HONOLULU, HAWAII – The Aloha International Piano Festival (AIPF) is honored to present the Hawaii debut of concert pianist Kevin Kenner on Thursday, June 21 at 7:30 p.m. in recital at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu. Winner of the 1990 International Chopin Competition, Kenner is among the preeminent Chopin interpreters in music today. His recital will feature a beautiful selection of Chopin favorites, as well as music to celebrate the 150thanniversary of Debussy’s birth. The program includes Debussy’s Préludes and Estampes, and Chopin’s Préludes and the “Heroic” Polonaise. Tickets are $25 or $10 for students and are on sale now at alohapianofestival.com.
“It is with great pleasure that I come to perform in Hawaii for the first time,” said Kenner. “I have chosen a program dedicated partly to Claude Debussy, whose 150th birthday we celebrate this year. Debussy was on the one hand the musical child of Fréderic Chopin, and on the other hand, the most important progenitor of modern music. And, as with most Impressionist composers, there is an abundance of works inspired by nature,away from people, cities, technology.”
“Debussy was particularly fascinated with the various manifestations of water and its interactions with the other elements: deep water, the reflective surface of the water, violent and turbulent water, snow, rain, fog,” continued Kenner. “He was even known to have owned a print of Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa which hung in his study. He was also a reader of Americanpoet and novelist Edgar Allen Poe, whose frequent references to the eerie, mysterious qualities of water are prevalent in his works, and whose poem ‘The City in the Sea’ is likely to have been the primary inspiration behind the creation of ‘La cathédrale engloutie’.”
“And so in this recital, I dedicate the first part to the music of Debussy, while the concluding part of the recital is dedicated to Fréderic Chopin, whose Préludes, Op. 28, represent some of his most original and innovative techniques in tonal colour and textures, qualities which certainly shaped Debussy’s ideas,” concluded Kenner.
In addition to his Honolulu recital, Kenner will also present an exceptional Chopin Workshop for students and teachers of all instruments on Friday, June 22, 2012 at 10 a.m. The public is also warmly invited to attend this workshop that discusses the approach and technique to understanding and performing Chopin, which all pianists must learn. Tickets are $15 and student tickets are only $5.
Kenner will also join fellow AIPF guest artists in performance at the Festival Finale concert on Saturday, June 23 at 7:30 p.m. This fun-loving concert also features Jon Nakamatsu, Sara Davis Buechner, Lisa Nakamichi, John Bayless and Noriko Uenaka as they join forces in a “monster” ensemble featuring works by one, two, three, and four piano ensembles.
Kenner has been praised as “one of the finest American pianists to come along in years” (Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune). Adrian Jack of London’s Independent describes one of Kenner’s recitals as “…the best performance I have ever heard in the concert hall of all four of Chopin’s Ballades.” The conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, who recorded with pianists such as Arthur Rubinstein, claimed Kenner’s Chopin interpretations to be the most sensitive and beautiful he remembered. To learn more about Kevin Kenner, visit www.kevinkenner.com.
About the Aloha International Piano Festival
Founded in 2006 by pianist Lisa Nakamichi, the Aloha International Piano Festival (AIPF) is a non-profit organization committed to educating Hawaii’s children and teachers. AIPF addresses three main needs: the need for music teacher training, the need for low-cost music concerts and music education opportunities, and the need forhigh-caliber classes and lessons for piano students. AIPF strives to elevate the awareness of classical music in Hawaii while offering people of all ages the opportunity to experience music in a welcoming and educational setting. As a result of volunteer efforts and work to minimize administrative costs, AIPF has consistently offered programs at low and affordable rates for more thanfive years. Visit alohapianofestival.com for more information.