Faculty Concerts: October

The Cali School faculty concerts in October offer a wide range of piano music and a jazz interpretation of Puccini arias for piano and saxophone. All performances will take place in Leshowitz Recital Hall. They are free and open to the public with no tickets required.

October 17, at 8 pm – Pianist Vadim Monastyrski: Works by Liszt, Prokofiev and Shostakovich

The Cali School of Music has the honor of hosting a Professor from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. This is part of our newest International Exchange program. Thanks to the Global Education Center, which is funding this visit, pianist Vadim Monastyrski will be in residence for the Fall Semester 2013 as the recipient of a Global Education Distinguished Scholar Grant.

October 18, at 8 pm – Jazz duo Dyad performs Puccini

Pianist and Cali School faculty member Eric Olsen and saxophonist Lou Caimano have re-imagined Puccini’s beautiful classical compositions as contemporary jazz arrangements in Dyad Plays Puccini. Beloved arias from Madame Butterfly, Tosca, Turandot, La Bohème, and others are combined with the sounds and rhythms of jazz, gospel, R&B, and Latin jazz to create an innovative musical experience.

October 20, at 5 pm – Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book Two, performed by Cali School faculty and staff.

This unique concert will present Bach’s magnum opus, consisting of 24 Preludes and Fugues. The performance will feature a round-robin of performances, each player presenting one Prelude and Fugue, in the order that Bach published them..

Bach’s WTC Book Two dates from 1742, twenty years after Bach wrote his first volume of 24 Preludes and Fugues. Tuners were experimenting with a tuning system that would allow compositions to be written for keyboard in all twelve keys, to sound more or less equally in tune. One of Bach’s primary purposes in composing each volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier was to demonstrate the feasibility of this "well-tempered" tuning system. And indeed, there is a Prelude and Fugue in all twelve keys, major and minor, for a total of twenty-four pairs of works. These volumes have long been a staple of every keyboard player’s training. Robert Schumann, several generations later, in his collection of Aphorisms, stated that the “Bach’s Preludes and Fugues should become our daily bread.” The fugues of these works represent the pinnacle of piano repertoire.

October 24, at 8 pm – Pianist Victoria Schwartzman: Works by Beethoven, Schubert and Rachmaninov.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Victoria Schwartzman performs regularly as a soloist and chamber musician. She is a member of the opera coaching faculty at the Cali School of Music.