[451] Internationally recognized pianist Park closes MTSU’s Keyboard Artist Series April 20

MURFREESBORO — International award-winning pianist Esther Park will help MTSU’s School of Music conclude its inaugural Keyboard Artist Series season Wednesday, April 20, with a free performance in the university’s Wright Music Building.

Park’s 8 p.m. public concert will be conducted inside the Wright Building’s Hinton Music Hall. A searchable campus parking map is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap.

Park, winner of both the 2013 Jose Roca and Russian International Piano Competitions, among many such contests, has performed as a soloist with orchestras and in recitals across the United States, Europe and Asia.

She took her first piano lessons at age 4 and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from The Juilliard School, as well as a Master of Musical Arts degree from the Yale School of Music. Park currently is an assistant professor of piano at East Tennessee State University and the director of ETSU’s Pre-College Program.

“Dr. Park’s recital will be a great finale to our inaugural season of the MTSU Keyboard Artist Series,” said Arunesh Nadgir, coordinator of keyboard studies at MTSU.

The recital, titled “Le France,” will feature the works of Baroque-era composer Jean-Philippe Rameau and Impressionist Claude Debussy, both Frenchmen, in the first half and pieces influenced by French culture and composers in the second.

Park will perform movements from Rameau’s circa-1726 “Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin” and Debussy’s early 1900s “Images,” followed by “French Suite in G Major” by Johann Sebastian Bach, “Twelve Variations on ‘Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman’” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Franz Liszt’s concert transcription from Charles Gounod’s opera “Faust.”

Nadgir explained that despite almost 200 years separating the Rameau and Debussy works, “the two composers strongly connected through the French keyboard tradition. The listener will certainly hear similarities between these works.

“The second half offers wonderful music from the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. The audience will certainly appreciate the elegance of the Bach, the lightness and innocence of the Mozart and, finally, the virtuosic fireworks of the Liszt,” he continued.

For more information on the new Keyboard Artist Series at MTSU, which features MTSU faculty and distinguished guest artists from around the world, visit http://www.mtsu.edu/music/keyboardseries.php. For details on more MTSU School of Music concerts, call 615-898-2493 or visit http://www.mtsumusic.com and click on the "Concert Calendar" link.