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SFJAZZ Spring Season 2007 • March 8-June 23, 2007
Gabriela Montero

"Bach Improvisations"

Gabriela Montero

Saturday, May 5 • 2pm

  • $25 General Admission
    • “A combination of ferocity and eloquence” - Wall Street Journal

    Program Notes

    Most twelve-year-old children cannot be bothered to listen to Tchaikovsky. Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero was already playing the composer’s music at that tender age, specifically his Piano Concerto No. 1, with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Even then, the prodigious Montero was already something of a music veteran. Her first public performance came at the age of five, followed by her concert debut at age eight with the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra. She has since studied at the Royal Academy of Music and counts famed Argentine pianist Martha Argerich as one of her admiring supporters. "I have rarely come across a talent like Gabriela's," said Argerich.

    Montero's career thus far has been trailed by accolades for her technical ability. But it is her talent as an improviser that distinguishes her from many of her peers. It is an ability that came to Montero early. "I was always an improviser since I was a child," Montero told NPR. "It was the most natural way for me to express myself with music. But it's only in the last five years that I've really come out in public and started to do it." Such appearances have been rapturously received. "Ms Montero's playing had everything: crackling rhythmic brio, subtle shadings, steely power in climactic moments, soulful lyricism in the ruminative passages and, best of all, unsentimental expressivity," wrote The New York Times of a concert performance.

    Though classical repertoire is viewed today as hidebound and locked, talented musicians from Bach to Beethoven considered improvisation a test of their skill, often engaging in impromptu piano duels. Montero continues that tradition on her latest album, Bach and Beyond. The Wall Street Journal noted that Montero's improvisations unleash "a musical potpourri absorbed over a lifetime, so that Venezuelan joropo-style dance rhythms find their way into Bach's D-minor Invention, and Rachmaninoff, Ravel, and Art Tatum sit comfortably side by side as commentators on a given theme."

    Personnel:
    • Gabriela Montero, piano


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