Primera Parte

Meet the “heir to the great legacy of the Spanish piano school”, Alba Ventura. Born in Barcelona, Alba is a passionate, nuanced performer who made her solo debut at the age of thirteen performing Mozart’s “Jeunehomme” piano concerto with the Cadaqués Orchestra and Sir N Marriner. She began her studies at the Académia Marshall, founded by Enrique Granados, and her mentors include Carlotta Garriga, Alicia De Larrocha, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Dimitri Bashkirov and Irina Zaritskaya. Her discography includes a wide range of repertoire - everything from Mozart to Rachmaninoff to Rautavaara, and of course includes the Spanish giants: Granados, Albeniz and Mompou.

We caught up with Alba in her practice studio in Barcelona where she shared her depth of experience and wisdom with us - sharing her journey as a concert pianist, and how she finds balance as a professor, mother, chamber musician, recording artist and performer. In this convo, we dive into her methods of preparing music, how she practices, the power of mental rehearsal and visualization, and the importance of following your own voice and strengths as you make your way on your own artistic path. Ultimately, her message is to enjoy the process in all of its forms - from your practice alone at the instrument, to the ebbs and flow of career milestones, and not to be afraid to continually refine as you go.

This conversation is full of light and joy and love for music. I can’t wait for you to hear it and to learn from this incredible artist!

Connect with Alba here: www.albaventura.com

Follow Alba on instagram @albaclassics

Listen to her new album IBERIA here!

✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:

Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianist

YouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist

🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm

🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Described as “one of those artists who can make classical music such great fun” (Sedona Red Rock News), Dr. James Palmer is an American pianist who is equally at home as a soloist, collaborator, presenter, and teacher. He is a dynamic musician, and just a lovely human being, currently on faculty at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Texas. This conversation is full of inspiration and ideas - James is such a creative person, who is always dreaming up new concepts and ideas of how to share the music he loves with audiences. We discuss how he has grown his performing career (from word of mouth to cold emailing!), the power of going to concerts and being inspired by others to create your next new idea, his obsession with Scriabin and how it has manifested into an incredible youtube series, and his brand new shiny concert series that he will be launching this fall in Houston! He shares his perspective on how he has searched for his own artistic voice through integrating all of the different parts of himself, and how we can all follow our curiosity and joy to find the career of our dreams.

Connect with James here: www.jamespalmerpiano.com

Follow James on instagram @jamespalmerpiano

✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:

Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianist

YouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist

🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm

🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

A self-proclaimed “singer in a pianist’s body”, Robert is an incredibly hilarious and talented vocal coach and pianist on faculty at the University of Kentucky, where he performs and coaches singers with his signature wit, and down-to-business coaching style. This episode is full of amazing ideas and insights into performance and preparation. Robert shares with us how he strives for excellence rather than perfectionism, and prioritizes how he wants the audience to experience the music rather than worrying about the right or wrong of it all. He encourages us to show up and give that day’s 100%, focus on joyful expression, keep the music feeling fresh and electric, and to dive in the deep end!

We are so lucky to absorb his wisdom and joy in this episode - please enjoy this amazing chat with Robert Bosworth, trained musician ™!

Learn more about Robert here: www.robertbosworthmusic.com

Follow Robert on instagram @robertbosworthmusic

✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:

Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianist

YouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist

🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm

🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Described by her listeners as mesmerizing and otherworldly, Canadian pianist Katherine Dowling thrives on the intimacy of live performance - always playing from memory so that the music is fully internalized. She loves to discover sounds that she has never heard nor imagined before, to explore beauty that isn’t nice or pretty.

In this convo we discuss the flexibility and synchronicity involved in artistic careers and how Katherine has navigated delightfully unexpected opportunities on her artistic path. She is a champion of new music, which is clearly displayed through her latest album, titled Awake and Dreaming, which features music by Canadian composer Alice Ping Yee Ho.

Katherine shares with us how she approaches welcoming audiences into the world of new music, and her mission to cultivate demand for live music experiences and continue to offer the precious opportunity for stillness and communion through live performance in an increasingly digitized world.

Listen to Katherine’s album Awake and Dreaming

Katherine’s recording of Alice Ping Yee Ho’s Aeon is featured in this episode

Learn more about Katherine here: www.katherinedowling.com

Follow Katherine on instagram @katherinedowlingpiano

✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:

Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianist

YouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist

🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm

🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Welcome to a masterclass in concert curation with the incredibly innovative Elizabeth Newkirk: pianist, artist, and writer based in Houston, TX.

This episode showcases her creative ability to make connections across art forms to curate incredibly interesting concert experiences for her audiences in her concert series THE ARCHETYPE OF MODERN MAN. Elizabeth also reminds us to continuously be your own teacher - and that if you can learn a Beethoven trio - you have the skills to fundraise, advertise, curate concerts, and read poetry of course!

And new this week - here’s your homework! Go buy this book!

You can listen to Elizabeth’s album here: the Americanist by Elizabeth Newkirk on Apple Music Classical

And read her essay THE AMERICANIST here: https://issuu.com/me7884/docs/art_style_magazine_volume_12_issue_12_setem

You can learn more about Elizabeth here: www.elizabethnewkirk.com

You can follow Elizabeth on instagram @eliznewkirk

✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:

Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianist

YouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist

🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm

🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Elizabeth Newkirk is an American classical pianist, writer, and curator. She specializes in music of the early 20th century, and her scholarship explores the foundations of culture, convention, and archetypes. As a passionate humanist, her curations and performances seek to put the humanities into practice.

This convo explores her work as an artist and writer, her album THE AMERICANIST, and her concert series THE ARCHETYPE OF MODERN MAN. Her insatiable curiosity has led her from classical piano, to poetry, literature, critical commentary, and back again. We dive into the deep philosophical questions that connect our art as classical musicians to poetry, literature, and the nature of the universal human experience and how these themes interact with her work as a performer and professor.

Why come to a classical music concert? What can we offer? How do we introduce new audiences to the music we love?

Stay tuned to find out!

You can listen to Elizabeth’s album here: the Americanist by Elizabeth Newkirk on Apple Music Classical

And read her essay THE AMERICANIST here: https://issuu.com/me7884/docs/art_style_magazine_volume_12_issue_12_setem

You can learn more about Elizabeth here: www.elizabethnewkirk.com

You can follow Elizabeth on instagram @eliznewkirk

✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:

Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianist

YouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist

🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm

🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Meet Nicole - our first collaborative pianist on the podcast! She is not your average pianist 💅 and has built a career at the intersection of artistry, innovation, and service. An active performer, educator, and arts administrator, she is deeply committed to expanding the reach of collaborative piano through performance, teaching, and community engagement. This convo is filled w incredible insights into the ups and downs of a collab career and the unique skill sets that collab pianists must cultivate on their road to success. Her passion for connecting with audiences and her focus on uplifting and encouraging each and every musician she plays with shines through as she shares her story. Currently based in Macon, Georgia, Nicole is on a mission to advocate for her collab community and cultivate meaningful relationships with her artistic partners. She shares what skills and values truly matter and how we can refocus on the beautiful opportunity we have to connect with the world around us as musicians.

You can follow Nicole @nicocoleying

www.nicoleying.com

✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:

Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianist

YouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist

🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm

🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

We’re back with Mark to recap the premiere of his piano concerto RUMINATIONS just hours after walking offstage! If you haven’t heard episode 5 yet go ahead and check that out to hear all about the creation of this project and how it came to be!

In this episode, we chat about the big premiere, the experience of performing music by living composers vs music of the established canon, performing a piano concerto with no conductor (👀) and the joy of playing music by your friends with your friends! 💕

You can watch the premiere of RUMINATIONS here!:

https://youtu.be/Fpd4wQXRJjU?si=FZ3Fay0tPriEfyZY

Thank you to Graham Lessard, audio engineer and Vicki Van Chau & Philip Bowen, videographers, for capturing the premiere so beautifully in our recording!

This is such a meaningful, dream-come-true project for us that would not be possible without support from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Development and the City of Calgary and the collaboration with the incredible artists of Kensington Sinfonia and the Calgary Philharmonic listed here:

Violin

Genevieve Micheletti

Eric Auerbach

Isaac Willocks

Erin Burkholder

Diane Lane

Sora Kim

Viola

Liza Scriggins Lowry

Patricia Higgins

Ethan Mung

Cello

Andrea Case

Kathleen de Caen

Takumi Rodgers

Bass

Matthew Heller

Flute

Emily Pernambucq

Clarinet

Cedric Blary

Horn

Peter Clark

Trumpet

Adam Zinatelli

Percussion

Chris Sies

You can follow Mark @mark.limacher on instagram

✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:

Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianist

YouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist

🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm

🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC