"Songs and Dances" with Donna Coleman

Looking forward to the Concert "Songs and Dances" by Donna Coleman at 3 p.m. on Saturday, 3rd May in the Quairading CRC when this internationally renowned pianist and recording artist will give the first of two concerts in the Wheatbelt.

Donna's concerts are an expression of her dream of sharing her music-making with audiences in regional communities. Donna’s
first visit to Australia in 1992 was sponsored by the United States of America’s Fulbright Foundation in the form of a Senior Scholar Fellowship that enabled her to present concerts of American music across the land.
It was a big decision to leave her native USA (and her dog!) to take up to position Head of Keyboard in the (then) Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, but the initial three-year appointment turned into twenty and a lifelong commitment to nurturing some of Australia’s finest talent

In 2005 she became a proud citizen of Australia. In the ten years since she left the VCA, Donna has continued to devote large portions of each year to reconnecting with present and former students and colleagues, with her many friends, and with her audiences in Australia.
She is delighted to present recitals for the residents of Quairdaing and York and the surrounding communities. Her York concert is on Sunday 4th May 2025 at 2:30 p.m. in the York Town Hall.

Donna’s repertory encompasses the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (OutBach®, her trademarked “brand,” derives from her performances of Bach’s music with Indigenous artists such as William Barton and Tom E. Lewis in “outback” communities), the gamut of “traditional” composers including Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and Fryderyk Chopin, but she is also a long-time champion of American music and the music of the Twentieth Century. Her recordings of the music of Charles Ives have been lauded worldwide as “the best,” and she has produced a volume of the complete Danzas Cubanas by Ignacio Cervantes. Her research into the origins of Ragtime resulted in two popular discs for ABC
Classics, Rags to Riches: A Syncopated Century and Havana to Harlem (Volume II of the Rags to Riches series). The Lost Lady traces the notion of “borrowed” music and the deep roots of Jazz and Ragtime in a journey from Germany to Poland / France to Cuba and thence to the USA via New Orleans and the Mississippi River. She has also given World Premiere and Australian Premiere performances of brand-new compositions, dozens of which were written specifically for her nuanced and insightful interpretation.
As a mentor to hundreds of students across the planet, Donna combines hands-on knowledge of piano technology (including full grand piano restoration), musculo-skeletal anatomy and physiology, and comprehensive familiarity with the history of keyboards and the repertory created for them. She is in the process of condensing this galaxy of materials into a book, Dancing with the Piano, part philosophy, part practise, and fully pure inspiration.

For the Western Australia OutBach® Tour, Donna’s program, Songs and Dances, will include music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Fryderyk Chopin, and an array of works by American and Australian composers including those associated with the Ragtime tradition and the Ragtime Revival (for example, George Gershwin, Percy Grainger, William Bolcom, Stephen Cronin).

Also check out other Music events in York, Entertainment events in York, Concerts in York.