Main Stage
Free, Advance Registration Required
Tickets will be sold in socially distanced pods.
Tickets go on sale Friday, September 24, 2021, at 12:00 pm
About The Afternoon Recital
Russian-born and New York-based pianist Anna Keiserman and American baritone and musicologist Christopher Herbert will perform an afternoon recital featuring the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Georgi Sviridov.
About Anna Keiserman
Russian-born and New York-based pianist Anna Keiserman is known for her creative programming, expressive freedom, and singular vision. With her debut album, Russian Mosaic, recently released on the Sheva Collection label, Anna offers rarely heard gems by Rachmaninoff, Shchedrin, Smirnov, and Medtner.
With a focus on actively engaging audiences, Anna created several custom programs for the Salmagundi Art Club. With her “American Music 1917-18,” “Sounding Palettes,” and “New York Lights,” Anna invited audiences to explore surprising repertoire in a variety of cultural contexts. Other performance credits include Le Poisson Rouge, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and performing for the Fête de La Musique at the invitation of the French-American Piano Society. In the summer of 2019 Anna embarked on a concert tour in Spain premiering the Sonata Cerdanyenca for cello and piano by Marc Migó Cortes. The highlights of the 2020 season include concert tours and master classes in Minnesota, Virginia, Kansas and a recording of solo piano works by composer Jordi Cervelló.
As a soloist Anna has performed concerti by Rachmaninoff, Haydn, Beethoven and Arensky with the Volgograd Symphony Orchestra, and also toured through Italy and Russia. Among Dr. Keiserman’s awards are top prizes in two International Piano Competitions in Russia: one based in Volgograd, the other in Saratov. In 2017 Anna received the “Culture and Art” award from the New Russia Cultural Center (Rensselaer, NY) for her dedication to promoting arts and culture in the community.
Anna Keiserman has served as faculty at the NYU Steinhardt School of the Arts, at the Rutgers University Extension Division, and at William Paterson University. Having earned degrees from the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music in Moscow and the University of Minnesota, Dr. Keiserman recently completed her Doctorate in Piano Performance from Rutgers University, where she earned the Elizabeth Wyckoff Durham Award for academic distinction and excellence in piano performance. In September 2020 Dr. Keiserman joined the faculty of Raritan Valley Community College as an Assistant Professor of Piano.
For more information, please visit annakeisermanpiano.com.
About Chris Herbert
Christopher Dylan Herbert is an American baritone and musicologist who performs concerts, recitals, and operas throughout the world. He is a two-time GRAMMY® nominee in the Chamber Music/Small Ensemble category, and he is a Gramophone Award finalist in the field of Early Music. For ten years, he recorded and toured extensively with his ensemble, New York Polyphony.
Hailed by Opera News for his “exceptional” singing, Christopher has also received acclaim for his “smooth baritone voice”, his “consistently warm sound” and his “versatile dramatic abilities”. He is a recipient of awards from the Sullivan Foundation and Gérard Souzay Competition, and he was a Naumburg Competition semifinalist. His outdoor Winterize/Winterreise project with Make Music New York is described by The New York Times as “brave and, in all senses, chilling… an elegantly lean performance that would have been impressive in any context but was remarkable under these conditions.”
Recent engagements in concert and opera include Hannah Lash’s Desire at the Miller Theatre, Vivier’s Kopernikus in Bilbao and Buenos Aires, Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti at Tanglewood, concerts at the Cartagena International Music Festival in Colombia, John Cage’s Renga with the San Francisco Symphony, the title role in Handel’s Saul for Trinity Wall Street’s Twelfth Night Festival, performances of Schubert lieder with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a Ginastera centennial celebration with the International Contemporary Ensemble, the world premiere of Judd Greenstein’s A Marvelous Order with the NOW Ensemble, the title role in Pelléas et Mélisande with Floating Opera NY, Montresor in Stewart Copeland’s The Cask of Amontillado with the American Modern Ensemble, and collaborations with Mario Brunello, Jeremy Denk, Stefan Jackiw, and Gilbert Kalish, among others. Previous seasons included performances of Fariseo in Caldara’s Maddalena with the American Classical Orchestra, Hannah-Before in Laura Kaminsky’s As One with the Fry Street Quartet for American Opera Projects at BAM, Polyphemus in Acis and Galatea with Musica Angelica, the title role in The War Reporter at The Prototype Festival and Stanford LIVE, Henrik in A Little Night Music at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Dover Beach at Lake George, Winterreise at the Austrian Cultural Forum of New York and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, and various recitals with pianists Thomas Bagwell, William Kelley, Chris Reynolds, and Timothy Long. Christopher has also performed Sid in Britten’s Albert Herring with Opera Vivente, Connie in Gordon’s Grapes of Wrath at Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, and Il prigioniero in Il piccolo Marat at Avery Fisher Hall. In addition, he has toured as a soloist with the Boston Pops and Mark Morris Dance Group, and has appeared at Tanglewood, Wolf Trap, and Central City Opera.
Christopher graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University with a B.A. in Music. He also holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, and a D.M.A. in Voice from The Juilliard School. He is an Assistant Professor at William Paterson University where he leads the Vocal Studies program. He has taught at the Mostly Modern Festival, Amherst Early Music Festival, and Madison Early Music Festival, and has given lectures and workshops at numerous colleges and universities including Stanford University, Dartmouth College, Columbia University, Duke University, and Eastman School of Music. As a musicologist, Christopher currently focuses on the music of the Ephrata Cloister, an eighteenth-century celibate commune in Pennsylvania. He is a board member of NATS-NYC. Christopher lives in Brooklyn, New York and Rochester, New York with his husband, pianist and conductor Timothy Long, and their dog Pumpkin.
