Pianist to Perform Free Concert at Pitt July 16

Issue Date: 
July 12, 2010

Pianist Steven Mayer, credited with “piano playing at its most awesome” by The New York Times, will perform a free public concert at 8 p.m. July 16 in the auditorium of Pitt’s Bellefield Hall. The concert is being presented by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO).

Having long been associated with the music of legendary jazz pianist Art Tatum, Mayer will perform selections by Tatum and other exemplars of the Black Virtuoso Tradition—a term used to describe the American solo piano repertoire inspired by African American song and dance.

The Mayer concert is being presented during a three-week teacher-training institute that opens today on the Pitt campus and continues through July 30. Sponsored by the PSO, with support from Pitt’s Center for American Music, the institute—titled “Dvořák in America”—will bring together 25 teachers from around the United States to study the life and works of Antonin Dvořák, the great Czech composer who, after coming to America in 1892, wrote music that helped Americans define and understand themselves.

For more information on the “Dvořák in America” institute, call 412-392-8991 or visit www.pittsburghsymphony.org.

—By Sharon S. Blake