By Wendy Watkins
For The Cortez Journal
Halfpipe tricks, bobsled chutes, luge tracks, slalom and slopestyle, double axel quads, speed skating, mogul runs, aerial twists, biathlons. These have all recently become part of our collective conversation.
America loves watching its athletes compete at the highest level on the international stage. With inspiring Olympic performances still fresh in everyone’s mind, another world-class competitor will walk out on the M-CHS stage on Monday, March 3, at 7 p.m. when award-winning pianist Charlie Albright performs the third concert of the season for SouthWest Colorado Concerts.
A first-place winner in numerous world stage piano competitions, Albright has compiled an impressive resume at the age of 26, the age of many of our Olympic athletes. He made his orchestral debuts with the Boston Pops, the Seattle Symphony, and the Phoenix and Lansing symphonies, as well as the San Francisco Symphony and BBC Concert Orchestra. Additionally, he has performed as soloist in New York, where The New York Times praised his “jaw-dropping technique and virtuosity meshed with distinctive musicality” and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in the Young Concert Artists Series, where the Washington Post hailed him as “among the most gifted musicians of his generation.”
Albright, a native of Washington state, was the first classical pianist ever in the Harvard College/NewEngland Conservatory joint program, completing his bachelor’s degree as a pre-med and economics major at Harvard in 2011 and a master’s of music degree in piano performance at the New England Conservatory in 2012. He is currently pursuing an artist diploma at the Juilliard School.
Albright is currently on tour throughout the United States, and SouthWest Colorado Concerts was shrewd enough to make a bid for his talent to come to Cortez. This is a rare opportunity to be in the presence of true musical virtuosity; to see a player at the peak of his game, stepping off the international stage to bring music to smaller local audiences. And, if his website is any indication, Albright is a fun-loving, affable young man who loves what he does.
If you want a taste of what you may look forward to on March 3, visit his website at CharlieAlbright.com or on Facebook.com/CharlieAlbrightPianist. Check out his three-minute performance of Mozart’s Turkish Rondo arranged by Russian pianist, Arcadi Volodos. Performed with an apparent effortless, his technique will leave you panting. There’s more where that came from when he performs his program drawn from masterworks by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Chopin, Czech composer Janacek, and his own original improvisations.
Tickets are available at the door March 3 starting at 6:30 p.m. Single concert tickets are available for $20/adult and $5/youth. For more information, call Paul Bostrom at 565-9127 or Joyce Stevenson at 565-4757.
One additional concert will complete the SouthWest Colorado Concerts 2013-14 season. The series closes with the Golden Dragon Acrobats, the 26-member world famous Chinese acrobats, on Saturday May 3, 2014, at 7 p.m. This will be another show not to be missed.
Wendy Watkins is owner/operator of S’more Music. LLC., a private Suzuki piano studio. She can be reached at 565-4129.
