‘Frighteningly talented’ pianist Christopher Taylor to open Rieth Chamber Series
Concert: Rieth Chamber Series: Christopher Taylor, solo piano
Date and Time: Friday, Sept. 30, 2016, 7:30 p.m.
Location: Goshen College Music Center’s Sauder Concert Hall
Tickets: $10 Buy Tickets
Virtuoso pianist and University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Piano Christopher Taylor will present a solo piano concert in Sauder Concert Hall on Friday, Sept. 30, 2016. The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. and is the opening concert in the 2016-17 Rieth Chamber Series at Goshen College.
Taylor’s program will include performances of J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 6 in E minor, Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Piano, and Fryderyk Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28.
The concert is presented in collaboration with the Indiana Music Teachers Association State Conference, which will be held at Goshen College on September 30 and October 1, 2016.
General admission tickets are $10, available online at goshen.edu/tickets or by calling (574) 535-7566.
Taylor will also present a piano master class on Saturday, Oct. 1 at 10:30 a.m. in Rieth Recital Hall. The master class is free, and the public is warmly invited.
The 2016-17 Rieth Chamber Series features seven concerts by outstanding organists and chamber music ensembles including Baroque ensemble Les Délices, Fischoff Competition Grand Prize Winners Ulysses Quartet and organist Aaron Sunstein, plus a bonus concert with reception for series subscribers only. Music Center Executive Director Marcia Yost explains that series supporters “will provide support for ongoing, accessible classical chamber music at Goshen College, as well as aid in establishing a reputation with performing artists for appreciative Music Center audiences.” Season tickets are still available. More information about this series is online at gcmusiccenter.org/events/rieth-chamber-series/
Hailed by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist” (The Los Angeles Times), Taylor has distinguished himself throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents and interests. He is known for a passionate advocacy of music written in the past 100 years — Messiaen, Ligeti, and Bolcom figure prominently in his performances — but his repertoire spans four centuries and includes the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and a multitude of other familiar masterworks. Whatever the genre or era of the composition, Taylor brings to it an active imagination and intellect coupled with heartfelt intensity and grace.
Numerous awards have confirmed Taylor’s high standing in the musical world. He was named an American Pianists’ Association Fellow for 2000, before which he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1990 he took first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and also became one of the first recipients of the Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award.
Taylor owes much of his success to several outstanding teachers, including Russell Sherman, Maria Curcio-Diamand, Francisco Aybar and Julie Bees. In addition to his busy concert schedule, he currently serves as Paul Collins Associate Professor of Piano Performance at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He pursues a variety of other interests, including: mathematics (he received a summa cum laude degree from Harvard University in this field in 1992), philosophy (an article he coauthored with the leading scholar Daniel Dennett appears in the Oxford Free Will Handbook), computing, linguistics and biking, which is his primary means of commuting. Taylor lives in Middleton, Wisconsin, with his wife and two daughters.