Portland Piano International Presents Charlie Albright in Recital, May 8

Three touchstones of the keyboard repertoire anchor an evening shaped in real time by improvisation, genre-crossing, and audience suggestion.

Friday, May 8, 2026 • 7:30 PM

PSU’s Lincoln Performance Hall

Portland, OR — Portland Piano International welcomes American pianist and improviser Charlie Albright on Friday, May 8, for a recital with a backbone and a lot of open road. Three beloved touchstones anchor the program: Arcadi Volodos’s virtuoso transcription of Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca,” Myra Hess’s transcription of Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Between them, Albright improvises on suggestions called out from the hall, threading the classical repertoire through Boogie Woogie, jazz, pop, rock, and film music as the mood of the room moves him.

Albright is one of a small number of touring concert pianists who also compose and improvise at a serious level, and that fact shapes everything about this program. It is not incidental that Gershwin himself improvised stretches of the solo part at the 1924 premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, or that the Volodos and Hess transcriptions are themselves pianists refashioning other composers’ music in their own voices. Albright takes the next step in real time, on the same stage, in front of the audience that is helping shape it. Praised by The New York Times for his “jaw-dropping technique and virtuosity meshed with a distinctive musicality,” he brings the technical command to back up the risk.

A 2014 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, a 2010 Gilmore Young Artist, and winner of the 2009 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Albright has recently shared Symphony Hall with the Boston Pops alongside Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis, and played sold-out halls across Asia and America. On May 8, he brings that same range to Lincoln Performance Hall.

Charlie Albright, Program

Wild improvisations, serious pyrotechnics, crazy music that you might never have expected from PPI, plus …

ARCADI VOLODOS / WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

“Rondo alla Turca,” from Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major, K. 331 (Volodos transcription)

MYRA HESS / JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” from Cantata BWV 147 (Hess transcription)

GEORGE GERSHWIN

Rhapsody in Blue

Tickets & Information: portlandpiano.org/charlie-albright

Venue: Lincoln Performance Hall, Portland State University, Portland, OR

Date/Time: Friday, May 8, 2026 • 7:30 PM

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