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Public Relations for the Arts Josephine Hemsing Managing Director
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Catherine Hampton Publicist
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www.hemsingpr.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PIANIST URSULA OPPENS PERFORMS A SELECTION OF PIANO FOUR HANDS PIECES WITH
PIANIST JEROME LOWENTHAL AT BARGEMUSIC, DECEMBER 1, 2012
FEATURING WORLD PREMIERE OF RZEWSKIS PIANO FOUR HANDS

The distinguished American pianist Ursula Oppens and fellow pianist and longtime collaborator Jerome Lowenthal will
perform works for piano four hands on Saturday evening, December 1, 2012 at 8 p.m. at Bargemusic. The program will
include pieces by Mozart, Barber, Faure, Milhaud, as well as the world premiere of Frederic Rzewskis Piano Four Hands. The
complete program follows:

Mozart Ein Orgelstck fr eine Uhr, KV 608
Barber Souvenirs, Op. 28
Rzewski Piano Four Hands (World Premiere)
Faur Dolly Suite, Op. 56
Milhaud Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Nothing Doing Bar), Op. 58
Tickets may be purchased at the door for $35 ($30 Senior, $15 Student). Bargemusic is located just under the Brooklyn Bridge at
Fulton Ferry Landing, Brooklyn, NY. For more information please visit www.bargemusic.org.
Ursula Oppens has long been recognized as the leading champion of contemporary American piano music. In addition her
original and perceptive readings of other music, old and new, have earned her a place among the elect of todays performing
musicians.

Ms. Oppens opened the 2012-2013 season with a celebration of John Cages work, performing Atlas Eclipticalis and Winter
Music simultaneously at Carnegie Halls Stern Auditorium with the SEM Ensemble in October. In January 2013, Ms. Oppens
will appear with Jed Distler at Hamilton Stage in New Jersey in a program of Monk and Bill Evans. Later this season Ms. Oppens
will appear in in concert in Chicago; she will also release a recording of music by the distinguished British-American composer
Bernard Rands.

Most recently Ms. Oppens captured a Grammy Award nominationher fourth to datein the coveted category of Best
Classical Instrumental Solo for the highly praised album Winging It: Piano Music of John Corigliano, released in April 2011 on
Cedille Records. The disc features the world premiere recording of John Coriglianos work of the same name, which had its debut
performance by Ms. Oppens at New Yorks Symphony Space in May 2009. Other works on the album, all by Mr. Corigliano,
include Chiaroscuro (1997), Fantasia on an Ostinato (1985), Kaleidoscope for two pianos (1959), and Etude Fantasy (1976).







Ms. Oppens is joined on the recording by veteran pianist Jerome Lowenthal for Kaleidoscope. Journalist Tom Huizenga from The
Washington Post praised Ms. Oppenss interpretation: Her rigorous, unforced performances again prove that few pianists of any
era can claim a hold on contemporary piano music as she does (August 2011).

Earlier Grammy nominations were for Oppens Plays Carter; a recording of the complete piano works of Elliott Carter for
Cedille Records (which also was named a Best of the Year selection by The New York Times long-time music critic Allan
Kozinn); herPiano Muisic of Our Time featuring compositions by John Adams, Elliott Carter, Julius Hemphill, and Conlon
Nancarrow for the Music and Arts label, and her legendary cult classic The People United Will Never Be Defeated by Frederic
Rzewski on Vanguard. Ms. Oppens recently added to her extensive discography by releasing a two-piano CD for Cedille
Records devoted to Visions de lAmen of Oliver Messiaen and Debussys En blanc et noir, performed with pianist Jerome
Lowenthal.

The 2011-2012 season found Ms. Oppens appearing in recital at the House of Composers in St Petersburg, Russia with a
program of Corigliano, Carter and Rzewski. She was also heard as soloist with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic
conducted by Jeffery Meyer where she performed the world premiere of Laura Kaminskys Piano Concerto, as well as Leonid
Rezetdinov's Feuerwerk-Hana-Bi for piano and orchestra. During the 13
th
Festival Slowind 2011 at the Slovenska Filharmonija
of Ljubljana (Slovenia) Ms. Oppens played works by Elliott Carter and Witold Lutoslawski. In February 2012, she performed
Amy Williamss Three Pieces for Piano, as part of the 8-hour Music of Now Marathon at Symphony Space. Other
engagements included Mills College in Oakland (CA), and Pittsburgh (PA). In July 2012 Ms. Oppens also returned to the Music
Mountain Festival in Falls Village (CT).

Over the years, Ms. Oppens has premiered works by such leading composers as Luciano Berio, William Bolcom, John Harbison,
Julius Hemphill, Tania Leon, Gyrgy Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, Harold Meltzer, Conlon Nancarrow, Tobias Picker, Frederic
Rzewski, Joan Tower, Amy Williams, Christian Wolff, Amnon Wolman, and Charles Wuorinen. As orchestral guest soloist Mr.
Oppens has performed with virtually all of the worlds major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, and the orchestras of Chicago,
Cleveland, San Francisco, and Milwaukee. Abroad, she has appeared with such ensembles as the Berlin Symphony, Orchestre de
la Suisse Romande, the Deutsche Symphonie, the Scottish BBC, and the London Philharmonic Orchestras. Ms. Oppens is also
an avid chamber musician and has performed with the Arditti, Juilliard, Pacifica, and Rosetti quartets, among other chamber
ensembles.

In October 2010, Ms. Oppens performed the New York premiere of Alvin Singletons Blueskoncert with the American
Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Halls Zankel Hall. Steve Smith, reviewing for The New York Times, wrote:

Alvin Singletons BluesKonzert, from 1995, pays ruminative tribute to Julius Hemphill, an accomplished jazz
saxophonist and innovative composer who died that year. The pianist Ursula Oppens, a founding member of the
American Composers Orchestrabrought her customary intensity and precision to fidgeting tremolos and obsessively
wheeling birdcall figurations, with handsome support from the ensemble. Bluesy in the abstract only, it was an
unconventional ending.

One of the most riveting experiences of Ms. Oppenss entire career came in Lisbon on April 25, 2011, the 37
th
anniversary of
Portugals Carnation Revolution which saw the overthrow of the authoritarian Estado Novo regime, when she caused a furor of







approval by playing the Portuguese national anthem as part of her performance of Frederic Rzewskis The People United Will
Never Be Defeated.

Ursula Oppens is a Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York
in New York City. From 1994 through the end of the 2007-08 academic year she served as John Evans Distinguished Professor
of Music at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Ms. Oppens lives in New York City.

Jerome Lowenthal studied in his native Philadelphia with Olga Samaroff-Stokowski, in New York with William Kapell and
Edward Steuermann, and in Paris with Alfred Cortot, meanwhile traveling annually to Los Angeles for coachings with Artur
Rubinstein. After winning prizes in three international competitions (Bolzano, Darmstadt, and Brussels), he moved to
Jerusalem where, for three years, he played, taught, and lectured.

He made his debut with the New York Philharmonic playing Bartoks Concerto No. 2 in 1963. Since then, he has performed
more or less everywhere, from the Aleutians to Zagreb. Conductors with whom he has appeared as soloist include Barenboim,
Ozawa, Tilson Thomas, Temirkanov, and Slatkin, as well as such giants of the past as Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy,

Pierre Monteux, and Leopold Stokowski. He has played sonatas with Itzhak Perlman, piano duos with Ronit Amir (his late
wife), Carmel Lowenthal (his daughter), and Ursula Oppens, as well as quintets with the Lark, Avalon and Shanghai Quartets.
Devoted to education, Mr. Lowenthal has taught for eighteen years at The Juilliard School and for thirty-nine summers at the
Music Academy of the West. He has worked with an extraordinary number of gifted pianists, whom he encourages to
understand the music they play in a wide aesthetic and cultural perspective and to project it with the freedom which that
perspective allows.


For further information, please contact Hemsing Associates at (212) 772-1132 or visit www.hemsingpr.com
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