Today we are putting the spotlight on Settlement Music School piano faculty member and former Settlement student at our Germantown Branch, Adam Berenson, who is celebrating the release of his most recent album, Everything that no one ever saw. The release opens with the track “Everything that no one ever saw, concerto for piano and electronics” an entirely improvised 50-minute piano concerto for acoustic piano and synthesizers. The album’s B-side includes two string quartets, composed by Berenson and performed by the Philadelphia-based QRTT Quartet, rounding out the release as a portrait of Berenson as a composer and performer.

This record is being released nationally on NEOS Music (based in Munich, Germany), one of a small number of major labels dedicated solely to avant-garde contemporary classical music.

The album was engineered by former WMMR Imaging Producer, Steve Lushbaugh, whose connection with Berenson and Settlement Music School spans a lifetime. At age 12, Berenson’s love of the band Genesis found him watching the live concert video “Three Sides Live” which happened to feature Lushbaugh on screen as the engineer during an interview at WMMR.

After graduating from the New England Conservatory in 1997, Berenson began teaching at our Mary Louise Curtis Branch in South Philadelphia. Shortly after, as fate would have it, Lushbaugh appeared in Berenson’s studio as a new Settlement Music School student and the two began a long partnership – Berenson teaching Lushbaugh piano, and Lushbaugh returning the favor with advice and assistance in engineering and production.

The two have since worked together on several releases reaching into a vast array of genres, orchestrations, and production techniques, both continuing to teach, learn, and grow their musical potential together.

Listen to Everything that no one ever saw: https://neos-music.com/product/adam-berenson-everything/