See the likes of Mozart and Liszt in Lincoln Hall!
Do you also sometimes wish you were born in a different era? If I could take my contact lenses and prescription medications with me (and perhaps, also, my favorite pair of Birkenstocks for long walks), I always imagine I’d be happy as a clam living a couple of centuries ago, maybe singing at a spinet like Kate Winslet in Sense and Sensibility, or cosily reading by the fire like the March girls in Little Women. No, of course I won’t die in childbirth, and of course we won’t starve in a famine. I’d be taking the coach to the Salle Érard in Paris, or perhaps the Musikverein in Vienna, to see the dashing Franz Liszt improvise on the spot. Or jump backwards another sixty years or so to hear the young Mozart pull off some “fantasia playing” (his term for pure improvisation). Wouldn’t that be the epitome of excitement?
The good news: No one has to sacrifice electricity or indoor plumbing to experience what until very recently was still regarded* as a relic of the past. Seeing a virtuoso pianist-composer improvise on stage, spinning a brand-new work from mere fragments suggested by the audience, is well within our reach, for that is exactly what Gabriela Montero will be doing on Sunday 25 October!
After performing her dazzling “Iberian” program, Gabriela promises to stun and delight by shifting gears away from the expected presenting of other people’s ideas – and leaning into a talent she’s been honing since childhood: improvisation in the spontaneous “fantasia playing” sense of the word.
The story of Gabriela Montero’s journey to stardom and her relationship with improvisation is not straightforward. Even as a gifted child of three or four years old, she had the uncanny ability to spin yarns at the piano, in her words, “meeting the piano” and then completely losing herself in a mesmerizing realm of sound. When she moved to the United States to study classical music seriously, though, a highly destructive teacher strictly told her, “Don’t improvise, because it is not worth anything.” And that was the end of it. She suppressed her desire to tell her own stories and focused on becoming a “traditional” classical pianist … something that caused so much friction and frustration that she entirely quit playing and considered becoming a psychologist instead!
That was, until she met Martha Argerich and finally let down her guard. The grande dame was ecstatic and this wholehearted endorsement gave Gabriela the professional armor she needed to defy conservative concert expectations and make her skill at improvising part of her unique appeal as an artist. From then on, everything clicked – and how grateful we are that it did!
If you aren’t already counting the sleeps until Gabriela’s performance (ten, I’m counting!), then this is your reminder to grab one of the few remaining tickets and come see history being made! Time-travel unnecessary.
* in classical piano circles, at least – let’s leave jazz aside!