Pianist Piotr Anderszewski
Pianist Piotr Anderszewski, the 2002 winner of the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award, will perform Sunday, Feb. 24, in the University of Wyoming Cultural Programs' spring concert series.
The second of four spring concerts begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center concert
hall. Tickets cost $18 for the public and $15 for students and seniors. Tickets are
available by calling the Fine Arts Center box office at (307) 766-6666 or at the Web
site www.uwyoedu/finearts.
The Polish-born Anderszewski has long been on the wish list of UW Cultural Programs
Director Cedric Reverand, who first tried to bring the pianist to Wyoming in 2001
and 2002.
"We tried to convince others to join us in ‘block-booking' him, but to no avail,"
Reverand says. "Now, nine CDs and a Gramophone award later, others know who he is
and we've put together a tour. But, remember, we noticed him first."
Anderszewski, who has performed with the Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and London
symphonies, the Los Angeles and Berlin philharmonics and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra,
won his first Gramophone award, for best instrumental disc, in 2006. The Gramophone
awards are considered the Oscars of classical music.
Four years earlier, shortly after UW first attempted to bring him to campus, Anderszewski
won the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award, which is presented every four years to an international
pianist who is deemed worthy of a global career. Reverand describes the award as "the
classical pianist's equivalent of the MacArthur ‘Genius' award."
The 2008 spring season will also feature the Imani Winds, a Grammy-nominated wind
quintet that recently won an award from Chamber Music of America (March 12), and Irish
pianist Barry Douglas, the 1986 Gold Medalist of the Moscow Tchaikovsky International
Competition, with his all- Irish orchestra Camerata Ireland (March 27).
