Alicia de Larrocha at 100

Klavierhaus  presents pianist Adam Kent in a two-concert centennial tribute to Alicia de Larrocha – Saturday and Sunday May 20 and 21, 2023 at 7 p.m.

With guest artist mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna

Organized by Institut Ramon Llull and co-sponsored by the Foundation for Iberian Music.

 


Saturday evenings May 20 at 7p.m, a concert including works for piano and voice composed by, dedicated to, or disseminated by Alicia de Larrocha, including several New York premieres.  Composers will include:  Alicia de Larrocha, Frank Marshall (her teacher), Joan Torra (her husband), Carlos Surinach, Joaquin Nin-Culmell, Federico Mompou, Xavier Montsalvatge, Lleonard Balada, Isaac Albeniz, Mateo Albeniz, Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla, and Antoni Soler.

This event will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Candice Agree, Joseph Patrych, and the artists.

Sunday May 21 at 7pm, guest artist mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna will join Adam Kent for an additional event.

 

 

 

A personal reflection from Adam Kent

“When I was 11 years old, my grandparents took me to hear the Catalan pianist Alicia de Larrocha in concert at Avery Fisher Hall. I was looking forward to the first half of the program, which included music by composers familiar to me—Bach, Haydn, and Mendelssohn. The second half looked more daunting—dedicated entirely to works by a Spaniard named Manuel de Falla, whose last name I assumed rhymed with “Paula”. Traffic was heavy coming into Manhattan that afternoon, and we missed the entire first half. It didn’t take more than the first few notes of Falla’s “Danza de la molinera” to make me realize that all was not lost. All at once, I found myself seduced by the robust folkloricism of this music, coupled to the exotic harmonic world and fanciful voicing of so much French Impressionistic music. Ever since then, the music of Spain has been central to my work as a performing artist and educator.”

 

ADAM KENT                                                                                                 

www.adamkentmusic.com

Pianist Adam Kent has performed in recital, as soloist with orchestra, and in chamber music on four continents. 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 is a favorite on N.Y.C. area radio stations.

His recently released recording of the piano music of the Cuban-American composer Tania León entitled “Teclas de mi piano” has garnered critical praise from The New York Times, which reported, “The pianist Adam Kent has the measure of León’s sound throughout, whether he’s dealing with student pieces written in the 1960s or more recent items like “Homenatge,” from 2011. In the latter, he brings a virtuoso’s zest to the dance rhythms and bluesy clusters that cavort in the composition’s opening minutes. But he also offers a patient, less showy sensibility during the ruminative airs of the final minutes…Throughout, Kent pays as much attention to León’s formal invention as to the way she reworks her diverse inspirations.” All About the Arts enthuses about the disc “…the gifted Adam Kent triumphantly takes on every one of the pianistic hurdles contained in Tania León’s panoply of works.” Among his other critically acclaimed commercial recordings are a CD of Ernesto Halffter’s complete piano music on Bridge Records and performances of chamber works by Joaquín Turina, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Oscar Lorenzo Fernândez with the Damocles Trio and Emerson Quartet violist Lawrence Dutton on the Claves label.

The music of Spain and Latin-America has long 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 Spanish Consulate has also sponsored appearances by Dr. Kent at Weill Recital and Merkin Concert Halls. 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 music with the Damocles Trio and Spanish composer and conductor Salvador Brotons, and 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. Dr.  Kent has also won grants to commission new works from Tania León, Salvador Brotons, Miguel-Ángel Roig-Francolì, and others. He has contributed performances and interviews to documentaries on Spanish composers Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla, and Federico Mompou. Ms. León’s music has been an area of particular advocacy for Dr. Kent, who has programmed her works in concerts throughout the world, including a version of Homenatge choreographed by Pedro Ruiz for Dance Theater of Harlem.

Since 2016, Dr. Kent has been a professor of music at the State University of New York at Oneonta, where he was recently awarded the 2023 Susan Sutton Smith Award for Academic Excellence. Summers have found him serving as Director of Cultural Outreach at the Burgos International Music Festival and teaching and performing at the Summit Music Festival in N.Y, Alberta Pianofest in Edmonton, Canada, and the Cursos de Verano of the Fundación Princesa de Asturias in Oviedo, Spain. He received a D.M.A. from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal. He holds as well B.M. and M.M. degrees from Manhattan School of Music, where he was a student of Solomon Mikowsky. In April 2023, Dr. Kent began a three-year tenure on the American Fulbright Specialist roster.

Mezzo Soprano Anna Tonna has been described as “mezzo heroine who knows how to sing Rossini” by the Rossini Gessellschaft and as “showing off her warm, secure mezzo-soprano to maximum advantage” by the New York Magazine; accolades such as these explain her constant demand as a recitalist and opera singer in both Europe and the Americas. The combination of a highly developed coloratura with a full, balanced, flexible lower register have guaranteed her acclaim as a lyric mezzo, both in familiar roles Rosina, Carmen, Dorabella, as well as in more rare repertoire by Paisiello, Vivaldi, Mascagni, Zandonai and Giordano. 

Additionally, Anna’s passion for excellence in the recital genre have garnered her increasing acclaim in both the U.S. and Europe, particularly her path breaking explorations of the repertoire of composers from Spain and Latin America. Anna’s recitals are a source of expectation and excitement in New York City, where she has performed at both the Alice Tully Hall and Rose Center of Lincoln Center, Bargemusic, Merkin Hall, New York’s Town Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. The same excitement greets her appearances in Spain, with performances at the Auditorio Nacional de España, Teatro del Escorial and the Academia Marshall in Barcelona.

She has collaborated with Casals Festival of Puerto Rico, Festival Iberoamericano de las Artes in Puerto Rico, Música de Cámara of New York, El Festival de Segovia, Joy in Singing, Elysium Between Two Continents and the Nassau Music Festival among others. Of note among the countless recital of songs are appearances at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the St. Anton Palace in Valletta (Malta), the Palacio Nacional de Ájuda in Lisbon, Teatro 1793 at Villa Adlrovandi Mazzacorati in Italy, the Atheneums of Madrid and Barcelona and at the ElbPhilharmonie in Hamburg. Her recital of “Songs of post Civil War Spain” at the Fundación Juan March of Madrid was broadcast on Radio Television Española and hailed as “a tour de force” by the Spanish newspaper ABC. 

​Anna’s artistry has been recognized by the Liederkranz Foundation, The Gerda Lissner Foundation, National Opera Association, Opera at Florham/Violeta Dupont Vocal Competition, and a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research in and perform Spanish Art Song in Spain, where she has established a thriving career. Commercial recordings that have preserved some of these efforts include “The songs of Julio Gómez” with disc label VERSO and “España alla Rossini” which premiered in April of 2016 with iTinerant Classics. 

In 2017 she bowed in the role of Laura Adorno in Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” with the Brno State Opera in the Czech Republic. In 2018 she was heard in the roles of Clarina in Rossini’s “Il cambiale di Matrimonio” and of Sally in Barber’s “A Hand of Bridge” for Little Opera Zamora in Spain, a Zarzuela concert at the ElbPhilharmonie in Hamburg (Germany), at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library (NYC), The Americas Society (NYC) and in Bernstein’s “Songfest” for Maverick Concerts (NY). 

Her 2018 season includes diplomatic concerts in Lisbon and the Dominican Republic; in Rossini vocal recital in Italy for the Circolo Lirico di Bologna and Museo Glauco Lombardi in Parma as well as in Spain for the Museo del Romanticismo and the Festival de Navas del Marqués in collaboration Duo Savigni; a German lieder duet concert with baritone Alfredo García at Festival ASISA in Spain, as well as appearances at The Sembrich Opera Museum (NY). 

In the fall of 2019 she bowed in a concert with orchestra with Teatro Grattacielo in Manhattan under the baton of Israel Gursky; as La Roldán in the zarzuela “El barbero de Sevilla” with New Camerata Opera; and in a concert of opera and zarzuela for the Auditorio National de España in Madrid. 

​Upcoming appearances include: the role of Glaura in Jose Lidon’s “Glaura y Cariolano” for LittleOpera Zamora; chamber music concerts in New York, Madrid, Italy, Viena and Germany in the summer and fall of 2022. Her newest disc with pianist Mac McClure, “1915:  Trip to Granada” (Classical Kat) premieres in spring of 2022.