As this issue of Almanac Weekly goes to press, some of the world’s most gifted musicians under the age of 35 are duking it out at the ivories over at SUNY-New Paltz, vying for top honors in the 2016 Jacob Flier Piano Competition as part of the college’s annual PianoSummer activities. Though we don’t know the name of the First Place winner as yet, we can tell you that he or she will only have nine days thereafter to recuperate and polish a showpiece for the Symphony Gala that wraps up the PianoSummer season next Friday, July 29.
Besides a solo performance from the Competition champion, the Gala will feature the Hudson Valley Philharmonic onstage at the McKenna Theatre on the SUNY campus, under the baton of PianoSummer founder/artistic director Vladimir Feltsman. Beginning at 8 p.m., the Symphony Gala program will include Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise and Brahms’s Symphony #3. Tickets cost $40 to $45.
Can’t wait that long for your fix of the classics? Daria Rabotkina, a PianoSummer 2016 guest artist who also happens to be a past Jacob Flier Piano Competition award-winner, will be giving a concert at McKenna this Saturday, July 23 beginning at 8 p.m. Rabotkina will demonstrate what The Washington Post called her “clearly prodigious musical gifts” with a program that includes Schumann’s Humoreske, Prokofiev’s Ten Pieces for Piano and Manuel de Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat.
Tickets may be purchased at the McKenna Theatre box office Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., by calling (845) 257-3880 or online at www.newpaltz.edu/piano.
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