New Music Central - Gayle Blankenburg

US pianist, Gayle Blankenburg, returns to perform a solo recital at UC School of Music in 2019.

Her programme will consist of recent compositions from American composers, Richard Cameron-Wolfe & Terry Riley, as well as a New Zealand premier of a piece by School of Music staff member, Mark Menzies.

Gayle Blankenburg has performed extensively to great critical acclaim as a solo pianist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist. She was a roster artist with Southwest Chamber Music from 1996 to 2003, with whom she regularly performed and recorded.

Among nearly a dozen award-winning CDs recorded for Southwest Chamber Music on Cambria Records are her performances of Elliot Carter's song cycle Of Challenge and of Love (with soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson) and the Carlos Chavez Invencion for solo piano. She has also performed with Phyllis Bryn-Julson at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, in New York City at Cooper Union, and in Vienna, Austria in a residency at the Schoenberg Institute.

Her recording of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with the LA-based ensemble “inauthentica” has received the highest critical acclaim from Gramophone Magazine, Opera News, and The American Record Guide. Released recently was a CD of solo piano and chamber music works of composer Richard Cameron-Wolfe.

The Los Angeles Times has reviewed her playing on numerous occasions, saying, “Blankenburg played with elegant power and poise… Her crisp touch and light pedaling produced crystalline, pensive, haunting sequences… This is a gratefully idiomatic piece for a pianist with both power and a palette, requirements Blankenburg met easily.”

Recent performances include concerts at the DiMenna Center, the Tenri institute of Art, and the National Opera Center in New York City, chamber music concerts in the Bay Areaand in Sacramento, and a performance in Los Angeles with the Telegraph Quartet.

Ms. Blankenburg was a student of the distinguished pianists Menahem Pressler (of the Beaux Arts Trio) and Abbey Simon at Indiana University, where she received the Bachelor's and Master's degrees in piano performance, and where she was also awarded the coveted Performer's Certificate.

She is currently on the piano faculties of the Claremont Colleges, teaching at Pomona College and at Scripps College.