Page 305 - PDF Flip TR Program Demo

Pianos are what Hoagy Carmichael played at Rick’s
in Casablanca. Or how Bobby Short summoned up Cole Porter at the Carlyle. Pianos are the jazz that Cziffra played in Paris clubs before he became famous as the world’s greatest virtuoso. Or the jazz that Az- navour played in Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player. Or the Chopin that saved Szpielman’s life in the true story behind the film The Pianist. Or the salvation of the world in Anderson & Roe’s ominously entertaining Rite of Spring.
I used to play Chopin preludes while my mother cooked, and I can still hear her calling out my mistakes from the kitchen. So pianos conjure up our parents.
If you’re lucky enough to have children who play,
you can hear their minds expanding as they turn into people at the piano before your own eyes and ears. So pianos are our children, too.
When I was young, my friends had baseball. I had the Beethoven Sonatas, and summer music camp. The pieces I used to play are like Proust’s madeleines: with them, my childhood comes flooding back, as baseball brings it back for my friends.
Pianos are the tip of centuries of accumulated ro- mance. They are mountain climbs in the moonlight, songs of passionate love, entire decades of fading amber light in European drawing rooms, the promise of new lives in America (Rhapsody in Blue).
It isn’t just the music. Music is the tip of the ice-
berg. Pianos are mountains, symbols of lost dreams and horizons, tropic seas where the waves wash in between the palms, an escape where discipline gives you freedom. Pianos let you hear your own soul, growing like vines. They will give you, your children, your parents, and yourselves an extraordinary life, whether or not you ever make it to Carnegie Hall.
And so we hope we leave you with the sound of something ringing in your ears that will make you think of us through the seemingly eternal snows of winter (at least last winter seemed like that), and bring you back to us next summer: hopeful, energized, and encouraged.
—Cathy, Peter and the Team at Tippet Rise
2018 Summer Season 305