Master Performers Series Features Pianist Zlabys Sunday in Concert

Piano virtuoso Andrius Zlabys is the next featured performer at the upcoming Master Performers @TAMIU Series Sunday, Feb. 16 at 3 p.m. in the Texas A&M International University Center for the Fine and Performing Arts Recital Hall.

Admission is free and open to the public. This event is sponsored by the Fernando A. Salinas Charitable Trust, TAMIU Housing and Residence Life, Hector Hall and Annabelle Hall.

The Master Performers Series @TAMIU is the latest series offered by the TAMIU College of Arts and Sciences Department of Fine and Performing Arts.

Grammy-nominated pianist Zlabys began his piano studies when he was six years old in his native Lithuania. He trained at the Curtis Institute of Music and has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra and Rotterdam Symphony, Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires, among others.

He has also appeared at numerous festivals both in the U.S. and abroad, including the Menuhin, Salzburg, Lockenhaus and Caramoor music festivals. Zlabys made his Carnegie Hall debut at the Isaac Stern Auditorium with New York Youth Symphony in 2001 in a performance of Beethoven First Piano Concerto.

His performances led the Chicago Tribune to write: “Pianist-composer Andrius Zlabys is one of the most gifted young keyboard artists to emerge in years.” The New York Sun called him “A Shining Hope of Pianists” after his recital at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Zlabys’ uniquely vulnerable honesty and selfless generosity in his playing allows the audience to connect with the composers’ most intimate reasons for their work. It is exactly this notion in Zlabys’ playing that prompted the Philadelphia Inquirer to note: “The beloved C-major chord… rippled off of Zlabys' hands with such open-hearted rightness that you couldn't escape the notion that the pianist was acting as Bach's ventriloquist...”

The program for the evening includes J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B flat major BVW 825, W.A. Mozart’s Sonata in A minor K. 310, Robert Schumann’s Sonata No. 2 in G Minor and Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7.

For more information, contact Dr. Fritz Gechter, TAMIU associate professor of piano and music, at fgechter@tamiu.edu, 326.2639 or visit offices in CFPA 233D.

University office hours are 8 a.m. – 5 p.m., Monday – Friday.

Additional information is also available at www.tamiu.edu

Journalists who need additional information or help with media requests and interviews should contact the Office of Public Relations, Marketing and Information Services at prmis@tamiu.edu