The San Francisco International Piano Festival returns for its third season with 14 concerts and 11 venues, presented by the New Piano Collective. Artistic Director Jeffrey LaDeur says the festival, which runs from tomorrow night through the 25th allows audiences to discover a wide range of music, spanning from the Baroque through today.
There’s more information at the San Francisco International Piano Festival website.
“Solo pianists, kind of inherently, are very isolated creatures. And so usually the only time that you see a good number of them in the same place is if they’re in a competition.” But that’s not the philosophy of the New Piano Collective. “I usually refer to it as an artistic alliance of pianists that support each other, collaborate, and interact with one another as colleagues, rather than competitors.” There will also be collaborating guest artists, including singers and string players. The venues range from intimate spaces to theaters, churches to concert halls. “The idea behind all the different venues is not just to make my life miserable, but to meet people at different stages of their journey and familiarity with classical music, and also match the repertoire and the artists with a space…For people who feel like, ‘Well, I don’t know about this venue, I’m not so familiar with this traditional classical presentation, but I feel really comfortable at the Empress Theatre, or I feel really comfortable at Berkeley Freight and Salvage. That they might come in knowing the venue, and then discover our programming.” At a concert this Friday night, Bobby Mitchell will play the US premiere of a work by Frederick Rzewski, and in the closing performance at Herbst Theatre on the 25th, there will be Mozart and Beethoven, with the Alexander String Quartet and other musical guests.
