For Immediate Release — Monday, November 28, 2005
Contact:
Mary E. McCrank
Media Relations Officer
(585) 245-5516
Rebecca Penneys to Perform Dec. 4 at SUNY Geneseo
GENESEO, N.Y. — Internationally acclaimed pianist
Rebecca Penneys will perform a concert at the State University of New York at
Geneseo at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 4, in Wadsworth Auditorium.
Tickets to the concert are $5 for students and $8 for adults
and will be available at the door. It is sponsored by Geneseo's Friends of
Music. For more information, call (585) 245-5824.
"She is one of the most dynamic, engaging and memorable
performers of our century," said Amy Stanley, associate professor in Geneseo's
School of the Arts.
Penneys leads a distinguished career as a recitalist,
chamber musician, orchestral soloist, educator and adjudicator. For five
decades, her passionate and insightful performances have held audiences
spellbound. Hailed as a pianist of prodigious talent,
she possesses a daredevil technique, the sort of charismatic stage presence
that demands attention, and an interpretive gift that make her performances
revelatory.
Penneys has been a professor of piano at the Eastman School
of Music since 1980 and chair of the Chautauqua Institution Piano Department
since 1985. She has been a resident artist at the Chautauqua Festival since
1978, and in 2003 she celebrated her 25th anniversary season by
performing Beethoven's "Emperor Concerto" with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.
In 2001, she was appointed visiting artist at St. Petersburg College, Florida.
Performing in the Unites
States, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Europe, Israel and
Canada, Penneys is a popular guest artist, keynote speaker and teacher at
national and international music conventions. Her artistry and deeply poetic
insight have won her a large and loyal following. In 2002, she officially
became an exclusive Steinway Artist and since then has given many concerts for
Steinway & Sons.
Born in Los Angeles, Penneys made her recital debut at the
age of 9 and performed as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra
when she was 11. At 17, after winning many national young artist competitions,
she was awarded the unprecedented Special Critics' Prize at the Seventh
International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland. Critics there
described her as a genius of the piano. Subsequently, she won the Most
Outstanding Musician Prize at the Fifth Vianna Da Motta International Piano
Competition (Portugal) and was Top Prizewinner in the Second Paloma O'Shea
International Piano Competition (Spain). In 1974, she founded the acclaimed New
Arts Trio, which won the prestigious Naumburg Award for Chamber Music (New
York) on two separate occasions. The Trio has been Trio-in-Residence at the
Chautauqua Institution since 1978.
A renowned pedagogue, Penneys has received extensive
recognition for her ability to teach keyboard technique (motion and emotion)
that allows pianists to achieve individual performance goals without physical
strain or injury. At the Chautauqua Festival, she has created an extremely
popular summer program combining traditional and innovative methods that is
unique in the world of piano instruction. An annual four-day residential
Pedagogy Workshop for teachers (Pedagogy As Art & Craft) inaugurated in
August 2004 is part of the exhilarating piano events that conclude each
season's activities.
Audiences everywhere are drawn to her keen musical
intelligence, effortless technique, and seemingly endless imagination. The San
Francisco Examiner wrote in a review, "Her
performance was nothing short of revelatory: a taut, kinetic brand of music
making that had you holding on to your seat."
For more information on Penneys, go to http://rebeccapenneys.com.
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