David DiChiera’s ‘lost work’ to be performed April 6 at Piano Area Showcase

A lost work by the late David DiChiera – a former professor of music at Oakland University, department chair, assistant dean, and founder of the Michigan Opera Theatre (now Detroit Opera) – will be performed at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 6 in Varner Recital Hall by OU faculty member Rebecca Happel and OU student Joshua Rao as part of the Piano Area Showcase.

The piece, titled “Lament,” was discovered by DiChiera’s daughter, Lisa DiChiera, in late 2023 in an original printed OU program. It was first performed on April 10, 1963 as part of a duo piano concert performed by David DiChiera and Professor Emeritus of Music Robert Facko at the Oakland Center.

Part of the original program from first performance of "Lament" at OU in 1963

“While very familiar with all of our father’s composing career, neither my sister nor I had heard of this piece and could not locate a score,” Lisa DiChiera said. “Our dear friend, Becky Happel, instructor of applied piano, went on the hunt at OU. After several months of outreach to various contacts, the score could not be found. However, now-retired special collections librarian Dominique Daniel of OU’s Kresge Library found an original open-reel recording of the concert. What a find! We had the reel digitized, and how fun it was to hear this piece for the first time. But now the challenge was how to transcribe a score from a 1963 mono-recording of two pianists.”

To that end, Happel reached out to Ben Fuhrman, then a special lecturer in music and technology at OU, who agreed to run the digital recording through a computer program to decipher notes. Once that was accomplished, Fuhrman and Happel enlisted Rao to help take the MIDI files and separate the music for two pianists, and translating it into a score section by section.

David DiChiera in 1963

“Joshua explained his first phase was to take Ben’s pitch map and identify and fix omitted or wrong notes based on the limitations of the software involved in converting audio to MIDI,” Lisa DiChiera said. “Phase two was to finalize changes to the score given that the process would mostly involve providing articulations, dynamics, etc. to the score, and moving around the notes to fit for both pianos. This took several months.”

Once phase one and two were completed, Happel and Rao collaborated on the final touches to the score, listening again to the digitized concert recording, which has not been heard since the 1960s.

“My sister (Cristina) and I are extremely grateful to Joshua, Becky, and Ben for all their work on this incredibly special project,” Lisa DiChiera said. “It demonstrated how important it is to maintain archives and have programs in piano instruction, composition, and technology, which made a 21^st century collaboration possible.”

DiChiera said that being able to hear her late father’s work being performed at the April 6 concert will be extra special because the timing of the concert coincides with her father’s birthday.

“Dad would have been 90 on April 8,” she said. “Thanks to OU and Woody Varner’s convincing, he moved to Michigan from Los Angeles in 1962 as a young music faculty member. This is where he built his career, and an opera company. How appropriate that at OU, ‘Lament” was restored, rescored, and will be performed again.”

The Piano Area Showcase is free to attend.

To learn  more about Dr. David DiChiera and his works, including “Lament,” visit www.daviddichiera.work/lamentinfo.