Thursday, April 06, 2023 - 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Paul Creative Arts Center Johnson Theatre
Pianist and conductor Stephen Drury has performed throughout the world with a repertoire that stretches from Bach to Liszt to the music of today. He has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Barbican Centre and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and from Arkansas to Seoul. A champion of contemporary music, he has taken the sound of dissonance into remote corners of Pakistan, Greenland and Montana.
Named “Musician of the Year” by the Boston Globe in 1989, Drury has commissioned
new works for solo piano from John Cage, John Zorn, John Luther Adams, Terry
Riley, and Chinary Ung with funding provided by Meet The Composer. He has
performed with Zorn in Paris, Vienna, London, Brussels, and New York, and
conducted Zorn's music in Bologna, Boston, Chicago, and in the UK and Costa
Rica. In March of 1995 he gave the first performance of Zorn's concerto for
piano and orchestra Aporias with Dennis Russell Davies and the Cologne Radio
Symphony Orchestra. Later that same season he gave the premiere of Basic
Training for solo piano, written for him by Lee Hyla. Drury has recorded the
music of John Cage, Elliott Carter, Charles Ives, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Colin
McPhee, John Zorn, John Luther Adams and Frederic Rzewski, as well as works of
Liszt and Beethoven, for Mode, New Albion, Catalyst, Tzadik, Avant,
MusicMasters, Cold Blue, New World and Neuma.
Stephen Drury has given masterclasses at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory,
Mannes Beethoven Institute, and Oberlin Conservatory, and in Japan, Romania,
Argentina, Costa Rica, Denmark, and throughout the United States, and served on
juries for the Concert Artist Guild, Gaudeamus and Orléans Concours
International de Piano XXème Siècle Competitions. Drury is artistic director
and conductor of the Callithumpian Consort, and he created and directs the
Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at New England
Conservatory. Drury earned his undergraduate degree for Harvard College, and
has also earned the New England Conservatory's select Artist Diploma. His
teachers have included Claudio Arrau, Patricia Zander, William Masselos,
Margaret Ott, and Theodore Lettvin, and conducting with Donald Thulean. He
teaches at New England Conservatory, where he has directed festivals of the
music of John Cage, Steve Reich, and (in 2010) Christian Wolff.
free and open to the public
