Pianists and longtime friends Gloria Cheng and Matthew McCright team up for an evening of new music for solo and four-hand piano.
"Cheng, a pianist who consistently fuses deep emotionality with exacting precision..." (San Francisco Classical Voice)
“An invaluable new-music advocate and a preferred collaborator of composers like Pierre Boulez and Esa-Pekka Salonen” [The New York Times], Grammy and Emmy Award-winning pianist Gloria Cheng has long been devoted to creative collaborations with composers of our time. She has been a concerto soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta and Pierre Boulez, and on its acclaimed Green Umbrella series with Esa-Pekka Salonen and Oliver Knussen. As a recitalist she has performed at the Ojai Music Festival (where she began her association with Boulez in 1984), Chicago Humanities Festival, William Kapell Festival, Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Mendocino, and Chautauqua Music Festivals, and annually on Los Angeles’ Piano Spheres series.
Cheng has premiered countless works that include John Williams’ Prelude and Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Dichotomie (of which she is the dedicatee), and John Adams’ Hallelujah Junction for two pianos (written for her and Grant Gershon). In duo-recitals with the composers, she premiered Thomas Adès’s 2-piano Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face and Terry Riley’s Cheng Tiger Growl Roar. She was awarded the Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra) GRAMMY for her 2008 recording, Piano Music of Salonen, Stucky, and Lutosławski, and received a second nomination for her 2013 disc, The Edge of Light: Messiaen/Saariaho. Her film project, MONTAGE: Great Film Composers and the Piano, aired on PBS SoCal and captured a 2018 Los Angeles Area Emmy.
Cheng’s education includes a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University, a Woolley Scholarship for study in Paris, and graduate degrees in performance from UCLA and the University of Southern California, where her teachers included Aube Tzerko and John Perry. She teaches graduate seminars and chamber music at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. gloriachengpiano.com
American pianist Matthew McCright (matthewmccright.org)has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific and on such prestigious stages as Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and Ireland’s National Concert Hall. He has thrilled audiences and critics alike with imaginative programming that places the greatest piano repertoire alongside the music of today’s most innovative composers. A native of Pennsylvania, McCright now resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is a member of the piano faculty of Carleton College. An accomplished recording artist, McCright has released seven solo recordings: his most recent Endurance on the Vox Novus label, as well as three albums on Innova Recordings (Second Childhood, A Waltz through the Vapor, and Blender), the piano works of Gene Gutchë on Centaur Records, on Albany Records of the piano music of Olivier Messiaen, and What is Left Behind on the Proper Canary label. His solo touring shows include Evening Preludes, The People’s Music, Contemplations: The Music of Olivier Messiaen, Connecting Flights, There and Back Again, Forward Looking Back, and Endurance.
McCright’s festival participation includes Bang on a Can at MassMOCA, Printing House Festival of New Music (Dublin), Late Music Festival (UK), SEAMUS, Hampden-Sydney Chamber Music Festival, Engelbach-Hart, Kodály Institute, Perilous Night, Fringe, Bridge, Spark Festival of Electronic Music, SPLICE, Festival of Lakes, Rayuela, Oh My Ears, Source Song, Seward Arts, Zeitgeist Early Music, Duquesne University’s Summer Music, Music 2000, CCM Village Opening, and Minnesota Composers Alliance, as well as programs for the American Composers Forum across the country. McCright completed his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Piano Performance from the University of Minnesota, Master of Music Degree in Piano from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati and earned his Bachelor of Music Degree in Piano Performance, Magna Cum Laude, from Westminster College. His past teachers include Lydia Artymiw, Lisa Moore, Nancy Zipay DeSalvo, and Richard Morris. He is represented by Proper Canary Artist Services.