Beatles meet Bach as pianist brings 'Blackbird' to Tucson recital

But on Sunday, July 19, St. Andrew's Bach Society is doing just that with Tucson pianist Rie Tanaka. 

Tanaka, in her Bach Society solo debut, anchors her recital with Paul McCartney's "Blackbird," a song he co-wrote with John Lennon for the Brit rock legends' 1968 eponymous double album also known as "The White Album."

Bach Society Director Ben Nisbet said the summer concert series has never in its 38 years had a work by a Beatle on its series.

Nisbet said he reached out to Tanaka after he saw a video of her performing "Blackbird" on a chamber music program.

"I saw that she had put together this recital program and she had this McCartney song and the way that it was paired up with other pieces. I wanted her to do that here," Nisbet said.

"I absolutely love that song. I love that arrangement," Tanaka said of the improvised jazz arrangement by the genre-bending Japanese jazz composer and pianist Hiromi Uehara. 

"Blackbird" anchors a program that looks at life and death in various circumstances, from William Grant Still's "Three Visions" — What happens to the human soul after the body expires? —  to Ravel's "La Valse," which Tanaka said "has the sense of death of the waltz genre" intertwined with what Ravel saw in post-World War I Vienna.

The meat of the program comes with Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 8, the third and longest of his three so-called "War Sonatas" composed between 1939-44.

The 30-minute piece opens with "the very, very long first movement, which goes through all emotions, I would say, of the tragedy of war," explained the Osaka, Japan-born Tanaka, who moved to Tucson to teach at the University of Arizona in spring 2024.

The work opens with a sweet melody that quickly gives way to an incessant driving rhythm and deeply sad lyrical themes borrowed from the music Prokofiev wrote for the film "The Queen of Spades."

It builds to a heroic conclusion of incessant, driving rhythms that transition into this strangely heroic and triumphant exclamation.

Then there's "Blackbird," which McCartney and Lennon wrote as an expression of hope in the midst of the often violent American civil rights movement.

Tanaka said the program is inspired by the themes of war, death, hope and dreams, "but I didn't really want to put that title." 

"I just wanted the audience to kind of weave that on their own, if they could," she said. "Just come and enjoy that journey of four different composers, all (with) completely different styles, different pieces, and just meditate on the idea of life and death, and what is going on in this world right now."

Sunday's recital begins at 2 p.m. at Grace St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St. Tickets are $16 through standrewsbach.org.

The 2026 summer series continues Aug. 2 with the Verona Quartet making its Tucson debut before the series wraps up Aug. 30 with "Ballet and Bach" featuring Ballet Tucson. Details and tickets are available at standrewsbach.org.