Summer Newsletter: Alec Baldwin, Mark Ainley, Michelle Cann
Summer Newsletter
Message from the Editor
Greetings from the Pianofest family!
With our summer well underway with the summer festival, we are so excited to update you with some of our news. On everybody’s minds is our Monday evening concert at Avram Theater, July 15th, 5pm, with iconic American actor and arts advocate Alec Baldwin as host. It will certainly be one of the most memorable events in Pianofest’s 31-year history. Read the full announcement (in cased you missed it).
We have also expanded our reach into a new series at the beautifully restored Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center; our first concert there was Thursday, June 27, and our next takes place Thursday, August 8, at 7pm.
Photo: Auditorium at Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center
In this brief newsletter we also feature two people very close to us: Michelle Cann, a frequent presence at Pianofest over the years, now a distinguished alum; finally we feature Mark Ainley, a friend and internationally recognized authority on the great pianists of today and yesterday with his online resource The Piano Files with Mark Ainley.
We hope you are enjoying a wonderful and music-filled summer, and look forward to seeing you at one of our events soon.
With warmest wishes,
Zsolt Bognár
Editor and Pianofest Alum
Meisel Family Hosts Successful Annual Pianofest Gala in Soho
Konstantin Soukhovetski and Terry Williams | Photo Credit
Photo: Louis K. Meisel Gallery
D. Ilona Oltuski
We were delighted by the success of the annual Pianofest gala in Soho in April at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery. An unusual offering that had everybody talking was the presentation of a melodrama by Viktor Ullman, “The Tale of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke”, performed by Konstantin Soukhovetski and narrated by special guest D. Terry Williams.
Watch Konstantin Soukhovetski and D. Terry Williams perform, “The Tale of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke.”
We also heard brilliant performances by Pianofest alum Michael Brown in pieces by Bernstein and Copland. We thank the Meisel family for so generously hosting us in the beautiful gallery surrounded by their formidable collection of art. As always, we were thrilled to see so many faces of the Pianofest family, from the seasoned to the new.
Photo: Mark Ainley and Paul Schenly
An Appreciation of Mark Ainley
We here at Pianofest wanted to take a special moment to appreciate the contributions of our friend Mark Ainley to the piano world. He has devoted thousands of hours to the study, curation, and insightful analysis of the great historical legacy of pianists on record, and performers and music fans young and old alike have come to recognize him as an international authority and proponent of musical treasures. In an online world inundated with a vast deluge of material on YouTube and elsewhere, his Facebook page The Piano Files with Mark Ainley has carefully presented his growing membership with a wide legacy of recorded pianists of every nationality, background, training, and insight, with a particular focus on old-world artists whose playing hardly resembles anything we hear on the stages today.
“The community includes students aspiring to musical careers, professional performers, and even the children and grandchildren of the great pianists featured,” remarks Ainley. “Today’s performers often wonder about the 'correct way' to play the music of Mozart or Chopin, and while there are no recordings of these composers as performers, we do have recordings by artists and composers trained in the 19th century, and what we hear is often quite different than the playing of today. We have a responsibility to listen to these living, breathing interpretations not to copy them but, as one great pianist said, to 'seek what they sought.' When you hear Liszt's pupils playing his compositions, or pianists that Brahms admired playing his works, or pianists who heard Chopin or who studied with his pupils, you gain access to the sound world of their time, which is far richer than written testimonials describing their playing - and you hear not just the act of performance but the art of interpretation." Some students, listening to recordings in Ainley's lectures, said that they wanted to throw in the towel because they would 'never be able to play like that' - to which he replied, "You didn't know this was possible before - now you do, so now you know what to strive for."
In 2014, Zsolt Bognár invited Mark Ainley to be a featured guest on the show he hosts, “Living the Classical Life”, which has also showcased Paul Schenly and Pianofest. The episode was filmed at the home of Alfred and Jane Ross, as was the episode featuring Jerome Lowenthal. Mark Ainley tied together his musings about piano repertoire, old-world phrasing and rhetoric, and the creative life as well. We are grateful to him in every way and hope to continue to connect our students with the incredible resource of his knowledge.
Watch Mark Ainley on Living the Classical Life: Episode 23.
Photo: Michelle Cann
Catching up with Distinguished Alumna Michelle Cann
When did you first come to Pianofest?
I was an undergrad at the Cleveland Institute of Music studying with Paul Schenly, and he suggested I apply to Pianofest, and this was back in 2006. Not only was that my first year there, but I was also immediately house manager together with Zahari Metchkov. So I cooked the meals for everybody, and that was a spectacular challenge to suddenly learn how to do in that quantity.
What are your current projects?
It’s been a busy year—my big project is working with and performing the music of Florence Price—a female African-American composer who was the first of her background to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have her work performed by a major orchestra. I have been performing her Piano Concerto in D Minor with various orchestras including the North Carolina Symphony in Raleigh, as well as the Knoxville Symphony; further concerts with other orchestras are also in the works. I also commissioned an arrangement of this incredible work for sextet, so that I can bring this piece to more settings.
I love to teach and keep a studio of private students, and I am on staff at the Curtis Institute of Music as a collaborative pianist. I also am Music Director at First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, and lead the choir there.
You have been involved recently in the nationally-syndicated show “From the Top”
“From the Top” was looking for a season in which guest hosts covered several shows; I was co-host across the country with actor/conductor Damon Gupton, as well as with violinists Leila Josepfowicz and Vijay Gupta. These were exciting events to be part of, and I was also the pianist for each show, collaborating with each musical number requiring piano accompaniment. I grew up listening to the show of course, so being part of running it was a huge honor.
What did you get from your experiences at Pianofest?
It’s hard to name just one thing of many. Being a house manager taught me to relate to many different types of people and showed me how to lead and manage their well-being. These skills were important in my later projects for sure. Pianofest certainly forced me to become a better cook. I made lifelong friends, and I meet them almost everywhere I go. It’s amazing that at Pianofest I was able to work alongside great students and great artists visiting as guest faculty—but most of all it was amazing that I could have meals with them and play games. Pianofest shaped my life.