Main Stage
Tickets $12
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About Awadagin Pratt
Join classical pianist Awadagin Pratt for an afternoon of piano music that spans four centuries of the greatest piano literature. The program includes works from the Baroque master François Couperin, pieces by the most well-known Romantic composers including Rachmaninoff, Chopin and Tchaikovsky, as well as contemporary pieces by Philip Glass, Peteris Vasks and jazz great Fred Hersh. The entire second half of the recital is a performance of one of the greatest virtuoso masterpieces in the piano literature, Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B minor.
Among his generation of concert artists, pianist Awadagin Pratt is acclaimed for his musical insight and intensely involving performances in recital and with symphony orchestras.
Mr. Pratt studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where he became the first student in the school’s history to receive diplomas in three performance areas – piano, violin and conducting.
In 1992, Mr. Pratt won the Naumburg International Piano Competition and two years later was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Since then, he has played numerous recitals throughout the US including performances at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. His many orchestral performances include appearances with the New York Philharmonic and the Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis and Detroit symphonies among many others. Also an experienced conductor, his most recent conducting activities include play/conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh and conducting performances of Porgy and Bess for the Greensboro Opera.
Mr. Pratt is currently a Professor of Piano at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati as well as the Artistic Director of the Art of the Piano Festival. In July 2023, he joins the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as Professor of Piano.
Through the Art of the Piano Foundation and inspired by a stanza from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, Mr. Pratt has commissioned seven composers – Jessie Montgomery, Alvin Singleton, Judd Greenstein, Tyshawn Sorey, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Paola Prestini and Peteris Vasks – to compose works for piano and string orchestra or piano, string orchestra and a Roomful of Teeth. Ms. Montgomery’s concerto was performed by a consortium of nine US orchestras including the St. Louis, Baltimore, Milwaukee and Indianapolis symphonies, in the spring of 2022. All seven works were recorded in summer 2022 with the chamber orchestra A Far Cry for New Amsterdam Records. During the 22/23 season, Mr. Pratt performs this concerto with 13 more orchestras, including Boston, Chicago, Minnesota and Atlanta.
Awadagin Pratt is a Yamaha artist. For more information, please visit www.awadagin.com.
The Afternoon Recital Series is made possible, in part, through the support of the Ocean County College Foundation.
