{"id":14206,"date":"2013-08-01T08:32:02","date_gmt":"2013-08-01T13:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=14206"},"modified":"2013-08-01T09:53:49","modified_gmt":"2013-08-01T14:53:49","slug":"toronto-pianist-adam-sherkin-ready-for-three-concert-series-at-jane-mallett-theatre-in-2012-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2013\/08\/01\/toronto-pianist-adam-sherkin-ready-for-three-concert-series-at-jane-mallett-theatre-in-2012-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto pianist Adam Sherkin ready for three-concert series at Jane Mallett Theatre in 2013-14"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

It is becoming more common to offer music students courses in entrepreneurship, given how difficult it is to find an agent, get the attention of concert presenters and record labels. Toronto composer-pianist Adam Sherkin could provide a lesson or two.<\/p>\n

He is a musical, technically gifted performer and a composer who mixes accessibility with careful structure in his work. But fine artists like Sherkin are part of our embarrassment of musical riches.<\/p>\n

What makes his story remarkable is how Sherkin has spent the last three or four years steadily, deliberately building an audience — to the point where this week he announced a three-concert series for 2013-14 at the Jane Mallett Theatre.<\/p>\n

That’s the same venue where Music Toronto presents the world’s best pianists and chamber music performers every year.<\/p>\n

Sherkin says he has amassed about 600 names on his audience list, which is 100 more than the capacity at the Jane Mallett Theatre.<\/p>\n

“Of course not everyone is going to come out to a concert,” he qualifies. “But I can make it work if I hit 100 people per concert.”<\/p>\n

Although every concert presenter in Toronto has found it increasingly difficult to sell subscriptions, Sherkin is offering a subscriber package with a substantial discount, on the advice of the people at the St Lawrence Centre.<\/p>\n

The pianist admits this is for older audience members — “people who check their calendars to see what they want to be doing on a Saturday night three months from now.” Sherkin says these patrons are a lot less likely to make last-minute ticket purchases the way younger concertgoers do.<\/p>\n

Sherkin, who is active on Facebook and Twitter, plans to offer last-minute discounts via social media, and says the St Lawrence Centre was a willing partner in accepting discount codes at the box office.<\/p>\n

But the real attraction has to be the music — and Sherkin appears to have that covered in\u00a0three carefully crafted programmes that mix works from the classical canon with Sherkin’s own.<\/p>\n

The first recital, on Sept. 28, references the 100th anniversary of Benjamin Britten’s birth and the composer’s 1939 stay in Canada. We will hear Britten’s early Holiday Diary<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That programme also includes gamelan transcriptions Canadian-born composer Colin McPhee brought back from Bali — some of which McPhee recorded with Britten in New York City in 1942.<\/p>\n

“It’s going to be the 50th anniversary of McPhee’s death,” explains Sherkin of a composer central to the development of 20th century minimalism.<\/p>\n

Sherkin was also charmed by the Western lens through which McPhee filtered his musical imports. “He even has Italian tempo markings,” chuckles the pianist.<\/p>\n

The anchor of that first programme is Aaron Copland’s fierce Piano Sonata<\/em> — something the composer was working on during a visit by Britten.<\/p>\n

Rather than kicking back, Sherkin is spending his summer writing pieces to complement this programme as well as the two that follow. The most ambitious will be a 20-to-25-minute fantasia for the March recital.<\/p>\n

You can find all the details of the three programmes and read more about Sherkin\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Udo Steingraeber, the head of the German boutique piano maker Steingraeber & Sohne, was in Toronto in May, and Sherkin was given the opportunity to play for him at the Canadian Music Centre (which has bought a Steingraeber concert piano).<\/p>\n

Sherkin chose to play a reminiscence of Wagner’s Parsifal<\/em> by Franz Liszt, in honour of the piano firm, which cast the bells for the original performance of the opera in Bayreuth.<\/p>\n

Here is the Solemn March to the Holy Grail:<\/p>\n