Dr. Scott Watkins, adjunct professor of music at the University of North Florida, and keyboardist with the Jacksonville Symphony, will present a solo piano recital exploring the music of American composers Edward MacDowell and Howard Hanson on November 6. The program opens with MacDowell’s Sonata Tragica (Piano Sonata No. 1) and includes Hanson’s rarely performed Piano Sonata in A minor (1918). It will also feature the world premiere of Jacksonville composer Benjamin Shorstein’s Piano Sonata, composed in 2018. A recognized authority on the music of Howard Hanson, Watkins published his edition of Hanson’s Symphonic Rhapsody, Op. 14 with Carl Fischer Music in 2017 after discovering the previously unpublished manuscript in Rochester, New York. He also gave the New York premiere of Hanson’s Piano Sonata at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, where New York Concert Review praised his performance as “a highly praiseworthy concert … played with the fidelity of a music historian … a fulfilling musical evening.”