3 months ago
Music Festival Director Meurig Bowen introduces a special musical event at the upcoming The Times Cheltenham Science Festival…
“one of the most entertaining, educational rides you could ever take in the world of music and technology”
David Owen Norris at Elgar’s piano, photo www.simonweir.com
More and more at Cheltenham Festivals, we are thinking of ways that our four sibling festivals can interact and cross-pollinate. When it was suggested a while back that we put together a music-related event in the Science Festival — one that would be at The Cheltenham Ladies’ College’s Parabola Arts Centre, and which might show off the venue’s brand new, industry-leading Fazioli piano — I quickly realised there was only one person for the job.
David Owen Norris is a top-class pianist, who tours the world giving recitals, making chamber music and performing concertos with orchestras. Being such an accomplished musician requires huge dedication and concentration, and for most pianists that’s more than enough to keep them busy.
Thursday 10 June 2010 at 5:00 pm,
Parabola Arts Centre,
Cheltenham
But David is different: he is one of those super-bright, quick-thinking, hugely-active people who, I enviously imagine, only needs about four hours’ sleep a night. Some of you will know him as a broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and 4 (a recent Radio 4 programme of his, Jane Austen’s iPod, has led to a four-part series which culminates with Charles Dicken’s iPod on Christmas Day). His huge abilities to communicate ideas about music — and umpteen other things along the way — has led to a dizzyingly large number of academic appointments, which include being Professor of Musical Performance at the University of Southampton, Visiting Professor of Fortepiano at the Royal College of Music and emeritus Gresham Professor of Music in London.
But David is far from being a dry, ivory-tower music professor. Alongside the tornado of thought and ideas that you encounter when you’re in his presence, David is one of the funniest — wittiest — people I’ve ever met. I’m sure that his event, The Ultimate Piano Lesson — where he gives a whistle-stop technological history of the piano, with lots of live and recorded demonstrations along the way — will be one of the most entertaining, educational rides you could ever take in the world of music and technology. The event we advertised in the Science Festival brochure has sold out, but David has kindly agreed to do it twice on Thursday 10 July.
Book online for David’s second Ultimate Piano Lesson
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We’ve tagged this post with BBC, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, Cheltenham Ladies College, David Owen Norris, Meurig Bowen, music, Parabola Arts Centre, piano, piano lesson on Wednesday 2 June 2010.
