Boehmler Foundation Brings Renowned Pianist Gilbert Kalish to Ithaca College
ITHACA, NY — The Robert G. Boehmler Community Foundation series will bring renowned pianist Gilbert Kalish to Ithaca College to perform with the Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, Dec. 5. Free and open to the public, the concert will begin at 8:15 p.m. in Ford Hall in the James J. Whalen Center for Music. Conducted by Jeffery Meyer, the program, will feature Kalish in the solo role for Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto. Thomas Ades’s “These Premises Are Alarmed” and Prokofiev’s “Symphony No. 5” will also be performed. Kalish will coach several student chamber music groups in the School of Music and present master classes.
Gilbert Kalish leads a musical life of unusual variety and breadth. His profound influence on the musical community as an educator, and as a pianist in myriad performances and recordings, has established him as a major figure in American music making.
He has been the pianist for the Boston Symphony Chamber Players since 1969 and was a founding member of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, a group devoted to new music that flourished during the 1960s and 70s. A frequent guest artist with many of the world’s most distinguished chamber ensembles, Kalish’s 30-year partnership with the great mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani was universally recognized as one of the most remarkable artistic collaborations of our time. In addition to frequent appearances with soprano Dawn Upshaw, Kalish maintains long-standing duo performances with the cellists Timothy Eddy and Joel Krosnick.
As an educator, Kalish is the leading professor and head of performance activities at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. From 1968 to 1997, he was a faculty member of the Tanglewood Music Center and served as the “Chairman of the Faculty” at Tanglewood from 1985 to1997.
Kalish is coming to campus thanks to a grant from the Robert G. Boehmler Community Foundation. Boehmler, who received a bachelor’s degree from the Ithaca College School of Music in 1938 and a master’s degree in 1961, was a musician and educator who established this foundation to support education in the communities in which he lived. A music teacher in the Palmyra-Macedon (New York) School District for many years, Boehmler died in 1998.
The Ithaca College School of Music presents some 300 concerts annually, for more information visit www.ithaca.edu/concerts or call (607) 274-3717.
Originally published in News Releases: Boehmler Foundation Brings Renowned Pianist Gilbert Kalish to Ithaca College.
