘Annunciation’ is a romantic, late-period Glass masterwork.” Fred Child, host of APR’s Performance Today was present for the premiere and wrote: “Pianist Paul Barnes put together and performed a thrilling evening of music!” Child’s interview with Barnes and Glass and the word premiere performance of the quintet was featured twice on Performance Today. The New York premiere took place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where New York Classical Review called the quintet “a fascinating mosaic of Glass’s late style…with a warm inner expression that seemed to echo Brahms.” PBS NewsHour recently featured a Nebraska Educational Telecommunications video production highlighting Barnes’ creative collaboration with Glass and the new quintet. Barnes recording of the quintet with string quartet superstars Brooklyn Rider was released in October of 2019 to critical acclaim. French publication ResMusica wrote: "Paul Barnes, whose pianistic lines are always clear, is a marvel of diologue with Brooklyn Rider."

Barnes’ twelfth CD New Generations: The New Etudes of Philip Glass and Music of the Next Generation has also received rave reviews. Gramophone Magazine wrote, “Pianists of Barnes’s great technique and musicality are a boon to new music.” And American Record Guide commented, “This disc provides further proof of Barnes’s ability to communicate new music with flair and passion.” Produced by Orange Mountain Music, the recording features a selection of Glass’s etudes juxtaposed with works by N. Lincoln Hanks, Lucas Floyd, Jason Bahr, Zack Stanton, Ivan Moody, and Jonah Gallagher. The sonic result is a breathtaking panorama of the energetic and expressive landscape that is twenty-first century piano music. Barnes has performed the recital version of New Generations in Vienna, Seoul, Rome, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago, Interlochen, and most recently at the Music Teachers National Association Convention in Glass’s hometown of Baltimore. Barnes also commissioned and gave the world premiere of Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (After Lewis and Clark). The Omaha World Herald praised Barnes playing for his “driving intensity and exhilaration.” Nebraska Educational Telecommunications' production "The Lewis and Clark Concerto," a documentary/performance of the concerto featuring Barnes, won an Emmy for Best Performance Production. Additional performances included collaborations with conductor Marin Alsop at the prestigious Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and the Northwest Chamber Orchestra where the Seattle Times called Barnes' performance "an impressive feat." The world-premiere recording with the NWCO was released by Orange Mountain Music. Gramophone Magazine remarked that this recording is "certainly one of the most enjoyable recent releases of Glass's music...Paul Barnes is a shining soloist." Barnes recently gave the Chinese premiere of the concerto at the famous Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu China as part of an inaugural American Music festival.

Orange Mountain Music also released Barnes' recording of his transcriptions from the operas of Philip Glass, including both the Trilogy Sonata and the Orphée Suite for Piano. Gramophone Magazine observed, “Barnes offers a surprisingly expressive reading…. Atmosphere and rhythmic vitality are important, and these qualities Barnes has in abundance.” The American Record noted, "Barnes is an expressive pianist with a lovely tone and a flair for the dramatic." The Trilogy Sonata and the Orphée Suite for Piano are published by Chester Music of London and are available at sheetmusicplus.com. Barnes’ eleventh CD The American Virtuoso featuring the music of Philip Glass, Samuel Barber, and Joan Tower was released on Orange Mountain Music to much critical acclaim. The American Record Guide wrote, "Another fine release from the amazing pianist Paul Barnes...with a pianist like this, new American music is in good hands." Barnes also commissioned a new piano concerto Ancient Keys written by Victoria Bond based on a Greek Orthodox chant. The world-premiere recording of this concerto as well as Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was released on Albany Records. Barnes also commissioned Victoria Bond to write a new piano work based on a Greek Orthodox crucifixion hymn. Simeron Kremate (Today is Suspended) was co-commissioned by the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts and the SDG Music Foundation in Chicago. The world premiere of Bond’s new work was given at Kimball Recital Hall on March 3, 2019 with the Chicago premiere on March 10 at the beautiful Nichols Hall at the Music Institute of Chicago. Barnes is Marguerite Scribante Professor of Music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Glenn Korff School of Music. He teaches during the summer at the Vienna International Piano Academy and the Amalfi Coast Music Festival. In great demand as a pedagogue and clinician, Barnes has served as convention artist at several state MTNA conventions, most recently at Virginia in October of 2018, and was recently named ‘Teacher of the Year” by the Nebraska Music Teachers Association.

Barnes latest recital A Bright Sadness: Piano music inspired by Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Native American chant features a contemplative and cathartic program of piano works inspired by the mystical world of chant. Barnes, also a Greek Orthodox chanter, has collaborated most recently with Philip Glass and Victoria Bond to create piano works based on ancient byzantine and Jewish chant. Barnes has also been a passionate champion of the works of Liszt and performs Liszt’s late masterpiece, Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross exploring the painful but ultimately hopeful journey of Christ to the cross. The overall theme of “bright sadness” permeates the program as the tremendous depth and intensity of ancient chant is seen through the bright prism of hope and love. New chant-based works by Native flutist Ron Warren, David von Kampen, and Matthew Arndt are given their premiere performances. Barnes’ recordings are available on Spotify, Pandora, ITunes, Apple Music, YouTube, and Amazon.

David von Kampen (b. 1986) is a composer based in Lincoln, Nebraska. David’s creative work spans a wide variety of genres and styles, including jazz, choral music, hymnody and liturgy, solo voice, chamber music, and musical theater. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Kansas, and Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Nebraska. He has studied composition with James Barnes, Dan Gailey, Forrest Pierce, Eric Richards, and Randall Snyder.

David is a six-time Downbeat Award winner in graduate-level jazz writing categories, a finalist for the American Prize in composition, and was named the MTNA Distinguished Composer of the Year for his song cycle "Under the Silver and Home Again." He has been among ten winners of the ORTUS International New Music Competition, the recipient of an ASCAP Young Jazz Composer award, winner of the San Francisco Choral Artists New Voices Project, winner of the National Band Association’s Young Jazz Composers Competition, and received Honorable Mention in the New York Youth Symphony First Music Commissions. Puddin’ and the Grumble, David’s original musical with playwright Becky Boesen, was one of seven finalists for the Richard Rodgers award.

David has over 80 choral and instrumental compositions and arrangements published with Walton Music, G. Schirmer, Hal Leonard, Santa Barbara, Concordia Publishing House, Pavane Publishing, UNC Jazz Press, Graphite Publishing, MusicSpoke, and others. His music has been performed by the KHORIKOS Vocal Ensemble, the Cambridge Chamber Singers, the L.A. Choral Lab, KC VITAs Chamber Choir, the Taiwan Youth Festival Chorus, San Francisco Choral Artists, the U.S. Army Blues Jazz Ensemble, the Vancouver Chamber Choir, and by collegiate, all-state, high school, and church ensembles throughout the United States and internationally.

David is a lecturer of music theory and literature at the University of Nebraska, where he directs the UNL Jazz Singers and Jazz Orchestra. He also teaches applied composition at Concordia University, Neb., and serves as Music Coordinator for Sanctuary Worship at Christ Lutheran Church in Lincoln. David is a member of ASCAP, the Jazz Education Network, and the American Choral Directors Association. He is active as a conductor and pianist, and as a clinician for vocal and instrumental ensembles. He lives in Lincoln with his wife Mollie and two daughters.

The Press Enterprise (Riverside, CA) hailed his “dazzling technique” and his “clean, tidy approach.” Music critic Laurence Vittes described him as an “illumination in music,” and said of his all-Beethoven recital: “Marshall presented a recital so full of musical thrills and beauties, and so in identification with the composer’s own persona, that, for a few hours, it was as if he were communing across the centuries to conjure up a rare and magical musical spectrum.” The Telegraf Online Constanta (Romania) reported that Marshall “captivated the audience” in Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20, which he conducted from the piano.

Eldred Marshall began studying the piano at age six and played in public by age seven. His prodigious and inquisitive mind allowed him to master large swaths of the piano repertoire quickly as well as consistently win top prizes at the competitions he entered as a child. By 16, he debuted with orchestra, playing Brahms’s Piano Concerto no. 2 in B-flat Major with the Victor Valley Symphony Orchestra. Before entering into Yale University, where he graduated with honors with a B.A. in Political Science, he had already performed all over the United States.

The critically-acclaimed pianist has performed in Spain, Italy, the Republic of San Marino, Belgium, Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, the People’s Republic of China, and Canada. He has performed the entire cycle of 32 Piano Sonatas of Beethoven in public, from memory, as a concentrated series, twice. Other notable tour projects include all-Bach piano recital programs including the Goldberg Variations, the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations.

As an orchestral conductor, Marshall has led the Ukrainian State Academic Orchestra (Kiev, Ukraine), the Kharkiv Youth Symphony (Kharkiv, Ukraine), the Pleven Philharmonic Orchestra (Pleven, Bulgaria), the Vidin Philharmonic Orchestra (Vidin, Bulgaria), the Filharmonica Oltenia di Craiova (Craiova, Romania), and the Constanta “Black Sea” Philharmonic Orchestra (Constanta, Romania). Additionally, he has led several opera productions, such as Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne, Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte, as well as Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.

The 2023-2024 Season will feature Marshall making his debuts as a pianist with the East Oregon Symphony Orchestra (Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4) and with the National Symphony Orchestra of Teleradio-Moldova as pianist and conductor. He will return to Bulgaria to tour three cities with the Pleven Philharmonic Orchestra, doubling as pianist and conductor in May 2024. Further, he will perform another tour of China in the summer of 2024.

Marshall earned his Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance degree from the University of North Texas (UNT) in 2018. Additionally, he earned three Master of Music degrees from Southern Methodist University (SMU): piano (2011), organ (2012) and orchestral conducting (2013).  Institutions at which he has taught include Grambling State University, Texas A&M Commerce, UNT, SMU, and North Texas Central College. His doctoral dissertation topic was on the art of conducting piano concerti from the piano – performance practice, discipline and whether or not it is “real conducting.”

Presently, Marshall serves as the Artistic Director/Conductor of the Mansfield Philharmonic Orchestra. Additionally, he serves as Associate Director of Music at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Rockwall, TX. He is also the Music Director/Conductor of the Music Ministry Conservatory Choir, the founding Artistic Director/Conductor of the Lucas Chorale, and the Organist/Music Director of Grace Fellowship Seventh-day Adventist Church in Lucas, TX.