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October 1, 1999/21 Tishri 5760, Vol. 52, No.5
Conversation helps make music approachable
TAMI BICKLEY
Staff Writer
With the dawning of a new millennium, pianist Jeffrey Siegel wants to make the music of three men he considers the greatest composers of the last century relevant and interesting to young people.
On Tuesday, Oct. 26, Siegel will perform "Keyboard Conversations, An American Salute" at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. Siegel will play excerpts on the piano from works by George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copeland, stopping midway through the pieces to relate to the audience information about each composer's life. He will then play the pieces in their entirety. Following the programs, Siegel will hold question and answer sessions.
"This way, the listener gets more out of the listening experience," says Siegel, a New Yorker who has been performing "Keyboard Conversations" tours for 21 years.
"It offers (the audience) history, but it's not a lecture. It's informal and humorous, and whatever I say is just priming the ears, so people (appreciate) the listening experience."
What is unusual about "Keyboard Conversations," Siegel explains, is that the program can make great music interesting and attractive to young people.
"The great works of classical music are not just for senior citizens," he notes. "Great music can enrich everyone's lives, particularly young people who feel, and rightly so, that they are missing something (musically)."
Siegel points to a lack of musical education and blatant exposure to "noise," such as elevator and restaurant music, that leads to the void.
Great music will endure in society, so long as young people are exposed to it in a way that interests them, Siegel says.
"There's a reason why the works of Mozart have been around for 200 years and remain at the top of the (classical) charts," he says. "It really affects us and tells us a lot, not only about life, but about (ourselves). ... Music begins where words leave off."
Siegel chose the music of Gershwin, Bernstein and Copeland for his current tour, he says, because he believes they are "the three greatest composers that first come to mind when you look over the history of the last century." They also all happened to have been Jews.
Their music is a product of who they were, their backgrounds and their identity as human beings, which includes their identity as Americans and Jews, says Siegel, who is also Jewish. But Judaism does not play a noticeable role in their works.
"They themselves would have wanted to be thought of first as great composers, second as American composers and third as Jewish composers," he says.
Siegel has played the three composers' music in Scottsdale previously, but never before together in one program. The upcoming concert will also mark the first time in 20 years of performing in Scottsdale that he will concentrate exclusively on Jewish composers.
Born in Chicago, Siegel learned about music at an early age. His father is a retired string bassist who played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. His parents noticed his talent for playing the piano when he was 6 and enrolled him in lessons.
At 15, Siegel won a Chicago annual music competition, by virtue of which he was chosen to play a solo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. When he was 17, he moved to New York City to study piano with Rudolph Ganz and Rosina Lhevinne at the Juilliard School. A few years later, he studied music in London, but eventually returned to New York, which has since been home to him, his wife, Laura, their daughter, Rachel, 15, and son, Noah, 11.
Siegel has been a guest soloist with national and international orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has also conducted for the past 15 years with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony and the Chicago Symphony, to name a few. For the past 13 years, Siegel has served as music director and conductor of the Mainly Mozart Festival in Phoenix. He has recorded three compact discs of Gershwin music for piano, plus one with solo piano music of Rachmaninoff and sonatas of Hindemith and Dutilleux.
In addition to Scottsdale, Siegel will travel to 16 other American cities on the tour - one of four "Keyboard Conversations" tours he conducts each year.
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