Thursday, 24 July 2014

#35 Nadav Hertzka: Concert Pianist


"In my next concert I’ll be playing Janacek, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and also contemporary composers; Borenstein and Waley-Cohen.

I have an interest in playing new music; I wanted to explore more than the Classical composers I was mainly playing; perform contemporary music and also work with the composers. I don’t collaborate with the composer until the piece is delivered to me. It is at that point that I get involved; before that I don’t know what the composer is creating. So I work with the music and with the composer, and see what the composer wants from me.

Five Breaths by Freya Waley-Cohen was written specifically for me. When she handed me the score I had questions. We talked about phrases and tempi changes, we discussed everything in detail and also elements that were not written out. 
 
I hope that my style of playing has an effect on the composers I work with; that I influence in some way the composition, through the composer having an understanding of my performance.

I have played contemporary music before, but now I have a stronger interest. In Israel we grow up playing contemporary repertoire and that must be part of the reason why I lean towards contemporary composers now. I think it was always important back in the day, and now we must do the same because we have to keep moving forward.

I play a lot of chamber music and I’m also preparing for several solo concerts in Europe. I've recorded a Tchaikovsky CD and looking forward to my second recording.

I came to England to do my Masters at the Royal Academy of Music and decided to stay because I like it so much here. There are lots of things around the business of music, superficial things, to do with image, looks, marketing, but what is ultimately most important is the music itself. When it comes to stage fright, I don’t think there’s a solution but I do think you get used to it. In a way, stage fright serves a purpose and eliminating it completely may be counterproductive; I think it means you care about the performance."(Nadav Hertzka)

Come hear Nadav Hertzka perform at the Markson Pianos Concert Series
July 30th at 7pm
£6 (£3 concessions) on the door
St Mary Magdalene Parish Church, Munster Square, London NW1 3PL
Programme
Janacek: In the Mists
Borenstein: Reminiscences of Childhood op. 54
Rachmaninov: Elegie in E Flat Minor, Op. 3 No. 1
Waley-Cohen: Five Breathes
Tchaikovsky: "The Seasons" Op. 37b (selection)

Bio
Israeli pianist Nadav Hertzka has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Asia in major venues such as Carnegie Weill Hall, Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, Shanghai Conservatory, and Avery Fisher Hall. His festival appearances include the Mostly Mozart Festival in Lincoln Center, the Beethoven Festival in Israel and the Mozart Festival in Malta, as well as engagements in China, Russia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, England and Scotland.

Connect with Nadav Hertzka

Friday, 18 July 2014

#34 Antony Clare: Chamber Pianist and Composer


"I do a lot of ‘accompanying’ work for students taking exams and diplomas, but the kind of piano playing I like to do as a professional performer is chamber music, with a duo or trio or a larger group. I don’t see any of this as ‘accompanying’. The word has a lot of baggage attached to it because it makes the pianist sound like a kind of servant. To me, the piano is always an equal partner and a lot of the piano writing in the chamber repertoire is equally as difficult and challenging and interesting as the solo repertoire. I would say that music where the piano sounds like it is accompanying is often bad music. As a pianist, you can find a lot of equality with the singer or instrumentalist you are playing with. It doesn’t matter how simple the piano part might be. When Schubert writes a song, it’s a piece for voice and piano, it’s not just a vocal line with the piano providing the harmony, there’s a lot more to it. For example, in many Schubert songs, the piano may be playing the same thing over and over again in each verse, but if you look at the meaning of the words and use your creativity, you can make the music different on each verse and so actually bring something to the piano part that isn’t there on paper. I think all of the truly great pianists played chamber music and felt it was part of their musical life. Then there were the great players like, for example, Gerald Moore who became known as an ‘accompanist’ (and of course wrote the classic little book 'The Unashamed Accompanist’) and more recent pianists like Roger Vignoles or Malcolm Martineau who perform with singers. I prefer not to use the word ‘accompanist’ to describe such great pianists.

I like to bring little known music to wider audiences; that’s always been my primary function. I mainly perform composers who are still alive; I really like exploring unfamiliar music, that’s the driving force for me. If an audience loves the music as much as I do, then that’s great! I also compose when I have time, more recently mainly pieces for bass clarinet and piano for my duo with bass clarinettist Sarah Watts (SCAW). I also compose pieces for bass clarinet choir. I’m very much a British music lineage composer with influences from Elgar to Birtwistle." (Antony Clare)



For information about forthcoming events for SCAW, visit:
www.scawduo.com

Friday, 20 June 2014

#33 James Brawn: Concert Pianist


"What I’ve heard recently in the last twelve months, in London, are so many young pianists, and certainly in the conservatories, who play the big pieces, who play admirably, their technique is really quite astounding! Their memories are astounding and they obviously work incredibly hard.

And yet, there’s something lacking in their playing and I often wonder if the conservatory system is the way to go, especially for individual artists. I wonder if the competition circuit is the way to go for up-and-coming musicians because I fear that it breeds something into them … I think that when you are in an environment where you’re surrounded by other pianists, all playing the same repertoire, studying with the same teachers and working towards the same competition circuit, somehow, over a period of years, pianists tend to lose some of their individuality because they’re so influenced by their teachers, by the people they’ve had masterclasses with.

I wonder if there’s another way; maybe just to abandon the conservatory training altogether and to really go along your own path, looking for other fine musicians to work with who don’t necessarily have to be pianists, they can be singers or other instrumentalists. I wonder if one can focus on the performance side of things, perhaps not to worry so much about having lessons with particular teachers who might be able to write references and get you into competitions and just to avoid all of that!

Perhaps find a new path that allows a player to develop his or her own sound, own voice, even when they’re playing the music of the great composers of the past. It doesn’t mean that they have to compose themselves, especially if they haven’t been doing that from a young age.

I’m very aware that one hears many pianists who, if they were to abandon teachers and abandon the whole idea of competitions and exams and auditions, they would find their own voice perhaps more easily, and maybe at a younger age.

There is a tiny percentage of musicians out there who have something really special to say in the music that they’re playing and this makes me wonder about the system, and I wonder about the business as well. I don’t think the music business is all that interested in artists who offer something a little different, who walk in another direction. They’re more interested in the people who have won prizes, who studied with particular teachers, who have gone to particular conservatories and so on. The business is very afraid of taking risks with artists who are either older or playing repertoire that’s not 'out there', and you know, it takes a lot of guts to walk in a different direction to everybody else and I wish more musicians would do that actually.

Performers could be more interesting and probably more engaging for audiences, because I think that audiences notice and hear the same old repertoire, the same types of virtuoso pianism being churned out night after night, day after day and this concerns me. It’s almost as if we’re being pushed into thinking that there is only one way to do something, you know.

I think there are probably some very enlightened teachers who can develop enquiring minds and are willing to allow their students to develop in an original way, but in this country we’re so totally obsessed, and we always have been, with music exams and all these sorts of things, so it’s very much engrained in the culture of education in this country. Maybe the younger musicians do need to think outside the box and think about how they’re really going to nurture their audiences, and especially younger audiences. If that means going into and playing in all sorts of schools, going into different performance venues and really try and engage with the audience of the future.

Nothing changes overnight, but I think there’s a feeling that maybe the competition is not the way to go anymore, that people are jaded by it all, that there are so many hundreds of competitions worldwide that churn out prize winners.

I adjudicated for a competition at the end of last year and pianists from all the music colleges mostly left me cold. Something needs to be developed within these students because I think everybody has the potential, yet somehow the training, especially in the conservatory system, means musicians conform, they don’t think enough for themselves and perhaps are afraid to take the necessary risks.

Perhaps there are pianists like that, and there are those doing things their own way. One of them might be Benjamin Grosvenor, who I think is only in his early twenties. My advice would be to find the really wonderful mentor, a really wonderful human being who believes in you and somebody who’s willing to explore, experiment and develop something special. I think there are very few of those sorts of mentors around. If it means travelling to other parts of the world then artists have to do it. They shouldn’t necessarily think that London is the only place." (James Brawn)

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Hear James Brawn perform 'Beethoven Odyssey' at Markson Pianos Concert Series

June 25th at 7pm
St Mary Magdalene Church
Munster Square, London NW1 3PL
Tickets on the door: £6 (Concessions £4)

James will be performing a selection of works from his odyssey of recording ALL the Beethoven piano sonatas. "A tremendous display of pianistic virtuosity with a powerful interpretation" - Evening Telegraph (UK)

Since his Mozart concerto debut in Australia aged 12, pianist James Brawn has forged his own musical path of discovery, from studies with great pianists who can trace their teachers' lineage back to Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and Clara Schumann to concerts alongside great Australian pianists Roger Woodward, Rita Reichman, Ronald Farren- Price, Ian Munro and Michael Kieran Harvey.

Connect with James
http://jamesbrawn.com/

Wednesday, 7 May 2014

#32 Duo Gastesi-Bezerra: Florida-based Piano Duo from Brazil and Spain

                                                                                                                          Estibaliz Gastesi & Márcio Bezerra

Márcio We try to have a mix of standard and contemporary repertoire in all our programmes. We find connections between the new pieces and the older pieces in the programme. For instance, we may work with a new composer who loves Schubert, so we pair his works with Schubert and somehow that works very well. Or we may work with a composer who uses pentatonic scales so we pair her music with Debussy and that also works so well.

Estibaliz Generally around 30% of our repertoire is new music. We find that when given the chance, audiences like listening to new music, people are often surprised that they like new music so much, sometimes more than the older pieces they may already know.

Márcio  I was raised in Brazil, in Santos - a city that had no music except an annual new music festival. The festival is now fifty years old, and at that time it was run by Gilberto Mendes who programmed post-modern music. He was a very open person, a composer who also worked in a bank. The concerts were free and there were usually around seven people in the audience and I was one of them! New music was the only kind of music I'd hear and it always interested me.

In our duo we play around 20 new pieces of music on a regular basis. That doesn't count premières, it doesn't really matter to us whether we play a première or not. To us the performance is more important than “the premiere” so we don't really count the number or premières we've done; when we take up a work we tend to play it more than once.

Estibaliz I come from Bilbao. I met Márcio in a summer camp in Spain and then we met again by chance at the Hartt School in Connecticut. We mostly work together but sometimes one of us will play solo if the programme requires it. For example, in our minimalism programme I play a Philip Glass solo piano piece.

Márcio  We have our roles. Estibaliz always takes Primo …

Estibaliz … yes, he has Secondo, because it's he who has the pedal ...

Márcio  ... and it's easier for me to be quieter than her so I take the Secondo role!

Estibaliz   Márcio is more into the harmonics, and the chords and the theory, I'm more into the melody and how the music sounds, so it suits both of us to stick to those roles.

Our vision is that playing the music is more important than fame. We like to be in contact with composers, we're not really looking for a big international career, with managers, extensive travel, and so on. We love what we do and we're really happy we're in a situation where we play what we want where we want, it's good to be independent.

Márcio  We try to encourage everyone to play new work. My advice is to play contemporary music - Mozart cannot help you. Playing new music is important, it's what keeps music alive. The problem with contemporary music is that the fingering and the chords are difficult to get used to, so I'd encourage everyone to start contemporary music as early as possible. The audience is surprised when they hear new music, sometimes they comment that living music is so much better than older music.

Estibaliz Once when we played, someone told me she couldn't sleep for a whole night, she was so stimulated after hearing the new music we'd played.

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Short bio
Internationally acclaimed Duo Gastesi-Bezerra has delighted audiences for over a decade with exciting programs of traditional and contemporary music for piano ensemble. Billed by the American Record Guide, as “a strong combination, playing very well together — often indistinguishable,” pianists Estibaliz Gastesi and Márcio Bezerra are staunch supporters of new music. They have commissioned and premiered more than twenty works by renowned and upcoming composers.

Connect with Duo Gastesi Bezerra

Website www.duogastesibezerra.com
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/marcio.bezerra.142







Monday, 31 March 2014

#31 Joseph Fleetwood: Concert Pianist





Generally I'll start my practice session with a little warm-up, play some Bach, or something light, or something Romantic, just to get the blood going through the hands. Then I'll look up the repertoire I'm performing at that particular time and focus on the technical problems because, there's no point in playing the whole programme through if you can play most of it, but get stuck on bits. So, in the Liszt for example, there are a few scary moments in there and I just make sure they're secure, that I can play them without thinking of them technically, so that the technique just functions by itself. At the same time I'll be working on the sound and the interpretation, but once the technique is solid you can then open the door into what's next; how you phrase, how you interpret the piece ...

To solve technical problems what I do is break the music down into the smallest component parts. I studied with a teacher called George Donald, and he was a pupil of two great teachers; Karl Schnabel (the son of Artur Schnabel) and Aube Tzerko who was a pupil of Artur Schnabel and they both go into something they got from Leschetiszky, who got it from Czerny who possibly got it from Beethoven; to get the composer's view of how the music is constructed so you look at motifs.

So the motifs are like the words that make up the phrase. I'm talking about practising micro phrasing hands together; so split up the phrase into the smallest unit that makes musical sense on its own. That's called the motif, and it's the stringing of these motifs together that make up a phrase. If you practise that one motif until it's right, and then you go onto the next motif and then you can string the two together so that you're not taking a running jump at a huge difficult part. The smaller the unit, the better the practice. Obviously you can't just practise the single note as that doesn't make musical,or physical, sense.

The aim is that the motif becomes instinctive. So, play it very very slowly, and with a light, but firm touch. You'd play with the key all the way down, but lightly, so that the fingers really understand the movements that they have to make. When you practise it at a slow enough speed, the brain understands the movement that the fingers have to make. Of course, when you practise faster, a certain compromise has to be made, because when you play all these motifs into a phrase you don't necessarily want your audience to hear the separate parts to the phrase, but if you don't practise like that, sometimes you can hear this and the music can sound a bit frenetic and senseless. It might feel like you're doing the phrasing right, and the pedalling right, and everything else, and getting the tone right but that sense of rushing comes from not rushing on these individual motives.

Practising in these small chunks actually builds stamina because your concentration is focussed only for a very small time, so you're not having to maintain a long line of concentration all the way. When you perform, your brain is going through the motifs so you're not focussed on thinking “I have to maintain the long line” - yes - you do have to maintain it, but you can do it in such a way as to go between the places where you can rest. You will have practised the motif within context, you will have moulded the motif into the line and that increases the stamina of practice and because you're not going over the same passage . In fact it's easier to make sense of the "long line" (as in the romantic idea of the long line) by focusing on the motifs, because instead of trying to make the line out of notes, you're making it out of the motives. It's like the difference between trying to make sentences and paragraphs out of individual letters, or trying to make it out of words.

I wouldn't play it excessively until it's right because you end up killing your ear and numbing your brain, so I think play the motif 3 or 4 times, then go on to the next one then go back – and keep it fresh, keep everything fresh. I never sit down and open the book from beginning to end unless I'm practising the performance.

When I'm practising for a performance I do two things. When I'm playing it all the way through, I practise it very, very slowly with that kind of soft, but sure, touch. You have to be incisive but you can't bang. And that gives you the core sound. George used to tell me that Schnabel told him that the tone should sound like iron wrapped in a velvet glove, and that you should imagine even in your pianissimo that you are playing to somebody sitting at the back of a large concert hall, but never shout at them. And from that sound you can increase to your fortissimo or decrease to your pianissimo and then you practise certain things in different ways. Sometimes it's good to practise a fortissimo passage pianissimo because you can get into the habit of thundering out all these chords and you're not really hearing what you're doing at that volume, your ear gets confused. So if you take it down and listen to everything at low volume you don't get as tired actually, because it's actually quite a lot of work. Break it down tonally and again into the motifs. Playing everything through at half speed is a good test of memorisation.

I'm not a great advocate of memorisation. The fashion is already changing and pianists are returning to using the music in performance; the piano competition had made some pianists into performing monkeys. Of course, I'm not saying that ALL competition pianists are like that, and there are exceptional players rise out of the competitions, like Danil Trifonov or Federico Colli, but many who enter competitions are merely thinking about memorizing as many of the right notes as possible and churning them out. I'm not sure how healthy that is to be honest. I think it's more the fault of an individual competitor than a competition - after all, the competition organizers aren't controlling how these people play. That is down to the individual, right?

I'm from Dundee which is going through a renaissance at the moment. There's currently a twenty year campaign of building works to completely redevelop the waterfront.

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Joseph Fleetwood comes from an extraordinary musical lineage, having studied extensively with George Donald, a concert pianist in Scotland and a pupil of Karl Ulrich-Schnabel. Karl’s teacher was Artur Schnabel, a pupil of Leschetiszky, who had studied under Czerny. Czerny was a protégée of Ludwig van Beethoven. It is from this training that Joseph’s concept of tone production and preparation has been developed, and his playing is attracting international critical acclaim. His current CD of piano works by Edvard Grieg is available directly from him (visit his website for details). His next recordings will be of the complete Bach Partitas, and the Liszt B minor Sonata coupled with the Schubert Wanderer Fantasy, and John McLeod's Sonata No.1

Connect with Joseph 
Website         www.josephfleetwood.com/
Twitter          @pianoteacher1
Facebook     www.facebook.com/JosephLionelFleetwood


Come hear Joseph Fleetwood perform at the Markson Pianos Concert Series
St Mary Magdalene Church, Munster Square, London NW1
Wednesday 30th April 2014 7.00pm
Tickets £6.00 on the door or pre-booked (phone 0800 0748 980); £4.00 Concessions
Scarlatti Sonata In E minor
Scarlatti Sonata In C major
Scarlatti Sonata In D major
Mozart Sonata K.570
Liszt Sonata in B minor
Ginastera Tres Danzas Argentinas

Monday, 28 October 2013

#30 Mayda Narvey: Cellist, composer



                                 Nadia Boulanger



                              Mayda Narvey

“Nadia Boulanger was born 1887 and lived to 1979 and was just a unique musical talent. She had a younger sister whom she revered. Nadia and Lili both studied composition and became composers, and they both tried to win the coveted Prix de Rome. Nadia became one of the few female winners of the 2nd Prix de Rome but her sister, at the age of 19, won the Premier Prix de Rome and as a result of that Nadia seemed to decide that she herself was not a composer. So she stopped composing and became primarily a teacher and also a performer of the organ and piano. It seemed almost as if she had a strange psychological block about herself and she just wanted to aid and abet other people's creativity.

Nadia had a way of nurturing. She had more than six hundred students and she had a huge interest in Americans and the situation in America where there hadn't been a traditional musical culture. Most musicians in America at that time had come from other places. She felt that the musical culture that evolved in America during her lifetime, and with her help, evolved from the music of African Americans.

She was not interested in imposing a stamp on the composers who studied with her. What she thought was the necessary thing was to learn how to listen and work out how to be able to recognise and write what a composer was hearing, so they absolutely understood music from the inside out, and then to evolve their own style. All her students have very individual, unique styles – including the really famous ones who include Copland, Barber, Bernstein, Carter – most well known American musicians went to Paris to study with her. She had a studio in the house she'd lived in since her teens and she had her Wednesday class there; it stayed like that for her whole life.

I've known about Nadia Boulanger since I was a little girl because my first teacher, Peggie Sampson, had studied with her (and also with Casals). Peggie was originally from Edinburgh, she died in the '90's. She was quite well known in Canada - where I'm from - because she was at the forefront of the Canadian Baroque movement playing viola da Gamba. In my lessons Peggie offered me a huge repertoire which she'd developed through her association with Boulanger; a lot of short pieces and show pieces of 20th Century music that were quite new then, not so quite well known now, including Hindemith who Boulanger rated highly. I also remember that Peggie was very familiar with Imogen Holst.

I was visiting my sister who runs a large music school in the States and saw on her desk a book that was transcript of “Mademoiselle” – a documentary about Boulanger I'd seen years before. I pounced on it saying “This is mine now!”. I realised it would be amazing to create a concert programme triggered by the transcript and that's exactly what I did. And that's why we have an actress working with us – to read from the book. I sourced various compositions; by Nadia, her sister Lili, her teacher Fauré and three of her students - Copland, Barber and Bernstein and also her good friend, Stravinsky. I am a composer too, so I composed for the project; the poet Paul Valéry was a close friend of Nadia's and I wanted to include him so I wrote a song setting his text.

It was easy to source Nadia's and Lili's works, they are in the general domain. We've been rehearsing at my place and spending hours on this project because we love playing together.

I've been working with the singer Sarah Cluderay for around six years; I love her voice...her ethereal voice. Our pianist is Selah Pérez-Villar from the Canary Islands who is a wonderful, passionate pianist. Our actress is Sally Mortemore; she was in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

We are ending with an amazing tribute of Leonard Bernstein about his meeting with Nadia on her deathbed when she says she's hearing music without beginning and end, followed by a beautiful song by Barber which many people know - Sure on this Shining Night - which you could say is about healing, because even though we know Nadia is gone, she still exists for us in our minds.” (Mayda Narvey)

Hear Mayda's ensemble "Ismena" perform October 30th at 7pm in the Markson Pianos Concert Series
St Mary Magdalene Parish Church, Munster Square, London NW1 3PT
An evening celebrating Nadia Boulanger's Life, Art, and Teaching. Soprano, Cello, and Piano. Ismena Collective are Sara Cluderay - soprano, Mayda Narvey - cello,and Naomi Edemariam - piano. An evening of music composed by the illustrious students of the great 20th century Parisian teacher of composition, including Barber, Berkeley and Bernstein, readings and reflections on Boulanger’s life, art and teaching

Connect with Mayda Narvey

Mayda Narvey was born in Canada where she was taught by Peggie Sampson, a student of both Pablo Casals and Nadia Boulanger. Narvey went on to study with Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Janos Starker, and was teaching assistant to Bernard Greenhouse of the Beaux Arts Trio at the University of New York where she received a Master of Music degree. Having played for some years with the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada, performing often in a solo and chamber capacity for the CBC (national radio) she moved to London where she teaches cello, string quartets and some music history classes at the City Lit and in the City. She writes/arranges for and plays with the Ismena Collective who perform 'Sunday Cabaret' in the West End and performs solo and chamber music recitals both in venues across London and beyond. She also runs a recital series at St Philip's in Earl's Court. Her piece 'Traue' for small ensemble and vocalists was recently performed by the Sweelinck Ensemble in the City of London and her chamber opera, Antigone is to be workshopped in the spring. Narvey is the cellist on Coloured Clutter by the young British band, the Savage Nomads, who have been called the “saviours of contemporary music.”



Thursday, 5 September 2013

#29 John Kenneth Adams: Concert Pianist and Teacher





“I’ve taught a huge number of private students from aged 7 up to college age from lower level up to concert level. As they approach college age I always told them there were two routes. First, they could try for the biggest names, i.e. Julliard, Curtis, Eastman, and spend a huge amount of money along the way. Or, they could come here to USC, save a huge amount of money and then on graduation apply to a top graduate degree program like those named above. USC has been hugely successful with this approach to recruiting big talents.

When students go directly from your studio to a top flight school, the minute they hit that level the name of the teacher who got them there in the first place seems to disappear in favour of a bigger name. So for example, when they have a concert and name their teachers – they will only put the bigger name and never recognise the teacher who worked with them in their formative years. So I have a bone about that and I’ve sometimes made a pertinent comment! I’ve found it has improved in recent years, in some students, in their maturity have looked back. I’ve heard from students now in their 50’s and 60’s and they’ve started to pour our these very emotional stories about what I meant to them and how I made them realise all these things about themselves and how I opened up a whole world of music for them – all this family stuff, “my father was very opposed to me doing this, and “I was suffering from all this emotionally”…etc. Of course I’ve found this enormously gratifying!

I grew up in the South, in Birmingham Alabama, in the 1930’s and ‘40’s - it was like South Africa, we had complete segregation. I played by ear until I was 11, it was perfectly usual just to be able to play. My first teacher was Elizabeth Allen. She pulled me up to quite a high level in just two years. She had been trained by the same teacher (a composer herself) who had developed the composer William Gillock. I was already in the line of some high level, serious pedagogy.

We moved home and my second teacher was responsible for bringing one of Clara Schumann’s last students, Carl Friedberg, all the way from Julliard to Kansas City. His comments to me when I was seventeen were just riveting. No one had told me I had a special gift and could go far. He asked me to go to New York to work with him but my father had a fit and said no way. Over the next years I had lessons with him when he visited Kansas – he was the first great influence on my life.” (John Kenneth Adams, July 2013)

About John: American pianist John Kenneth Adams has travelled the globe presenting recitals, “Piano Portraits”, master classes and lecture-recitals to audiences in 22 countries. He has successfully blended a wide choice of repertoire with his unique ability to speak about music in terms that bring audiences closer to the music. Long known for his powerful performances of French repertoire, including the complete piano music of Claude Debussy, he has also made a strong reputation as an exponent of major works of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms.

Read more at John's blog http://johnkennethadams.blogspot.co.uk/

Hear John Kenneth Adams perform during Markson Pianos Concert Series September 2014