San Juan Symphony to present Steven Mayer in Adams Foundation Piano Recital  

 

Internationally renowned pianist Steven Mayer will kick off the San Juan Symphony’s 2010 Adams Foundation Piano Recital Series with a performance on Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 3 p.m. at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO.  Ticket prices range from $15 – $25 and may be obtained by calling the Community Concert Hall at 970-247-7657.   The program for the afternoon will include Beethoven’s Sonata in Bb Major, Op.22, Schumann’s Carnaval, Op. 9, as well as modern jazz pieces from Scott Joplin, “Jelly Roll” Morton, James P. Johnson, and Art Tatum.   Credited with “piano playing at its most awesome” (The New York Times), pianist Steven Mayer has brought his unique repertoire of such jazz icons Art Tatum, Fats Waller and “Jelly Roll” Morton, as well as music from Mozart to Liszt to Ives, to thousands of listeners worldwide.  According to John Ardoin of the Dallas Morning News, “Mayer’s piano artistry is simply awe-inspiring. What he brings to the keyboard that is so wonderful and personal is sanity and a clarity of thinking that are combined with high imagination and articulate fingers.”

Since his prize winning performance of Leon Kirchner’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Dennis Russell Davies and the American Composer’s Orchestra at The Third Carnegie Hall International American Music Competition, Mr. Mayer has performed at music festivals worldwide including Bargemusic, Banff, the Bay Chamber Festival in Maine, Mainly Mozart in San Diego, the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, Leonard Slatkin’s Minnesota Sommerfest and the Moab Festival in Utah.   Mr. Mayer is currently Professor of Piano at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival at the Mannes College of Music. He has served as Visiting Lecturer in Piano at UCLA, and as juror at the International Flipse Concours in Rotterdam.   The New York-based Adams Foundation is an organization dedicated to restoring the piano recital in small communities throughout the United States.   For more information, please call 970-382-9753 or visit:  www.sanjuansymphony.org.