Renowned Husband Wife Piano Duo Kick off Taylor Community Music Series on Sunday, January 27 Arlene and Christopher Kies set to play four hands and perform Schubert, Chopin, Gershwin and more
January 20, 2013Tim Martin, President and CEO of Taylor Community is proud to announce the 2013 Taylor Community Music Series Sponsored by Bank of New Hampshire will kick-off on January 27 at 3:00 pm at Taylor’s Woodside Building in Laconia with the husband and wife piano duo of Arlene and Christopher Kies.
Arlene and Christopher Kies have premiered several two-piano compositions including performances at the Fromm Foundation at Harvard and the Washington Square Series. They are both faculty within the Music Department at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
First performance on Sunday, January 27, 3:00pm | Christopher and Arlene Kies
Woodside at Taylor Community, Laconia
Program highlights with feature solo performances and four-hand music by Schubert, Chopin, Debussy and Gershwin, and will also include a new Fanfare for Piano Four-Hands written by Christopher Kies especially for the unveiling of the new piano at Taylor Community.
For more information on the 2013 Taylor Community Music Series Sponsored by Bank of New Hampshire visit www.taylorcommunity.org or call 524.5600. Those planning to attend must pre-register as spaced is limited.
For more information on the 2013 Taylor Community Music Series Sponsored by Bank of New Hampshire visit www.taylorcommunity.org or call 524.5600. Those planning to attend must pre-register as spaced is limited.
Future Program Sponsors include: Tim & Peggy Martin, Melcher & Prescott, Ron & Nan Baker, Bob and Anne Smith, and PingPR.
About Arlene Kies:
Pianist Arlene Kies performs widely as recitalist, concerto soloist and as chamber pianist.
She has recently performed the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto with the New Hampshire Philharmonic, the complete Goyescas of Enrique Granados as part of a tour of Tuscany, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Strafford Wind Symphony. Other highlights of recent seasons include performances of Mozart’s C Minor Concerto, Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra, Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto, an all-Spanish gala performance for the University of Rhode Island Great Performances Series, and numerous solo recitals featuring an extensive and varied repertoire. She recently co-directed the University of New Hampshire in Italy program in Ascoli Piceno, Italy, where she taught and performed several recitals. In 2009 she released a solo CD, Portraits and Pictures, which features Schumann’s Carnaval and Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
Born and raised in Providence, R.I., Arlene (Pepe) Kies studied piano with Stanley Siok and Wayne Farrell. She received her BM and MM degrees in piano performance with honors from the New England Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Theodore Lettvin on complete scholarship. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Vienna as well as a New Hampshire Individual Artist’s Fellowship and is a NEST artist. In addition to performing, Arlene has been a member of the piano faculty of the University of New Hampshire since 1995 and resident pianist for the Kendall Betts Horn Camp since 2007.
About Christopher Kies
Christopher Kies is a professor of music at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H., where he has taught piano, theory, and composition since 1979. His Bachelors degrees are in piano and composition from the New England Conservatory and his M.F.A. and Ph. D. in composition are from Brandeis University. A Fulbright Fellowship recipient, Dr. Kies has twice been awarded Individual Artist Fellowships in composition from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and he recently won first prize in the 2011 Longfellow Chorus International Composers Competition in Portland, Maine.
Both as a composer and as a performer, Dr. Kies has long been a major fan of piano ragtime. For seven straight years, 1994-2000, he performed classic ragtime pieces for First Night celebrations in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He has composed two one-movement ragtime concertinos: Academic Festival Rag for piano and orchestra (2009), and Introduction and Ragtime for clarinet and orchestra (2011).
In recent years, his work has mainly featured the combination of music and narration for young audiences, including several versions of Little Red Riding Hood for various ensembles (including orchestra) and narrator, The Amazing Bone (based on the story by prize-winning children’s author, William Steig) for trombone, piano and narrator, and a sequel to Le Carnaval des Animaux based on poems of Ogden Nash entitled “Le Tombeau de Saint-Saens” for narrator and either orchestra, wind ensemble, or brass quintet. In 2006, his “Franklin Portrait” for orchestra, double chorus, and narrator was performed by student musicians from Franklin high school (Franklin, MA) in observance of the Tercentenary of Ben Franklin’s birth. Other compositions include two ballets, a ballet suite for orchestra, works for mixed, treble and children’s chorus, music for solo piano, piano four-hands, and two pianos, and various pieces for mixed instrumental ensembles (with or without narration). Recordings of several of his works are available on CD; Kies’ music is published by Veritas Musica Publishing.