Performance Music Announces Fall Concerts

Performance Music at Scranton has announced their upcoming fall events. See the complete listing, here.

Friday, September 6, 2019, 7:30 p.m.
IN RECITAL: Dan Ficarri, organist
Dan Ficarri is recognized as a performer of both new music and the standard classical repertoire — The New York Times listed his performance of John Cage’s “Souvenir” under the “Week’s 8 Best Classical Music Moments,” and WQXR broadcast his live all-Bach performance as part of their “Bach Organ Marathon.” He has performed with orchestras in Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall, and he has given solo performances at New York City’s towering Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and St. Thomas Episcopal Church. Other engagements have taken him around the country, from concerts with The Florida Orchestra to appearances in the Oregon Bach Festival. Ficarri also serves as Organ Scholar at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan. In 2015, he founded Sacred Sounds at St. Paul’s, a concert series promoting organ music in the Lincoln Center neighborhood and providing performance opportunities to young artists.

Saturday, September 21, 2019, 7:30 p.m.
FAMILY WEEKEND CONCERT: The Aaron Diehl Trio with an appearance by The U. of S. Concert Choir
Grammy Award winning 32-year-old classically trained pianist and composer Aaron Diehl has made an indelible mark on the jazz world over the last 15 years. Showing an affinity for early jazz and mid-20th-century “third-stream” music, his latest evolution comes as he begins to tackle modern classical works, recently performing Gershwin with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Diehl has collaborated with living masters ranging from from NEA Jazz Master Benny Golson to 20th-century classical titan Philip Glass while establishing himself as one of the preeminent interpreters of the Great American Songbook in his own trio and with the vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant. Jazz critics from The New York Times have extolled Mr. Diehl’s “melodic precision, harmonic erudition, and elegant restraint,” while the same paper’s classical critics have noted, “Mr. Diehl play[s] magnificently.” His meticulously conceived performances, collaborations, and compositions are refreshing, as his highly personal aesthetic spearheads a union of tradition and original artistry while bounding ahead on an uncharted course.

Sunday, September 29, 2019, 7:30 p.m.
IN RECITAL: Carlos Avila, pianist
Carlos Avila is one of the most in-demand pianists on the classical music scene. His concerts have taken him across North and South America, Europe, and Asia. In recent seasons, he performed in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s All-Access Chamber series and the New York Philharmonic’s Leonard Bernstein salon series, and also performed on a nationwide 29-city tour with award-winning Baritone Leon Williams. Carlos has also been showcased on New York’s WQXR, in an all-transcription recital broadcast. He has been a guest at music festivals around the world, where he had the opportunity to work with luminaries such as the late Isaac Stern, Daniel Barenboim, Michael Tilson Thomas, Emanuel Ax, Richard Goode and members of the St. Lawrence, Tokyo, Guarneri, Juilliard, Ying, and Borodin String Quartets. Carlos is pianist of the Boreal Trio, is a member of the Collaborative Piano Faculty at the Heifetz Institute, and is also the studio pianist for Joel Krosnick at The Juilliard School.

Saturday, October 5, 2019, 7:30 p.m.
IN CONCERT: Dan Levinson’s Palomar Jazz Band with vocalist Molly Ryan
The 2017 winner of Hot House Magazine’s “NYC Jazz Fans Decision” award for Best Clarinetist, Dan Levinson is equally at home as both leader and sideman. During a 30-year career specializing in traditional jazz and swing music, he has appeared alongside a long list of prominent artists, and since 1993 Dan has been a member of Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, with whom he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion radio program, in addition to the band’s bi-weekly appearances at Iguana Restaurant in Manhattan. Dan has performed on over 150 CDs, including nine under his own name. He can also be heard on the soundtracks to the films The Cat’s Meow, Ghost World, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, and Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, as well as on virtually all of the newly recorded music used on the soundtrack of the Grammy Award-winning HBO television series Boardwalk Empire Though based in New York City, Dan’s busy schedule takes him across the continent and around the world.

Please visit the Performance Music website for a listing of all fall concerts. All take place in the Houlihan McLean Center, are free of admission charge, and open to the public.