On Saturday, January 23rd at 7 p.m., Jeffrey Siegel will return to the Center for the Arts with his fan-favorite Keyboard Conversations® series, Fantastic Fantasies. Siegel will provide commentary on the music of Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Swedish composer, Stenhammar. His audience will have the pleasure to hear each piece played by Siegel in its entirety with a newfound understanding of the music’s context and meaning. A passionate conversationalist, as well as a performer, Jeffrey Siegel presents Keyboard Conversations® in a brilliantly polished concert-with-commentary format, concluding with an interactive Q & A.
Alan Driscoll, a member of the Friends of the Center for the Arts Communications Committee, has helped us get ready for the upcoming performance with his own research and fun facts about Siegel and Mozart.
DID YOU KNOW . . . Year after year, loyal audiences return to ongoing Keyboard Conversations® series in Europe and major American cities including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Phoenix, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Dallas, Denver, and Fairfax! This is a resounding testimony to Siegel’s superb artistry, format and loyal fans. The Center has been presenting Jeffrey Siegel ‘s Keyboard Conversations® for more than 25 years.
DID YOU KNOW . . . In 2021, Keyboard Conversations® continued for the 13th season at London’s dynamic Kings Place. Classical music television broadcaster, Sir Humphry Burto, notes, “I was curious as to whether [Siegel’s] kind of explanatory talk about music would win over a London audience. I needn't have worried. Mr. Siegel has developed a language that avoids talking down yet gets to the heart of the musical matter. “
DID YOU KNOW . . . Born into a musical family, Jeffrey Siegel studied with renowned Swiss pianist, Rudolf Ganz, in his native Chicago, as well as the legendary Rosina Lhévinne at The Juilliard School and, as a Fulbright Scholar, with Ilona Kabos in London.
DID YOU KNOW . . . A few years ago, the Friends of the Center for the Arts (FCFA) provided enough funding for the purchase of a new Steinway piano. When a delegation led by Dr. Linda Apple Monson, Director of the Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music at George Mason University, went to the Steinway factory to select the piano, Jeffery Siegel accompanied them to lend his expertise in the selection process.
DID YOU KNOW . . . Although baptized as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the name that he is known by. Mozart has been widely accepted as not only one of the greatest composers of the Classical period, but also one of the greatest in all of Western music history. It’s been said that his type of talent is seldom seen. His music had a natural flow and was impossible to not like. Mozart was able to use his mastery and conviction to express sorrow, humor, or joy in his works of music. He accomplished something no other composer ever has in music history—he wrote music in all existing genres of his time.
DID YOU KNOW. . . It was said that Mozart had begun picking out chords with precise pitch memory when he was just three, could play short pieces by age four, and began scribbling and composing a concerto at age five. It’s said that when he was seven years old, at a musical gathering, he picked up a violin, never having had a lesson, and sight-read with absolute perfect precision and accuracy. By eight, he had written his first symphony, most likely with his father transcribing most of it for him, becoming the most celebrated and renowned child prodigy of his time.
Join the Center for the Arts January 23rd at 7 p.m. to learn more from Siegel himself during Keyboard Conversations®: Fantastic Fantasies. For tickets and more information visit the Center for the Arts website.