SUNDAY • JULY 9 • 5PM

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Jason Cutmore has performed piano recitals and collaborative concerts throughout North America, Europe and India, winning praise for his “brilliant technical finesse” and “deep emotional penetration” (Offenbach-Post, Germany), and for the “charismatic generosity of communication in his music.” (The Telegraph, Calcutta, India).

Mr. Cutmore made his Chicago recital debut in the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts in 2005 with an all-Liszt programme that was broadcast live on WFMT radio, and shown on Chicago Cable TV 25. Since then he has returned twice to the Hess series, and has performed in Canada’s Elora, Music Niagara, and Colours of Music festivals, Los Angeles’ Sundays Live series, Calgary’s Celebrity Series, and at venues in New York City, San Francisco, Toronto, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Edmonton and elsewhere across North America.

His concert performances, and an ardent interest in foreign travel, have frequently taken him abroad to Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Spain, and India. These performances have included appearances at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (Mumbai), the Alliance Francaise (Bangalore), and the India International Centre (New Delhi), as well as at the Franz Liszt Museum in Budapest, and the International Music Festival in Burgos, Spain.

In 2008, Mr. Cutmore’s debut commercial CD, an album of piano music by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla on Centaur Records, was released to critical acclaim. Gramophone magazine praised his “warm, generous sonority and natural feel for the idiom” and raved that “this pianist’s gorgeously variegated legato makes a sexy and inviting recital.” Mr. Cutmore’s interpretations of the Spanish piano repertory have gained notice in concert as well. The Times Argus in Vermont has written that “Cutmore performed this most evocative music with flair. His colorful playing proved vibrant and exciting.”

Mr. Cutmore’s avid interest in chamber music has led to many collaborations, both traditional and unusual, including past partnerships with Lithuanian pianist Guoda Gedvilaite, and with concert organist Daniel Sullivan. One of Mr. Cutmore’s current projects is a collaboration with narrator (and former CBC radio personality) Rick Phillips, in works for solo piano and narrator by composers such as Debussy, Roussel, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Saint-Saens and others, in live concert performances for children. Mr. Cutmore also partners with Paris-based cellist Antoine Pierlot.

Mr. Cutmore’s major teachers have included Stephanie Brown, Robert Shannon, and Michael Massey. Currently based in New York City, Jason Cutmore is originally from Edmonton, Canada, and is the founder and director of Alberta Pianofest. He also serves on the faculties of two historic community music schools in Manhattan, the Third Street Music School Settlement, and Turtle Bay Music School.

jasoncutmore.com


Pianist Adam Kent has performed in recital, as soloist with orchestra, and in chamber music throughout the United States, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Latin America. A winner of the American Pianists Association Fellowship and Simone Belsky Music Awards, Dr. Kent also received top prizes in the Thomas Richner, the Juilliard Concerto, and the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competitions, and is a recipient of the Arthur Rubinstein Prize and the Harold Bauer Award. Dr. Kent made his New York recital debut at Weill Recital Hall in 1989, and has been featured on WQXR, WNYC, WFUV, WVOX and Sirius Radio stations. Chamber music has been an important part of Dr. Kent’s concert life, most prominently with the Damocles Trio, which has performed both in the United States and abroad. The group’s recording of Joaquín Turina’s complete piano trios and quartet with Emerson Quartet violist Lawrence Dutton was released by Claves Records in 2004, followed up by their recording of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s complete piano trios and Oscar Lorenzo Fernândez’s Trio brasileiro in 2009.

Spanish music has been a specialty of Dr. Kent’s, whose advocacy has been acknowledged by the Spanish government on numerous occasions. In 2011, King Juan Carlos I of Spain honored the pianist by bestowing Spain’s Orden al Mérito Civil, and the Consulate General of Spain in NY underwrote Dr. Kent’s course on the history of Spanish music at Brooklyn College. The Spanish Consulate has also sponsored numerous appearances by Dr. Kent at NY’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the Spanish Ministry for Education and Culture awarded him a grant for Música por doquier/Hispanic Music Everywhere, a year-long celebration of Spanish and Latin-American in NYC with the Damocles Trio and Spanish composer and conductor Salvador Brotons. The Foundation for Iberian Music at the CUNY Graduate Center and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU have also sponsored a number of Dr. Kent’s Hispanic-themed projects, including commissions of new works by Tania León, Salvador Brotons, Miguel-Ángel Roig-Francolì, and others. Most recently, the State University of New York at Oneonta awarded Dr. Kent several grants to conduct research in Spain and to assist the institution in establishing long-distance learning programs with universities in Cartagena, Colombia.

Dr. Kent’s critically acclaimed recording of the complete piano works of Ernesto Halffter is available on Bridge Records, and a recent performance of Book I of Albéniz’s Iberia suite was praised in the Indianapolis Star as “Albénizian to the core…his suave legato touch wedded to a tone with an Old World patina about it.” Excelsior of Mexico City enthused about a recent all-Spanish recital, “Adam Kent brought not only magnificent technical ability to the music, but managed to go beyond the printed page, delving into the essence of what the composer sought to express.” Dr. Kent’s expertise in this repertory has also extended to interviews and performances in several recent documentaries on Spanish composers Enrique Granados and Manuel de Falla. At present, a recording of Tania León’s complete piano music is in the works, as well as a documentary on Federico Mompou.

Summers find Dr. Kent serving as Director of Cultural Outreach at the Burgos International Music Festival in Spain and teaching and performing at the Summit Music Festival in N.Y. and at the Cursos de Verano of the Fundación Princesa de Asturias in Oviedo. Recent performances include a concert of works by Ibizan composer Miguel-Angel Roig-Francoli at Carnegie Hall, a recital at N.Y.C.’s (le) poisson rouge broadcast on The Classical Network radio station, the world-premiere of a newly-written piano trio by Argentine composer Sebastian Zubieta’s at N.Y.C.’s Look and Listen Festival, performances with the Westchester Chamber Symphony and the New Jersey Baroque Orchestras, concerts in Havana, Cuba and a recital of works by Tania León at the University of California at Riverside.

Dr. Kent received a D.M.A. from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal and served as an adjunct professor. His dissertation, The Use of Catalan Folk Materials in the Works of Federico Mompou and Joaquín Nin-Culmell, was awarded the school’s Richard F. French Prize, and his writings have appeared in Music in Art Cambridge Scholars journals and in a Spanish-language monograph on Xavier Montsalvatge published by the Spanish Society of Authors and Editors. He holds B.M. and M.M. degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Solomon Mikowsky. Dr. Kent is on the Piano Faculty of Manhattan School of Music Precollege Division, and was recently appointed to the full-time faculty of SUNY Oneonta.

adamkentmusic.com

A Gala Concert & Tapería


Enrique Granados (1867 – 1916), known as the Spanish Chopin, is one of the most famous and beloved artists Spain has produced. His music is evocative, poetic and intensely Romantic. Adam Kent and Jason Cutmore, two foremost North American interpreters of Spanish art music, present this gala tribute to Granados in honour of the 150th anniversary of his birth.

Programme • 5-8PM

Then and There/Here and Now in the Music of Enrique Granados
Talk by Dr. Adam Kent

Enrique Granados
(1867-1916)
Escenas Románticas
(Jason Cutmore)
Intermission* tapas and wine
  En la Aldea; Marcha Militar No. 1
(Jason Cutmore & Adam Kent)
Intermission* dessert & coffee/tea
  Excerpts from Goyescas suite
(Adam Kent)

*Includes two 3-ounce pours of wine, 5 tapas, coffee/tea, and dessert.


Tickets:

$35 per person. Tickets available in advance and at door.
Only 100 tickets available! NO PASSES.

purchase advance tickets


The work of Spanish composer Enrique Granados raises fundamental questions about musical sense and meaning. How much of an artist’s personal life is invested in his/her work? In what ways does an artistic creation stand alone, and in what ways does it live within broader artistic and historical contexts?

Granados was the quintessential romantic, looking back to the elegance of Francisco Goya’s late eighteenth century Madrid in the Goyescas, paying homage to the stylistic worlds of predecessors like Chopin and Schumann in the Escenas romanticas, and evoking the charms of the typical Spanish village in his duet En la aldea.

Pianist and Spanish music specialist Adam Kent discusses the life and work of one of Spain’s leading composers in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of his birth. Granados’s unique amalgamation of Spanish history, art, and music with mainstream European aesthetic trends comes to life in words and music in this innovative format.