Editor: Keith Davis Writers: Dave Maley Publisher: Office of Public Information Volume 22, No. 3   September 20, 1999

Pianist Angela Hewitt is Thaler Concert Recitalist Angela Hewitt — hailed by the Sunday Times of London as "one of the outstanding Bach pianists of our time" — will be performing on Tuesday, September 28, in Ford Hall in the James J. Whalen Center for Music. Hewitt, this year’s guest artist in the Rachel S. Thaler Concert Pianist Series, will begin the free concert at 8:15 p.m., playing works by Bach, Beethoven, and Handel. Born into a musical family (her father was a cathedral organist in Ottawa, Ontario), Hewitt began her piano studies at the age of 3, first performed in public at 4, and won her first scholarship a year later. At 9 she gave her first recital at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, where she studied for nine years before becoming a pupil of Jean-Paul Sevilla at the University of Ottawa. She went on to place first in Italy’s Viotti competition and became a top prizewinner in the international Bach competitions in Leipzig and Washington, D.C., as well as in the Schumann competition in Zwickau, the Casadesus competition in Cleveland, and the Dino Ciani competition at La Scala in Milan. It was her triumph in the 1985 international Bach piano competition in Toronto, however, and her subsequent Bach recording for Deutsche Grammophon that secured her reputation as a premier Bach performer. Hewitt’s repertoire, however, is not limited to Bach. Her performance at Ithaca College, for example, will feature Beethoven’s Variations and Fugue in E-flat Major, op. 35, and Handel’s Chaconne and 21 Variations as well as Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Hewitt’s solo recitals have taken her to some of the most prestigious performing venues in the world, including Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York City, Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, the Kennedy Center in Washington, London’s Wigmore Hall, Paris’s Salle Gaveau, Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan, and the Sydney Opera House. Established in 1991 in honor of a talented pianist and longtime College supporter, the Rachel S. Thaler Concert Pianist Series has brought to campus such world-class virtuosos as Jon Nakamatsu, Yefim Bronfman, Gilbert Kalish, and Garrick Ohlsson.