“I always like to incorporate my mom, because she is one of my favorite pianists to play with,” Jamanis says.
Jamanis built the show around the “Danse Macabre,” an 1874 piece by French composer Camille Saint-Saens. Jamanis associated the piece with images of skeletons dancing.
Inspired by the key of “Danse Macabre,” Jamanis then added “Chaconne” by Vitali to the program. He and his mother will also play “Scherzo Tarantella op. 16” by Henryk Wieniawski, a piece Jamanis often refers to while teaching his music students.
“It’s always been a (piece) I play a little snippet of for kids,” Jamanis says. “I say, now the Tarantella is a dance that people would do after they would be bitten by a tarantula. Supposedly, you’re supposed to spin around really fast to get the poison out of you. So, I thought of spiders, Halloween. Why not?”
For the program’s final two pieces, Jamanis challenged himself to expand his view of what Halloween can be. While thinking of the holiday’s association with death, he considered the holiday as a time to celebrate one’s ancestors.
“We always associate Halloween with scary, and a lot of people don’t celebrate it because of that, because it might be kind of gruesome. … But it’s also about celebrating your ancestry,” Jamanis says. “I was like, OK, let’s bring that angle of it too, because I know I have a lot of students who will be there because they will not be out trick-or-treating as well.”
Jamanis has chosen “From My Native Land” by Bedrich Smetana and “Sonata in G op. 45” by Edvard Grieg to represent that perspective of the holiday.
The program is only about an hour long. Jamanis values keeping performances of classical music “user-friendly” so more people feel inclined to explore and experience the genre.
“It’s audience-accessible,” Jamanis says. “The music is anything but boring.”
Jamanis says he is a big fan of Halloween himself. He usually spends the holiday giving out candy to trick-or-treaters. “Danse Macabre” and Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” are two pieces he always thinks of around Halloween.
“Music embodies you,” Jamanis says. “So, a certain sound, a certain chord, a certain melody, immediately it will depict a memory. There’s an association with that. When you hear a minor second, you feel a little pang.”
While he has his hands in many projects and teaching gigs, Jamanis says it’s still important to him to make time to perform.
“This is what I love,” Jamanis says. “I love performing. Keeping my chops going … my fingers feel so good now.”
His success onstage helps him in the classroom, too.