Kamigawara was discovered playing Bach outside a drugstore by our music critic Leslie Gerber. (photo by Dion Ogust)
Byrdcliffe’s Kleinert/James Center for the Arts presents classical violinist Akiko Kamigawara and pianist Hiroko Sakurazawa in performance on Saturday, September 26 at 8 p.m. Kamigawara was discovered playing Bach outside a drugstore by Woodstock Times & Almanac Weekly music critic Leslie Gerber. “It was a big surprise – startling, actually – to walk out of CVS on a Sunday afternoon and see someone playing unaccompanied Bach on a violin,” he wrote. “A moment’s listening surprised even further: This was a very good violinist, a high-class professional.”
Sakurazawa studied piano with Mariko Yamamoto and Henriette Puig-Roget (from the Conservatory of Paris) at Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo. She premiered his Piano Tree for Piano and Computer at the Merce Cunningham Dance Company New Music Series and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. In 2005 she gave the world-premiere performance of two unpublished piano works by Henry Cowell at the Bard Music Festival.
Kamigawara and Sakurazawa’s program includes work by Francesco Maria Veracini, Franz Schubert, Gabriel Fauré, Toru Takemitsu and Sergei Prokofiev. Tickets are available at ulsterpub.staging.wpengineguild.org/akikohiroko.html, by phone at (845) 679-2079 or at the door. The Kleinert/James Center for the Arts is located at 36 Tinker Street in Woodstock.