Drew Petersen & Jed Distler: Mahler & Schubert Four-Hands

5 PM Doors & Pre-Reception
6 PM Recital
7:15 PM Post-Reception

Drew Petersen & Jed Distler: Mahler & Schubert Four-Hands

Gotham Arts in collaboration with Groupmuse is delighted to present an intimate private recital of music for piano four-hands by pianists Drew Petersen and Jed Distler featuring Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 transcribed by Bruno Walter together with Schubert's Andantino varié.

An array of wine and snacks will be served.

Program:

SCHUBERT Andantino varié, D. 823
MAHLER-WALTER Symphony No. 1

About the Musicians:

Drew Petersen

Acclaimed young American pianist Drew Petersen is a sought-after soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. He has been praised for his commanding and poetic performances of repertoire ranging from Bach to Zaimont. He is the recipient of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and winner of the 2017 American Pianists Awards and Christel DeHaan Classical Fellowship.

His upcoming season includes solo recitals in Winchester and Newport News, VA, and orchestras in Washington (DC), La Crosse (WI), Visalia (CA), and Elgin (IL). He will join the Atlantic Classical Orchestra for a four-city tour of Florida, and will return to collaborate with the Pacific Symphony (Orange County, CA). In the New York area, he will appear in solo recital at Howland Chamber Music Circle and 92Y. Recent highlights have included debuts with the Buffalo, Cincinnati, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Sarasota, Phoenix, and Pacific symphonies as well as recital debuts at the Kennedy Center (Washington Performing Arts) and Davies Hall (San Francisco Symphony). In solo recital Petersen has appeared at the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, University of Indianapolis, Williams College Concert Series, Dame Myra Hess Concerts in Chicago, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Brevard Music Center’s Summer Festival and Chicago’s Ravinia Festival. 2018 marked the release of his first solo recording of music by Barber, Carter, and other American composers on the Steinway & Sons label for which BBC Music Magazine acknowledged his presence as a rising star.

A frequent radio contributor, Petersen has performed on McGraw-Hill Young Artists Showcase, From the Top, and Performance Today. Profiles include The New York Times, New York Magazine, and the documentary “just normal” by award-winning director Kim A. Snyder. A champion of chamber music, Petersen has appeared on French radio’s France Musique while a member of a Verbier Festival piano trio. He also is a perennial guest artist with Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players in NYC.

Drew Petersen’s firm belief in the importance of music in contemporary society led to collaborations with Young Audiences NY that presents performances in New York City’s public schools. His appearance in Andrew Solomon’s New York Times bestselling book, Far From the Tree, sparked a nation-wide conversation on raising extraordinary and different children who test the willpower and capabilities of their families and society. Petersen continually advocates for the necessity of classical music and other arts in society, and was named a 2006 Davidson Fellow for his portfolio entitled Keeping Classical Music Alive.

Jed Distler

Called “an altogether extraordinary pianist” by Michael Redmond in the Newark Star Ledger, “the Downtown Keyboard Magus” in the New Yorker, and “a witty, genial and adventurous pianist and composer” in the New York Times, Jed Distler has premiered works by Frederic Rzewski, Lois V Vierk, Wendy Mae Chambers, Simeon ten Holt, Richard Rodney Bennett, Alvin Curran, William Schimmel, Virgil Thomson, Andrew Thomas and Virko Baley, among many others. Jed’s principal classical piano teachers were Stanley Lock and William Komaiko, although he considers Dick Hyman, Hank Jones and Bill Evans important mentors in his early years when he played jazz for a living. As a recitalist, Jed has given new music programs across the United States and Europe from Italian festivals in Ravello, Sorrento and Erculano to New York’s Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. The list of musicians, spoken word performers, visual artists and choreographers with whom Jed has collaborated is a veritable Who’s Who of the New York arts scene in late 20th-century New York. In the 1980s Jed worked closely with dance legend Jacques D’Amboise and, more recently, played Beethoven with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and has performed with singers as diverse as Phyllis Bryn-Julson and KT Sullivan. In 2012 Jed launched a solo piano project encompassing jazz icon Thelonious Monk’s complete songs in a single concert, and has performed it in New York, Las Vegas, Berkeley, Italy and Germany. Jed conceived and programmed 100 Portraits for Virgil, the first complete performance of all the Virgil Thomson piano portraits in a day long, multi-media festival featuring thirty six performers, co-produced by the New School and Composers Collaborative, the latter for whom he serves as artistic director. He led the New York premier of Simeon ten Holt’s minimalist manifesto Canto Ostinato with four pianos outdoors on Cornelia Street, where he also directed 150 performers for Terry Riley’s “In C” for the first annual Make Music New York festival in 2007. In 2014 Jed and fellow composer/pianist Massimo Giuseppe Bianchi formed a piano duo devoted to old and new music as well as improvisation.

Jed’s CD, Meditate with the Masters, released by Musical Concepts in 2011, contains soothing, relaxing original piano pieces based on familiar classical themes. Canadian journalist Cendrine Marrouat wrote “Distler plays with such grace and lightness that the beautiful emotions he delivers speak directly to the senses, and ultimately to our inner child.” Jed’s keyboard prowess also graces numerous other CDs on the CRI, New World, Spectra, Fin Alley Arts, Strange Music, Laserlight and Coney Island labels. His long-awaited all-Thelonious Monk solo piano CD will be released in 2019 by TNC Recordings. As a Steinway Artist, Jed has recorded prolifically for Steinway Spirio, a high-resolution player piano system, and will be recording several CDs for the Steinway & Sons label.

What's the music?

Drew Petersen

John Edward Distler Composer/Pianist

Attendees

Joanna D.

Jeffery K.

Francesco C. Groupmuse Superhost

Anastasiya R.

+1

Lora A.

Nick K.

Frank M.

+1

Kurt H.

Andrew Q.

Miles J.

Adam G.

Jennifer C.

+1

Nancy H.

Daniel M.

Alex N.

Niklas H.

Eva V.

Corey R.