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A silly little trailer, and my first (very rough) attempt to video editing......

Click HERE for the Prairie Debut Trailer

Back to the South (Winnipeg !)

We're on a flight back to Winnipeg, after our Northern adventure in Thompson and Snow Lake. Internet-less and phone-less for two days we would have felt completely disconnected from the world were not for the warmth of the locals. We had a great time. The two and a half hour drive through a forest reminiscent of the Siberian taiga, was pretty uneventful until we got closer to Snow Lake and a beautiful landscape started to form. The flat land become more hilly and lots of (frozen) mini lakes appeared. We stayed at an amazing hunting and fishing lodge by the Wekusko Falls and it was breathtaking. Our private cabin was literally ON the falls. As it usually happens we had time to drop our suitcases and leave for the performance venue. We had two performances: one for local kids, who behaved exemplarily well, and the evening recital. The venue was an unusual one, the beautiful home of David Hart, a wonderful man, art collector with impeccable taste who owns five pianos (including a wonderful Yamaha Concert Grand) and a beautiful harpsichord.

He is an avid music and art lover, and we started spending some time watching wonderful videos, while waiting for lunch. The highlights included an interview with Arthur Rubinstein at age 90 and a quirky Canadian cartoon entitled Getting Started. David is the proud owner of a wonderful Elektra espresso machine, and I have to say he spent most of his time making me what seemed to be an obscene amount of delicious espressos and cappuccinos!

The kids were just amazing, and seemed to really get into the core of the music we played for them, and formulated very deep thoughts about the program. The evening audience was also wonderful. We met them after the concert and there was a wonderful feeling of having played our program directly to each one of them. A delightful reception hosted by David, the perfect host followed. We sipped rare tea served in two beautiful antique Russian samovars. I had another coffee, I think. To think that we were in Snow Lake, a small mining town in Northern Manitoba, surrounded by Russian samovars, beautiful art, Persian carpets and sipping espresso from an Elektra machine was mind blowing!

We drove our 10 miles back to the cabin, and woke up early to take a short walk around the property and the falls before going into town for yet another feast (breakfast, this time) at David's.

We will cherish our memories of Snow Lake for a long time to come. Back at Thompson airport I finally received all my e-mails for the past two days. About 100 emails, half of them junk, many serious ones and about a dozen of them with pressing questions needing to be answered, oh well, yesterday. Really? Now, really? How urgent can these be? Looking at Canada's vast forests from our plane now, and thinking about all the roads we still have to cover, it all seems relative. These tours seem to be a time to reflect on music, ourselves, and how small we are after all in this world, regardless of how big our preoccupations might seem back home. Kipling, Langenburg, Yorkton and Wynyard left on this segment of the Prairie Debut tour.

Oh, I will miss the Elektra in the next few days.

our cabin on the Falls

the Elektra!!!

Petting zoo

the Falls from our cabin

 Lucille and I on the property

southern Italian playing with snow

amazing falls

 the falls from the suspended bridge

Canadian Tour 2 - part 1

Greetings from Thompson, Manitoba. Check it out on this MAP
We were greeted by a a balmy -26C (-15F) at the Thompson airport. The air brought me back to our Trans-siberian tours. You can read my first long diary from that amazing trip HERE.
The air is cold and dry and as soon as you step out you feel your nose hair starting to freeze. I have to say it is much more pleasant than the relatively warmer but more humid Winnipeg, where last night we started the second of three legs of our Praire Debut Tour. The tour will cover about thirty towns across Saskatchewan and Manitoba in three segments: the first was last October, this current one in December and the longest final leg will take place in February.
Winnipeg was fun. Lucille and I played as part of the Virtuosi Concerts Series, the major recital series in town. We were chosen as poster children for the season brochure and it was nice to see our faces at the Winnipeg airport. We played to a wonderful sold out house, on an old Steinway D, signed by none other than Claudio Arrau!
So we boarded a small ATR-42 propeller jet flown by Calm Air to Thompson, picked up our monstrous Dodge Ram 5.7L 4X4 pick-up truck and drove to our hotel. We were warned by the tour manager not to go out, as apparently the town can be dangerous, and only to eat at the restaurant recommended by the hotel. We left for the restaurant just to find out that they are closed on Sunday, we tried another establishment, but after looking at the "way-too-cozy" atmosphere and noticing a smell of cheap alcohol (at 5pm), we decided to drive through an A&W and eat burgers in our room.
Tomorrow, we leave for the charming town, appropriately called Snow Lake, a mining town in which just last year the largest Canadian deposit of gold was discovered! We have a school program and an evening concert there tomorrow, and it will be by far the most remote destination of this tour.
Oh, I almost forgot. I need to plug in the Dodge's battery to an outlet in the parking lot, so that the battery won't freeze over night and the car will start in the morning. I have never done this before. I hope I do it right, or we might end up staying in Thompson and eating at A&W again...

Welcome to Thompson airport

Typing the destination on the GPS 

Driving in the Prairies

Sweet ride

 Calm Air Pamphlet 

 Winnipeg Program

Canada's Prairie Tour- Part Two...itinerary

Here's the google map itinerary for the second leg of our tour through Canada's Prairies....
More posts to follows...hopefully! :-0

Canadian tour #2

Tonight is the last concert of the first portion of Canadian "Prairie Debut" tour. At 1600km of driving through Saskatchewan and 6 concerts in 6 days, this is the shortest of three tours. The next one will be in December and the last one in February, for a total of almost 30 concerts and a few workshops. The program is a healthy mix of four hand works with my wife, Lucille Chung, by Mozart, Brahms, Schmidt (a Canadian composer we commissioned a work from), and Piazzolla. It's been an interesting tour, mainly because of the various small and enthusiastic communities we brought our programs to and some really vast landscapes. I don't think we've ever seen so much sky in our lives!
So we left the "Korean" Travelodge in Melfort. The food was really outstanding! And it included a Ukrainian brunch on the morning we left town. Since Melfort we played to sold out houses, made up with locals, piano teacher(s), and lots of piano students. It was really heart warming to see and talk to these special audiences. And God knows, we needed some warming. Although the temperatures became more friendly and most of the ice melted, we had a bit of an adventure last night in Manitou Beach. We assumed most of the Prairies would be totally flat, but this beautiful spot, a nice lake surrounded by cliffs was not! Last night, coming back from the concert in Watrous, I took a wrong turn, and got ourselves stuck on ice on a winding hill, far away from the main road, and with no phone connection. A ditch was just inches away, while I tried to wiggle the car out of the ice for a good half an hour. It was quite an experience for a Southern Italian like myself. We kind of gave up, when I tried one last time, we somehow magically got out. We were pretty lost, and I just followed the only path my car let me go on, until we ran into some civilization and asked for directions. We got to the main road, finally, but again totally lost. We saw a deer, but didn't want to ask for directions.... and right at that time our phone somehow miraculously got enough connection to log onto Google Maps to get us out.
We asked Lynne Bailey, Executive Directore of PD to rent us a 4X4 car in December!
So tonight is our last concert of this first segment, then a 2 hour drive to Regina airport and two flights to get back home in New York, just in time for my debut recital at the Metropolitan Museum on Nov. 5 .

NYC, and especially our home, will feel very good, I think!

Tough competition, in Melfort

Amazing views

Our dirty car at the end of the tour

no hurry....

Watrous

Prairie life

Canadian Prairies Tour #1

Oct. 29, 2010

It's the second day of our Canadian "Prairie Debut" tour. We flew into Saskatoon, spent the night and embarked on our drive to Hudson Bay, SK. 330km away, but the roads were so icy already that slow traffic made the journey last about five hours. The scenery is quite stunning. Winter has already started, and we have continuous views of the white prairies, and an enormous sky. It's wonderful to have 360 degrees views at all times. Living in NYC, we definitely appreciate this.
The ice on the road is no fun, especially as it forces us to drive at a snail's pace.
We stayed at a cozy B&B last night located on a ranch. Part hunting lodge and part horse riding destination, the B&B felt very comfortable and its owners went out of their way to make us feel welcome. We played the concert to a mixed crowd of young piano students and local older couples, whom seemed thrilled to have a classical "act" in town.
After an amazing breakfast of local oats, wild Saskatoon berry jams, eggs, bacon, and, to my request, moose steaks, we took the road to Melfort, about 155km back on the way to Saskatoon. The second part of the journey was pretty rough, but I am still in awe of the colorless vast landscape. I wish I didn't have to drive and just take pictures. I am feeling immersed in an amazing black and white painting!
We checked in at the Travelodge in Melfort. The place has been owned by Korean nationals for the last two years and its restaurant serves Korean food! Needless to say, they were thrilled to see Lucille whom in Korean negotiated for us to have a Korean lunch today, even though it is usually reserved only for dinner here.
I have been wanting to compare this tour to our previous trans-siberian tours, but I have had some difficulties so far. Now, I am driving, so unfortunately am not able to soak in the surroundings as well as I did in Russia, and also, as much as we felt detached from our world in Russia, we were visiting all the major cities, whereas so far on this tour we are in really rural areas. Hudson Bay's populations is 1600, to put things into perspective.  Second concert in a few hours, but not before a Korean lunch! Moose Kalbi, anyone?

saskatoon jam

moose steak b-fast

our vehicle...

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Music@Menlo: Found in Translation (Aug 9)

VIDEO CLIP FROM MUSIC@MENLO 2010's Carte Blanche!

Music@Menlo: Found in Translation (Aug 9)

August 8, 10am. Music@Menlo: Carte Blanche Concert IV: Found in Translation

Music@Menlo: Carte Blanche Concert IV: Found in Translation

It's been a while: a mid-summer night's story

It's been a while since my last post. It's about 1230am now, but summer is going by so fast that I suddenly felt the need to jot the first part of it down.
This is a wonderfully hectic summer. Six festivals, a Rachmaninov Solo CD for Signum, a three-week long tour of Japan, a couple of recitals and a concerto performance are just the musical part of this crazy summer. Lucille and I also sold our condo in New York last month and just moved to a brand new one fives blocks away. Two separate trips to Asia and two to Europe are somehow providing me with lots of hours of much needed mental rest on the plane. As it happens,  I had to fly from Wales to NYC for two nights to close on our sale and move all our belongings (including two pianos!) to storage, then went on to my Japan tour and three weeks later started rehearsals in Fort Worth. Lucille managed among many difficulties, and performances (including a Mozart recording for Universal) to close on our purchase of the new condo AND move in during her two day stay in New York. She then joined me to the Mimir Chamber Festival in Fort Worth. We just got back to NYC and are unpacking. It's really exciting. I am looking forward to lots of dinner parties.

I was really happy to be back at beautiful Schloss Elmau, in Bavaria for the second time.  It is really heaven on earth! This time I put together  three concerts with Lucille, and my friends (and amazing musicians) Nicolas Alstaedt and Joseph Lin. We really had a great time playing wonderful music, enjoying the spectacular surroundings and taking full advantage of the most beautiful spa I have ever seen. Highly recommended!

I am really excited also about the new Rachmaninov recording for Signum Records. We chose the beautiful facilities at Wyastone, in Wales, for this project, and I couldn't have been happier. My producer Anna Barry and Mike Hatch were their amazing selves. I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with them on my last three recordings, starting with Warner Classics' Baroque Reflections. It went so well that we finished the recording early. I can't wait to hear the final edit, and for the  recording to be out next year! It will feature the complete preludes op. 23, quite a few transcriptions (including my own version of Vocalise), and a rarity: some charming student works by Rachmaninov.

I then moved out of our old place and  I got ready for the long tour in Japan with violinist Sayako Kusaka, an old friend from my SMU, who is now concertmaster of the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra.  We played three programs, including my first ever Franck Sonata (!) among other things. But the highlight of the tour for me was performing  Busoni's amazing Second Violin Sonata. It is such a special, unique and powerful work, and it was a pleasure to perform it in such great concert halls and on great pianos with her.
I thing I have probably been to Japan about 15-20 times, but this summer I finally had time to visit Tsukiji, Tokyo's famous fish market for the first time. Our tour manager picked us up at 330am to be in line for the tuna auction at 4. It was really an amazing experience. Of course the 6am  sushi omakase at the market was the best part! I also had the opportunity to visit the beautiful city of Nara, Japan's oldest, and to meet a lot of warm people all over Japan. All in all it was a great trip, and a very unusual one, since  I had a bit of free time and met with a few friends while in Tokyo! I have to confess that Tokyo has become over the years one of my favorite destinations. I can't wait to go back!

A yearly summer appointment, the Mimir Festival in Fort Worth, followed Japan right away. This was a fun year, as I was playing two amazing works. Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time (it was my first performance ever!) and Korngold's Suite for two violins, cello and piano left hand alone! Mimir is always a lot of fun, and after about ten years, I feel like I know a lot of the audience, and that we are all a big family. 

Now, I am back in NYC, in my beautiful new home, and with Lucille. Off to Westport, CT, for a four hand concert with Lucille on July 24th , then back home and off to Menlo for my debut at the wonderful Music@Menlo Festival. At that point, musically, I will only be half way through my summer. It's going to be a long and wonderful one!

Carte Blanche at Music@Menlo

I was asked to come up with a Carte Blanche recital concept for this summer's Music@Menlo Festival. Coming up with a three-part recital spanning from Bach to Berio was a very interesting process for me. The concert will take place on August 8th, and will start at 10 am at the Stent Family Hall, at Menlo School.
For more info check out the Festival page for the concert.
I was also asked to write some extensive program notes on this Carte Blanche. Feel free to read them here!
Now back to New Jersey, with the second of the four "Best of" concerts which will see me and Lucille performing a variety of concertos with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and their new music director Jacques Lacombe!

My fastest and shortest version of BWV 846

Click HERE to see the AMEX commercial!!!

Mid-travel

I'm now at AA's flagship lounge in Miami at the beginning of a month-long "outing". I was lucky enough to spend last week playing at the Aruba International Piano Festival. The name says it all. Lucille joined me and played for  the first few concerts but had to leave a couple of days ago to play Saint-Saens' Second Concerto in Toronto. The rehearsal and performing schedule was supposed to be quite relaxed but because of Eyjafjallajökull (yes, I copied and pasted that)  things became quite hectic. Three of the musicians were stuck in Europe and we had to come up with a brand new festival on the spot. Lucille did most of the organizing, if not all of it, and I really think it all turned out for the better. The audience enjoyed the new programs very much and we had a lot of fun playing "a lot" of music. On the flip side of it, we couldn't spend any time on Aruba's gorgeous white beaches. Only 15 minutes at the beginning of the festival were enough to give me an embarrassing T-shirt tan which will stay with me a for the next few months. So a lot of unexpected work and no holiday, but then, I'd rather be working looking at the beach and looking forward to a freshly made Pina Colada than anything else. I also met a lot of new wonderful musician friends, and had the feeling that very long friendship started this week. That's an incredibly rewarding feeling.
I now have eight full hours at MIA and no excuse not to update my blog. I am on my way to Bilbao, where I will be rehearsing the Tchaikovsky First Concerto with the Bilbao Symphony to play it in Madrid's Auditorio Nacional on the 29th and in Salamanca on the 30th . This is the concert that triggered that strange exclusivity clause with my contract with the Castilla and Leon  Orchestra last month and saw Lucille come to the rescue...
I am very excited to be playing in the main hall of the Auditorio Nacional for the first time. I played in the recital hall for Joaquin Achucarro's 70th birthday a few years back, and this is now quite a nice event for me. The schedule is pretty hectic. Rehearsals on the 27 and 28, bus to Madrid on the 29, concert in Madrid (at 1030pm!!!), bus to Salamanca on the 30, concert in Salamanca, bus to Bilbao and recital in Mondragon on May 1. Then on May 2 I fly (via Stuttgart!!) to Bari for rehearse a chamber concert on the 5th. I will stay few days in my home town to be with family, get a new tuxedo made, and a couple of suits "touched-up". Lucille will reach me on the 4th and we'll go to Lubeck for the last concert of this segment on the 13th. Back to NYC on the 14th and rehearsing a chamber program on the 15th morning!

The Tres Leches cake in the lounge looks very tempting right now. After a night spent with musicians roaming an island in search of food, running into closed restaurants and ending up at a McDonald's,  a Tres Leches sounds very good! Maybe if I dare venture outside the lounge I can find a nice cuban cafecito somewhere in Miami airport.
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Blackberry pictures of a couple of rehearsal breaks in Aruba:

weather trouble

8am. I wake up to a snow covered view of Central Park. Pretty, I think, then look down and see cars and buses either stopped on the circle, or spinning their wheels trying to get out of the snow. I get my Blackberry out of bedside mode, and the phone starts buzzing uncontrollably. 10 emails, 7 facebook alerts and 1 voice mail. Everything is pretty standard, but the voice mail worries me. As it turns out, it is a "courtesy" call by American Airlines saying our flights out of LGA were cancelled because of weather. The friendly voice goes on saying that they kindly re-booked us one day later, through Miami all the way to Madrid. It's all fine with me, but I realize that Lucille will have to play her recital about two hours after touching down. We call AA's Executive Platinum desk, knowing that no matter how high one is on the priority list, it's going to be a long wait. The scene is something to behold: two blackberries, and our home phone, all set on speakerphone, playing AA's holding jingles, sounding like an edgy minimalist trio for three computerized travel agents accompanied by elevator music. The piece lasts for about 30 minutes, at the end of which a very nice travel agent, a real person this time, makes sure we have seats together tomorrow, and wishes us good luck getting a flight. By the looks of it, I dare not make any predictions, but the snow seems to be getting worse. 

It's been a rough winter season. I managed to get on the last flight to Florida two weeks ago, before Dallas was covered by a record-breaking 12 inches of snow. Lucille was stuck there for an extra day and reached me in Florida just in time to hear my first performance ever of Chopin's Second Piano Concerto and to celebrate Valentine's day. Earlier this year, she had to cancel a concert in Washington, DC, also because of weather. Hopefully this time things will work out. After her recital near Madrid, we'll be off for three concerts with the Grieg Concerto and the lovely Castilla y Leon Symphony Orchestra in Valladolid and Salamanca. I am really excited to be back there, to play for the first time in their new hall in Valladolid, and to be working with conductor Vasily Petrenko. Of course, I can't wait to have their world famous suckling lamb once again. About a month ago this tour almost fell apart. The management realized that I was booked to play in the Salamanca hall with two different orchestras on two different tours, one month apart. Because of some exclusivity clause, buried deep inside some contracts, this could not happen. Happily they asked Lucille to play the concert in Salamanca, which makes this tour quite unusual. I'll do the rehearsals and play the concerts in Valladolid, then she'll have a quick sound check on the day of the last concert in Salamanca, and I will be sitting in the hall enjoying her performance of the Grieg! 

All of this, weather permitting!

A bonus post about food...

I know, I know. I meant to stay quiet until the end of 2009, but I just had to post this. It's been a great culinary week. It started with seafood shopping and the amazing Chelsea Market (16th street and 9th avenue) for our Vigilia dinner. I made Lucille's favorite dish...zuppa di pesce (fish soup). We were so impressed with the quality of the seafood at the Chelsea Market. The zuppa di pesce was at the center of our Christmas dinner.
It is made in a few easy steps (see pics below). Prepare a fish stock (any fish bones and heads would do. I was given the remains of a striped bass by the fishmonger). Lightly steam the clams. Sautee garlic, onions and tomato paste. Add squid and octopus. Add Clams. Add tomato sauce (I used canned cherry tomatoes and San Marzano tomato puree). At the very end,  add the red mullets or any other fish and cook for just a few minutes. Season (very little salt, as fish is quite salty, pepper, and I like hot paprika and saffron stems)....add fresh parsley. That's it...pretty simple, eh? The best thing is that you can use almost any kind of fish and seafood.

And to add to the seafood feast, last night we went to an amazing restaurant called Sik Gaek in Flushing, NY. The 1-hour long commute was well worth it. The place specialize in Korean seafood and has become very popular since it was featured on the Anthony Bourdain's No Reservation show about the outer boroughs.  It has a really laid back and cool atmosphere, lots of drinks and most importantly amazing seafood. One of their specialty is a live octopus appetizer. It's cut while still live and it keeps moving and trying to run off the plate for about ten more minutes. It doesn't get much fresher than this... The suction action that the tentacles have while you chew is an experience.  You can see the video of the live octopus here.

The main dish was a seafood stew (this time a spicy Korean one, of course) that was just a feast for the eyes. Giant clams, mussels, octopus, squid, crabs, live lobster (yes, live, but not for long) and even abalone! Simply amazing! It was quite a shock to come out the restaurant and be in Flushing! We had felt as if we were in Korea during the whole meal.