Franch-Ballester/Brown give Impromptu Concert performance at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on March 25

Clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester and pianist Michael Brown will visit Key West for an Impromptu Concert performance at 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 25, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 401 Duval St. The concert is the sixth, and last subscription performance of the 2018 Impromptu Concert season, which is celebrating the centennial of the late composer Leonard Bernstein, a frequent visitor to Key West.
Accordingly, the duo will perform two Bernstein compositions, “Touches for Solo Piano,” and “Sonata for Clarinet and Piano,” which was written during 1941-42 and published in 1942.The sonata was Bernstein’s first published piece, most of which was written in Key West during the first of his many subsequent visits here.
Franch-Ballester is a multi-award winning Spanish clarinetist considered one of the finest classical soloists and chamber music artists of his generation. He has been hailed for his “technical wizardry and tireless enthusiasm” by the New York Times.
Born in Moncofa into a family of clarinetists, Jose began clarinet lessons at the age of 9 and graduated from the Joaquin Rodrigo Music Conservatory in Valencia. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he was mentored by Ricardo Morales, principal clarinet in the Philadelphia Orchestra.
As a concert soloist he made a New York debut in 2006 with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Lincoln Center. In 2008 Mr. Franch-Ballester received an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and he won both the Young Concert Artists and Astral Artists auditions. He is artistic director of miXt, an ensemble of award winning soloists from the Young Concert Artists roster that he founded in 2012. He is also the founder of Jose Franch-Ballester & I amics (and friends,) a series of concerts in which young musicians from all over the world are presented in his hometown of Moncofa and throughout the Valencia area.
Michael Brown is returning to Key West where he performed in 2015 and thrilled the audience as the Impromptu Concert’s “Rising Star”. Michael is equally acclaimed as both pianist and composer, described as “one of the most refined of all pianist-composers,” by International Piano, and “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers,” by the New York Times.
A winner of a 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, he is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center with whom he performs frequently at Alice Tully Hall and on tour. He has performed with orchestras such as the Seattle, North Carolina, Maryland and Albany with recitals at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall and the Louvre.
In addition to the Bernstein pieces Jose and Michael will perform the “Klezmer Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano,” by Paul Schoenfield, the “Clarinet Sonata,” by Aaron Copland, “Elegies for Clarinet and Piano,” by Peter Schickele, and “Four Rags for Two Jons,” by John Novacek.
Tickets for the concert cost $20, and are available at www.keystix.com, or at the door on the afternoon of the event. Cash, checks, or credit/debit cards accepted. Students admitted free. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
For more information visit www.keywestimpromptu.org
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