Matthew Sear – Classical Guitarist, 3rd October 2014

Hear Matthew Sear perform at the 1901 Arts Club in Waterloo this Autumn. Matthew will be joined by guest pianists Julie Cooper, Muzz Shah, Rebecca Singerman-Knight and Jennie Barham.

[BOOK TICKETS]

Matthew performs as the opening artist for the 2nd season of the South London Concert SeriesLaunched in November 2013, the South London Concert Series is an innovative concert concept which showcases young and emerging professional musicians (primarily pianists). The series is unique as it also offers performance opportunities to non-professional and amateur pianists and other musicians by giving them the chance to perform alongside professionals in the same formal concert setting.

The event is hosted by Lorraine Liyanage and Frances Wilson.

[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKiSnS0xjaY”]

 

Vatche Jambazian Piano Recital, 16th May

SE22 Piano School teacher Vatche performed a phenomenal recital of music by Russian composers last weekend as part of the South London Concert Series. You can watch video highlights of the event. A review by Frances Wilson of the event is below.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfoZvZsi4s]

Frances Wilson writes:
Occasionally one experiences something really remarkable at a concert: Maurizio Pollini playing the Boulez Second Sonata, Marc-André Hamelin making sense of the craggy edifice that is Charles Ives’ ‘Concord’ Sonata. And last night, it was young Armenian-Australian pianist Vatche Jambazian playing Galina Ustvolskaya’s Piano Sonata No. 5 at the season finale of the South London Concert Series. This was not at the Royal Festival Hall, nor the Wigmore, but the 1901 Arts Club, just five minutes from the Southbank Centre, a beautiful small venue in a former Victorian schoolmaster’s house.

Vatche Jambazian

A graduate of the University of Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music, Vatche is already carving an impressive professional career with a busy concert schedule and an equally full teaching roster, and he has an enthusiastic following, judging by the crowded salon at the venue and the noisy post-concert party upstairs.

Unlike some up-and-coming young artists, Vatche doesn’t play crowd-pleasers: his repertoire choices for the South London Concert Series (SLCS) were challenging and eclectic: it was his choice of repertoire that prompted the organisers of the concert to call it ‘Eastern Accents’, with its special emphasis on music from Russia. But just to prove that he is equally at home with “mainstream” classical repertoire, he opened his programme with Haydn’s B minor Sonata, a darkly sardonic work whose final movement could be mistaken for the work of a youthful Beethoven. The performance was rich in colour, witty and crisply phrased, particularly in its outer movements.

Vatche’s assertion that Galina Ustvolskaya’s Piano Sonata No. 5 was “not for the faint-hearted” was more than borne out in a performance of great clarity and control. Composed in 1986, and initially banned by the Soviet authorities, this is a work which contains chord clusters and violent dynamic contrasts, and makes full use of the range, resonance and sonority of the modern piano. It is not easy listening, challenging and at times brutal, yet Vatche’s powerful communication drew the audience into this extraordinary soundworld with its dissonances and chiming bells. The piece also confirmed one of the key missions of the SLCS: to put lesser-known and rarely performed repertoire before an audience in a salon setting which recalls the European cultural and musical salon of the nineteenth century.

“Absolutely fantastic…..Vatche I salute you! Such control, power and energy!” Lorraine Banning, audience member

Shostakovich followed, fittingly, for he was Ustvolskaya’s teacher, with an exuberant and technically demanding Prelude and Fugue in D-flat from the Opus 87. Returning to the piano after performances by supporting artists Alex Ewan (violin, in de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance) and Frances Wilson (Takemitsu and Rachmaninoff), Vatche concluded the concert with an energetic and colourful rendition of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 3 in A minor. It was a rollicking finale to what has been an exciting and popular first season for the South London Concert Series.

There were also performances by supporting artists Jose Luis Gutierrez Sacristan (Villa-Lobos and Granados) and SLCS co-founder Lorraine Liyanage (Khatchaturian and Auerbach), and the audience had the opportunity to mingle with the performers in the bar at the 1901 Arts Club after the concert.

Founded and curated by Lorraine Liyanage and Frances Wilson (AKA The Cross-Eyed Pianist), this innovative concert series offers amateur and semi-professional musicians the opportunity to perform alongside young and emerging professional artists in the same formal concert setting. The series has a special focus on lesser-known and rarely-performed piano repertoire, and has featured young professional artists Helen Burford and Emmanuel Vass in its first season. Praised for its unique and accessible approach to music making, the series combines quality chamber music with socialising to recreate the ethos of the nineteenth-century musical salon.

“A wonderfully creative idea” – Peter Donohoe, internationally-acclaimed concert pianist.

The South London Concert Series 2014/15 season launches in September 2014 with a new concept – Notes&Notes – a music and words event in which acclaimed pianist and teacher Graham Fitch will discuss and perform music by Bach and Haydn. The concert is at Craxton Studios in Hampstead, former home of pianist and teacher Harold Craxton, and will be followed by afternoon tea.

“The South London Concert Series is both innovative and traditional. Events blend an appreciation of fine music and music making with conviviality, and blur the artificial distinctions between professional and amateur”
James Lisney, international concert pianist

Full details of all SLCS events here www.slconcerts.co.uk

Piano Recital at Lassco Brunswick House

When I am not teaching, I have lots of musical ventures on the go – performing as a harpsichordist, organising the Dulwich Piano Festival and curating the South London Concert Series (SLCS) with my piano teaching colleague Frances Wilson. SLCS is a series of concert mixing contemporary classical music with socialising in unique and unusual venues in London. Here are a few photos and videos from the event so you can get an idea of what we do!

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vz2I-JQ0gM”]
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOBQry0mRO8″]
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgEDAovVevA”]

This write-up of the event is courtesy of Frances Wilson and originally appeared on her blog, The Cross-Eyed Pianist.

A stag with an impressive set of antlers surveys the room, while a white-tuxedo’d Tony Curtis keeps watch over the proceedings from his niche in a corner near the piano, a John Hopkinson baby grand with a rosewood case. Glittering chandeliers hang from the ceiling, illuminating the exposed brickwork on two walls of the room and highlighting the colours of the stained glass panels in the elegant sash windows. Exotic oriental rugs are draped over vintage British Rail first class seats, and at the back of the room, a glass cabinet is filled with antique pharmacy jars. Welcome to Brunswick House, part of the London Architectural Salvage and Supply Co, a Georgian mansion just five minutes from London’s Vauxhall Station, flanked by the brand new 5-star hotel and luxury apartments of One Nine Elms. Brunswick House is a treasure trove of antiques and salvaged curiosities, and on Thursday night last week, it provided a wonderful and eclectic venue for a fine evening of music making and conviviality.

Lorraine LiyanageLorraine Banning, Frances Wilson & Lorraine Liyanage (and Tony Curtis) at Brunswick House

“A superb evening – huge fun was had with a mix of musical genres in a delightfully decrepit and stylish Georgian mansion. Best of luck promoting these salon recitals, the way music is meant to be played and heard.”

Rosalind, audience member

The concert was part of the South London Concert Series, and featured a recital by BBC Music Magazine’s “rising star” Emmanuel Vass, together with supporting performances by three talented members of the London Piano Meetup Group, who despite not being “professional” pianists, played with equal poise, musical sensitivity and professionalism. The diverse programme matched the unusual setting, with music by Bach, Chopin, Turina, and Mozart together with Emmanuel’s own transcriptions of pop songs by Queen and The Prodigy. In keeping with the SLCS ethos of recreating the nineteenth-century musical salon, an hour of music was followed by much conversation and socialising in the ante-room next to the Saloon, and continued downstairs in the restaurant adjacent to the house.

“The South London Concert Series is both innovative and traditional. Events blend an appreciation of fine music and music making with conviviality, and blur the artificial distinctions between professional and amateur”

James Lisney, international concert pianist

The final SLCS concert of the 2013/14 season is on Friday 16th May at the 1901 Arts Club. Entitled ‘Eastern Accents’, the concert includes music from Russia and Japan, and features a performance by guest artist Vatche Jambazian. Further details/tickets here

 


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