Riparian Media

Alvin Singleton
Jackie Leung, piano
Inside Out

Out: September 4th, 2026 on Albany Records (CD/DL)
Genres: Modern Composition, Solo Piano

ALVIN SINGLETON — alvinsingleton.com
JACKIE LEUNG — jackieleung.com | jackieleungpiano.bandcamp.com
ALBANY RECORDS — albanyrecords.com

This Friday, Toronto-based pianist (Dr.) Jackie Leung is slated to launch her debut recording, Inside Out—due out on CD and digitally from Albany Records. The disc is devoted entirely to the work of celebrated veteran composer Alvin Singleton (b. 1940) encompassing his complete published solo output for the instrument up until 2024’s Bed-Stuy Sonata. Among this collection is the commercial recording premieres of three of his piece including Mutations, for which Leung served as the score’s editor.

Singleton was a graduate of New York University and Yale, and holds the dual distinctions of being a Fulbright Scholar and Guggenheim Fellow. He was the recipient of numerous other prestigious awards and honours including a Serge Koussevitsky Music Foundation commission, and grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He was awarded Kranichsteiner Musikpreis from the City of Darmstadt, for his work Be Natural, a mere two years after his solo cello piece Argoru II was the first ever work by a Black composer to be performed at the Darmstadt Summer Course in 1972. He spent fourteen years living and working in Europe during his early career before returning to the United States where he became Composer-in-Residence with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (1985-88). His work has been commissioned by everyone from Bang on a Can to Kronos Quartet and can be found on recordings from labels that span Elektra/Nonesuch to John Zorn’s Tzadik.

The varied body of work found on Inside Out substantiates these various accolades, revealing a singular and unusual vision that embraces elements of jazz and popular music alongside traits of high modernism, para-minimalist approaches and even romanticism. Singleton’s soundworld is richly colourful as well as being eclectic, and yet he frames these aspect within his characteristic and formidable grasp of structure. Another unique feature of Singleton is engagement with improvisers and the practice of improvisation itself; past collaborators of his include important avant-jazz figures such as Wadada Leo Smith and Anthony Davis. Here, while it’s only on the 18-minute final (and semi-titular) piece, we see Leung engaging with this rich dimension of Singleton’s musial personality, in a duet with fellow pianist and SUNY Stony Brook graduate Erica Murase. But even when Singleton is not inviting interpreters to improvise, his written material is palpably enlivened with a sense of play and spontaneity.

Leung’s performances here are downright virtuosic, nimbly and musically tackling these demanding pieces with ease and insight. In addition to the aforementioned Murase, she also enlists prominent Canadian percussionist Ryan Scott on one of the selections, “Greed Machine”. All in all, Inside Out stands as an impressive debut release from Jackie Leung and a vivid portrait of one of the greatest living American composers, Alvin Singleton.

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