Visitors to my reception in Placitas next Sunday, Jan. 28th, 1:30 to
3:00 pm
http://www.taospaint.com/Placitas2007/Invite.html
are in for an extra treat if they decide to stay for the concert
following the art opening.
The concert is a ticketed event ($18.00) after the art opening.
Awadagin Pratt
is returning to New Mexico to play for our enjoyment. http://
www.awadagin.com/
Below is an article from this mornings paper. Nothing about my
watercolors,
just the music.
Sunday, January 21, 2007 Albuquerque Journal
Pratt Returns for Concert in Placitas
By David Steinberg
Journal Staff Writer
Willy Sucre said he didn't have to twist Awadagin Pratt's arm.
"It was just a matter of speaking to him and he was immediately
very responsive to playing some chamber music in Placitas," said
Sucre. "It was no big deal."
Simple as that.
Pratt, an in-demand pianist worldwide, will be at the keyboard
in Robert Schumann's Piano Quartet in E flat major and Johannes
Brahms' Piano Quartet in C minor Jan. 28
The concert is a Willy Sucre & Friends event that's part of the
Placitas Artists Series' 20th anniversary celebration.
Sucre said the Schumann and the Brahms "are the elite of the
repertoire of piano quartets."
"The Schumann is an extremely lush and romantic work. He wrote
it over about two weeks so he was doing some great writing," he said.
By contrast, it took Brahms more than 20 years to finish his
quartet.
In the first two years he worked on it, his friend Schumann was
suffering from a mental illness and died in 1856.
Brahms, Sucre said, was in love with Schumann's wife, Clara. And
while Schumann was hospitalized helped Clara care for her seven
children.
"He was a wonderful friend and was going through a lot of
emotional turmoil. This piece reflects all of that. It's tragic,
vigorous, intense," he said.
When Brahms returned to the work 17 years later, he changed the
key signature, revised one movement and rewrote two others.
Pratt is a former Albuquerque resident who moved to Cincinnati
last summer. He is an associate professor of piano and artist-in-
residence at the College Conservatory of Music at the University of
Cincinnati.
"I have nine students and coach some chamber music. Two of my
students are world class," Pratt said in an e-mail.
"One is a winner of the Kapell Competition in Maryland and a
high prize winner in many others, including the Queen Elizabeth and
the Chopin.
"The other is from the Moscow Conservatory and is a prize winner
in the World Piano Competition."
(Pratt himself won the 1992 Naumburg International Piano
Competition.)
Douglas Lowry, the dean of the conservatory, said Pratt "drives
a real hard bargain with his students. He has very high expectations.
So in the end our students benefit from that."
With the conservatory's blessing, Pratt spends a good deal of
time away from his teaching duties giving recitals, conducting and
occasionally judging piano competitions.
Performing the two piano quartets with Pratt and Sucre are
violinist Krzysztof Zimowski, the concertmaster of the New Mexico
Symphony Orchestra, and Joan Zucker, the NMSO's principal cellist.
WHAT: Willy Sucre & Friends with Awadagin Pratt
WHEN: 3 p.m. Jan. 28
WHERE: Las Placitas Presbyterian Church, six miles east of I-25
exit 242
HOW MUCH: Tickets are $18 general public, $15 seniors and
students in advance at La Bonne Vie Salon & Day Spa, Homestead
Village Shopping Center, Placitas or on the Web site
www.placitasarts.org or at the door
