Lyell Gustin Recital Series 2023
300 years since the birth of the piano! The 2023 series features pianists from national and international stages performing a full range of splendid repertoire, from Baroque to 21st Century!
Catherine Vickers
Tuesday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m.
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 436 Spadina Cres. East
Gustin House proudly presents Saskatchewan-born international pianist Catherine Vickers in a recital of fascinating music from the 20th and 21st centuries! A winner of the Busoni Prize and Gold Medal in Italy, she continues to be praised as a stellar classical pianist for her concerts in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. She has become especially well known and much respected as an active practitioner of modern repertoire, including newest avant-garde compositions. A resident of Germany, Vickers is a regular guest at international new music festivals and has been artistic director of an electronics-piano festival in Karlsruhe. She recently published the fourth in a set of books on piano technique for contemporary music.
For her return to the Lyell Gustin Recitals in Easter week, Catherine Vickers has designed a unique program, a soundscape of music from the late 19th century to the 21st ... Weber-Liszt, Brahms, Debussy, Scriabin, and a 2019 work by N. Huber, all in celebration of 300 years of The Piano!
Tickets $50 regular / $30 student: St. John’s Music, Saskatoon Academy of Music, Gustin House Committee, at the door, or online via the link below.
Child 12 or Under, free admission if accompanied by an adult.
More about the artist
Catherine Vickers is a native of Regina, where she did her first music studies, performing across Saskatchewan as a young pianist. After further studies in Edmonton, she received a Canada Council grant to study in Europe, taking piano courses with eminent artists such as Paul Badura-Skoda, Alfred Brendel, and György Sebok. Among early formative musical activities in her home province, Vickers spent eight consecutive seasons at the Lyell Gustin Summer School in Saskatoon; she is now generously serving as Honorary President of Gustin House.
In 1979, Catherine Vickers won the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition and Gold Medal in Italy, and was an award winner at the Sydney International Piano Competition. For some time, she was on the faculty at Folkwang-Hochshule in Essen, Germany, and from 1998 to 2018 was Professor at the University of Music and the Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
The artist has appeared in concert across Asia, Europe, North and South America, performing an extensive repertoire, ranging from standard traditional piano music to avant-garde compositions. Vickers appears regularly at international new music festivals in centres such as Munich, Darmstadt and Stuttgart, and she is a member of juries of international competitions for piano and chamber music. She has released several CDs, and has written a series of books, The Listening Hand, on piano technique for contemporary music.
David Jalbert
Tuesday, August 22, at 7:30 p.m.
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 436 Spadina Cres. East
A brilliant pianist with a warm, elegant style and extensive repertoire, David Jalbert is among the elite of a new generation of classical musicians. Named by CBC as one of the 15 best Canadian pianists of all time, he is a national and international prize winner, having received four Juno nominations and six Prix Opus awards. Gustin House warmly welcomes this final artist of the 2023 series to perform music spanning three centuries–-works by Bach, Brahms and Prokofiev. With his personal style at the piano and a charismatic stage presence, David Jalbert dazzles audiences, critics and the press, who describe him as “a deeply musical pianist” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), “a virtuoso in the best sense of the word” (La Presse), and “[an artist with] wide-ranging musical imagination and phenomenal technique” (Toronto Star).
Tickets $50 regular / $30 student: St. John’s Music, Saskatoon Academy of Music, Gustin House Committee, at the door, or online via the link below.
Child 12 or Under, free admission if accompanied by an adult.
More about the artist
Virtuoso pianist David Jalbert performs regularly as a soloist, recitalist, and ensemble artist in Canada and across the globe. As guest soloist, he has appeared with many orchestras, including the Montreal Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Toronto Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Bielefelder Philharmoniker and the National Symphony of Ireland, collaborating with conductors such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Christoph Campestrini, Bramwell Tovey and many more.
A recording artist as well as a solo and ensemble performer on world stages, Jalbert has released solo CDs of works by Bach and Shostakovich, and by French and contemporary American composers. These recordings have all garnered international praise in venues ranging from Gramophone to France-Culture. He is also a prized guest commentator for music broadcasts.
David Jalbert is an accomplished chamber musician in much demand, and is a member of his own piano trio, Triple Forte, whose first recording was awarded a 2014 Prix Opus (Album of the Year). Laureate of the prestigious Virginia Parker Prize of the Canada Council for the Arts (2007), the artist holds degrees from Juilliard, Glenn Gould School, Université de Montréal and Conservatoire de Musique du Québec. He is Professor of Piano and Head of the Piano Sector at the University of Ottawa, and faculty member at Orford Music Academy.