Saturday March 21 • the Music Gallery presents
MARILYN NONKEN: SOLO PIANO

Doors at 6:30pm
Artist's Talk at 7pm
Concert at 8pm
Tickets $20 regular, $15 member, $10 student + senior
Advance tickets available via Ticketweb — BUY NOW!

Program
Liza Lim —The Four Seasons (After Cy Twombly) (2008)
Richard Festinger — Le Pianiste (2008) World Premiere
Drew Baker — Stress Position (2008)

Fearlessness is a virtue in contemporary music interpretation, but how not to fear someone who plays the complete Pierre Boulez, Arnold Schoenberg and Tristan Murail? New Yorker Marilyn Nonken comes to the Music Gallery for her first Toronto appearance, and brings with her an imagination and toughness that will overwhelm and subdue even the most hardened ear.

March 21’s program feature new works written for Marilyn, by composers representing the East Coast (New York), West Coast (San Francisco), and the Pacific Rim (Melbourne) — distinctive compositional voices, influenced alternately by Morton Feldman and the New York School, Brian Ferneyhough and the New Complexity, and the evolving practices of jazz and ethnic music. Lim's spare yet intense Four Seasons possesses visceral energy and vibrant colour, bringing together the violent and the meditative in tribute to one of the greatest Abstract Expressionist painters. The richly chromatic Le Pianiste captures the passion and fantasy of Roberto Matta's paintings, and also an engaging sense of the whimsical. With Stress Position, in which the piano is theatrically treated as a torture instrument, the emerging American Baker confronts the American "War on Terror," reacting to the abuses of power that have taken place at sites such as Abu Ghraib. Each of these very different works offers a unique, highly contemporary perspective on virtuosity and musical drama.

Biography
Marilyn Nonken, “a determined protector of important music" (New York Times) and "one of the greatest interpreters of new music" (American Record Guide), has been presented at venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Miller Theatre, IRCAM, the Festival d'Automne, Helsinki Festival, Aspects des Musiques d’Aujourd-hui, and William Kapell International Piano Festival and Competition. She records for New World, Mode, Lovely Music, Albany, Metier, CRI, BMOP Sound, Tzadik, and Neos, and has worked with composers ranging from Alvin Lucier to Tristan Murail and Brian Ferneyhough. She has also commissioned a host of emerging Americans, including Jason Eckardt and Drew Baker. A graduate of the Eastman School and Steinway Artist, she is Director of Piano Studies at NYU’s Steinhardt School.

"Nonken's performances are marvels of keyboard mastery and musical command." — The Boston Globe ("Best of '97, '99, '00, '01, '02")

"A pianist from music's leading edge." — The New York Times

"This pianist enthusiastically explores modern and other contemporary areas where a lot of pianists fear to hang out, and she packs enough artistry and technique for the journey." — The Village Voice