William Ögmundson is an award-winning and EMMY-nominated composer and lyricist, and a classically-trained solo pianist with nine albums to his credit and over 40,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
Admission $10/$5 students.
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Sunday on the Steinway with William Ogmundson
William Ögmundson is an award-winning and EMMY-nominated composer and lyricist, and a classically-trained solo pianist. William has performed at venues throughout North America and Europe including the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, where he was honored to have been the organist for a Sunday morning mass.
This program is titled “American Beauty” and starts with American Music from the 1860s (Gottschalk, Stephen Foster), Marches and Ragtime (John Philip Sousa, Scott Joplin), ending with early Jazz (Rhapsody in Blue).
Virtuoso Pianist Raja Rahman at The Medallion
The Medallion Opera House in Gorham, with sponsorship from Music in the Great North Woods, is thrilled to bring Raja Rahman to play a program of Beethoven and Bach at Gorham Town Hall’s Medallion Opera House on Saturday, November 10, at 2:30 pm. Described by the NY Sunday Times as a “powerhouse pianist,” the prize-winning Canadian virtuoso is a graduate of The Juilliard School.
Raja Rahman has performed worldwide with Sir Georg Solti, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Iona Brown. Winner of concerto competitions, Juilliard’s Vladimir Horowitz Scholarship, International Concert Artists competition, and numerous other prestigious awards, Raja’s career has taken him all over the world in concert as both soloist and chamber musician.
Collaborations have included performances with cellist Matt Haimovitz, and members of the Juilliard String Quartet and the San Francisco Symphony. Mr. Rahman’s Carnegie Hall debut took place while still at Juilliard, followed by his Lincoln Center debut shortly thereafter. Sir Georg Solti became an ardent supporter of Raja’s after they performed together in Germany. Teachers have included Seymour Lipkin, Jerome Lowenthal, Lev Vlassenko and Byron Janis.
For the last 20 years, Raja has been Director of Piano Studies at Nevada School of the Arts where he teaches a studio of 20 students. He was awarded a Proclamation from the Mayor in recognition of his efforts to expand culture there. Raja, who co-stars in the magic and music duo “Jarrett & Raja,” has appeared on NBC’s America’s Got Talent as a semifinalist, the CW Network, ABC’s “Shark Tank,” “Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and the BBC. Currently he is touring the East Coast and can be seen in his 5th season on The CW’s “Masters of Illusion.”
No tickets are required, due to underwriting by the non-profit organization, Music in the Great North Woods, but donations will be enthusiastically accepted for this rare appearance.
Sunday on the Steinway with Matthew Odell
The New Hampshire-born pianist Matthew Odell began his studies at the age of 10 and has since won acclaim for performances of a wide range of repertoire as a solo recitalist, soloist with orchestra, and chamber musician. Mr. Odell currently teaches at The Juilliard School and frequently presents master classes, workshops, and lectures at professional conferences and universities throughout the U.S and Europe. This program will includes works by Robert Schumann, Oliver Messiaen, and Amy Beach. Tickets $10/$5 students.
“Art of the Duo” Features International Musical Artists
Internationally acclaimed Syrian clarinetist/composer Kinan Azmeh and Sri Lankan-born pianist/composer Dinuk Wijeratne share a stirring “Art of the Duo” performance/discussion program across northern New Hampshire, May 20-22.
The duo fuses elements of Arabic and Southeast Asian vocabulary with classical and jazz music idioms to create a new sonic world that the legendary Marcel Khalife called “wings of breath.”
In their informal northern New Hampshire programs, the musicians will play work from their album, “Complex Stories, Simple Sounds” and new compositions, and talk about collaboration and improvisation, their musical inspirations, life on the road around the world, and the role of the arts in times of crisis.
Programs take place
• 3 p.m., Sunday, May 20, All Saints Episcopal Church
35 School St., Littleton NH
• 7 p.m., Sunday, May 20, Starr King Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 101 Fairgrounds Road, Plymouth
• 6:30 p.m., Monday, May 21, Medallion Opera House, 20 Park St., Gorham NH
• 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 22, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 113 Main St., Lancaster. Dessert reception to follow.
Tickets for all programs cost $15 per person or $30 for families; tickets purchased in advance online at www.aannh.org are $12; reduced rates are available for Arts Alliance members. Absolutely everyone is welcome; anyone for whom the ticket price is too high is welcome to pay what they can or come at no cost.
“We are so excited to be offering our communities a chance to meet, listen and talk to these amazing musicians as part of a new partnership with the West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts, which has worked with them for the past decade,” says Arts Alliance director Frumie Selchen.
Kinan and Dinuk’s three-day visit to northern New Hampshire also includes programs with students from Franklin to Woodsville as part of a residency funded in part by the Expeditions program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the six New England state arts agencies, including the NH State Council on the Arts. They will return this fall for two more days in the region.
For advance tickets and additional information, visit www.aannh.org, email [email protected] or call (603) 323-7302.
About Kinan Azmeh:
Hailed as a “virtuoso” who is “intensely soulful” by the New York Times and “spellbinding” by the New Yorker, Kinan Azmeh’s distinctive sound spans different musical genres and has gained him international recognition as a clarinetist and composer.
Kinan has been touring the world as soloist, composer and improviser. Notable appearances include: Opera Bastille, Paris; Tchaikovsky Grand Hall, Moscow; Carnegie Hall and the UN’s general assembly, New York; the Royal Albert Hall, London; Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires; der Philharmonie; Berlin; the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, Washington DC; the Mozarteum, Salzburg, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and the Damascus Opera House for its opening concert in his native Syria. He serves as artistic director of the Damascus Festival Chamber Players, a pan-Arab ensemble dedicated to contemporary music form the Arab world. He is also a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble with whom he was awarded a Grammy in 2017.
About Dinuk Wijeratne:
The Sri Lankan-born, Canada-based composer-performer Dinuk Wijeratne has been described by the Toronto Star as “an artist who reflects a positive vision of our cultural future,” and by the New York Times as “exuberantly creative.” His boundary-crossing work sees him equally at home in collaborations with symphony orchestras and string quartets, tabla players and DJs, and takes him to international venues as poles apart as the Berlin Philharmonie and the North Sea Jazz Festival.
Dinuk’s 2016 highlights include JUNO and ECMA wins for his string quartet pieces Two Pop Songs on Antique Poems, and his appointment as Composer-in-Residence of Symphony Nova Scotia. His music and collaborative work embrace the great diversity of his international background and influences.