The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Music Department will present a free and public Alumna Recital featuring the Transcontinental Piano Duo with Janice Meyer Thompson (BME ’71) on Wednesday, Oct. 10 in the campus Music Hall.
The Transcontinental Piano Duo (TDP) features Meyer Thompson, a piano faculty member at Arizona State University, and Elaine Greenfield.
The recital begins at 7:30 p.m. in the UW Oshkosh Music Hall. Again, admission is free and open to the public.
The TDP’s special recitals have been staged around the United States. They feature commentary highlighting “four-hands playing and duo repertoire.”
“Professional performers and passionate teachers who have earned praise nationwide, their joint master classes (solo or duo repertoire) have been enthusiastically received by teachers and participants at the pre-college through graduate student level,” according to the Duo’s website.
“The TPD has given workshops, master classes and performances nationwide, performing in university settings, at professional conferences, and in community concert series across the United States. Reviews note the Duo’s ‘impeccable ensemble,’ ‘great musicianship and versatility,’ and ‘delicate phrasing and expressive lines… brilliance and excitement.’ Recent highlights include performances at the 2012 MTNA National Conference in New York City, the World Piano Pedagogy Conference, Arizona’s Steinway Chamber Music Festival and their current six-university Wisconsin-Iowa tour. The Duo’s most recent recording, “The Elegant Erard—music of Debussy, Faure, Bizet and Ravel performed on an historic instrument” was released on Centaur Records in 2010.
About the artists:
Elaine Greenfield is a widely acclaimed pianist, recognized internationally for her performances, recordings, and teaching, with a distinguished career as soloist/lecture recitalist, and collaborative artist. Nationally, Ms. Greenfield has received praised notice for performances at Carnegie, Merkin and Steinway Halls, the Phillips Collection, Boston’s Gardner Museum, and concert venues coast to coast. The New York Times hailed her “crystalline clarity, tonal warmth, graceful airiness, and rhythmically strong” playing, with “a formidable technique”. CLAVIER magazine recently lauded Ms. Greenfield’s CD release “Debussy Preludes, Bks.1 & 2,” Centaur Records, calling her performances “impeccable”…“how this music was meant to sound.” Ms. Greenfield was a founding performer of the VT Contemporary Music Ensemble and toured for fifteen years with Philadelphia flutist Pamela Guidetti. She is artistic director of St. Paul’s Cathedral Arts in Burlington, Vermont, where she resides, and Greenfield Piano Associates, an educational organization dedicated to the art of piano playing. Known nationally as an educator, Greenfield is sought after as an adjudicator, workshop clinician and instructor of piano teachers, offering master classes and a private course in piano teacher enrichment.
Janice Meyer Thompson has enjoyed a diverse career as soloist, collaborative artist, lecture-recitalist, and master teacher across North America, Europe, and Asia. Highlights have included performances in the premier conservatory concert halls of China and South Korea, at the Val Tidone and Maggio Musicale Festivals (Italy), at the U.S. Consulate in Florence (Italy) and at the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland). Acclaimed for her “beautiful sound, easy versatility of style, and remarkable sensitivity to phrasing and nuance” (Fanfare), Thompson maintains a lively international performance schedule with her professional chamber music ensemble, The Kent Camerata, with the Transcontinental Piano Duo, and with faculty colleagues in the Arizona State University School of Music where she was awarded the rank of Professor Emerita in 2012 after a distinguished teaching career. Dr. Thompson enjoys a national reputation as a leader in the field of graduate piano pedagogy and is a frequent guest artist, speaker, master class clinician, author, and adjudicator for MTNA state and national conferences and for the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy. A native Wisconsinite and 1971 alumna of UW Oshkosh where she was a student of Beverly Hassel and James Kohn, Dr. Thompson is proud and honored to return to her undergraduate school as a guest artist for this first performance since graduation.
You can learn more about the Duo by reading artist biographies and other information at www.transcontinentalpianoduo.com.