Eugénie Rocherolle

The Eugénie Rocherolle Collection

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Eugénie Rocherolle (1936-2025) was born and raised in New Orleans. The music of the city would inspire her compositions throughout her life. She also spent formative time in France, studying with the legendary Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and later returning to explore the country with her growing family.

Although her career as a published composer began with choral and band music, Rocherolle’s teaching expertise and pianistic instincts soon propelled her to be one of the top educational piano composers of her generation.

In her later decades, Hal Leonard’s Eugénie Rocherolle Series brought well-deserved international fame, and grew to include more than 30 collections of original piano solos, duets, and superbly crafted arrangements of pop and jazz favourites.

Eugénie Rocherolle’s Reflective Piano Solos

Eugénie Rocherolle’s ‘Reflective Piano Solos” is the latest addition to the many superb publications in her Hal Leonard series. But is it what it seems?

Eugénie Rocherolle’s Romantic Stylings

“Romantic Stylings” is as easy to recommend as it is to review: eight superb and varied intermediate pieces, which are bound to bring joy to players at around UK Grade 4-5 level.

Eugénie Rocherolle’s Fantasia del Tango

For those who enjoy the tango genre, this collection is an easy winner, offering engaging material delivered with excellent attention to the needs of the intermediate player, and with genuine stylistic affection.

In Summer 2024, while preparing a compilation of her favourite works, Rocherolle was diagnosed with stomach cancer. The heart-breaking news focused attention on completing this long-planned anthology of pieces for Late Intermediate players (around UK Grades 5-6).

The Eugénie Rocherolle Collection includes two new, final compositions, and was ultimately completed by Hal Leonard editor Charmaine Siagian following the composer’s passing away on 4th March 2025.

Eugénie Rocherolle’s Fantasia del Tango

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Among the American piano composers to gain prominence since William Gillock (1917-1993), Eugénie Rocherolle (b.1936) is certainly a leading light, and I have increasingly taken an interest in her work as it has steadily become more familiar here in the UK. To find out about her other recent publications, you can check my previous reviews here.

A few months back, her 2016 collection Fantasia del Tango appeared in a new edition here, and it’s another firm winner. Read on to find out more…

Eugénie Rocherolle’s Reflective Piano Solos

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

When I recently reviewed Mona Rejino’s Reflections and Relaxations collection (you can read the review here), I noted that the cover image and title suggested it to be part of the current trend for books of calm, relaxing music in the popular ambient classical style, but that in the event it proved to be something different.

It’s therefore with a sense of déjà vu that I now bring you my review of another Hal Leonard title that appeared around the same time. Here, again, the title perhaps implies a relaxed book of soothing adagios, a lovely cover photograph seems to underline this expectation, and the book promises “11 Beautiful Moods and Styles”.

But once again, this proved to be a different (but no less enjoyable) collection to the one I initially expected. Let’s dip in…

Eugénie Rocherolle’s Romantic Stylings

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Widely respected as a leading contemporary American composer of piano repertoire, Eugénie Rocherolle was born in New Orleans in 1936. A music graduate of Tulane University (Louisiana), she spent her Junior Year in Paris, where she attended classes with Nadia Boulanger.

Rocherolle has composed works for solo voice, chorus, orchestra, musical theatre, and chamber music. Success as a piano composer came with the publication of her first solo collection in 1978, since when she has added dozens of educational and recital works to her catalogue, many now appearing in The Eugénie Rocherolle Series from Hal Leonard.

Though less well known here in the UK, Musicroom nevertheless list more than a hundred piano publications, many of which comprise Rocherolle’s arrangements of popular, film and show tunes. Now in her 80’s, she still composes original music too, and a new collection is imminent.

In this review, I revisit her most recent (at the time of writing) collection of original pieces. Appearing in 2019, Romantic Stylings offers 8 original piano solos suitable for the intermediate player.