PORT LUDLOW — Port Ludlow Performing Arts will host Stephanie Trick and Paolo Alderighi performing four-hands piano at the Bay Club in Port Ludlow at 7 p.m. Saturday.
Tickets to the concert at the Bay Club, at 120 Spinnaker Place, cost $35 and can be purchased online at www.portludlowperforming arts.com.
The two pianists will play their arrangements of classics from the stride piano, ragtime and boogie woogie traditions, as well as from the Swing Era and the Golden Age of Tin Pan Alley.
“I love to hear Stephanie and Paolo together,” said critic Dick Hyman. “They are an inspiration. Such sympatico! Such back-and-forth! Individually they are marvelous musicians — we’ve known that, but together, they play four-handed stride as it’s never been done. Brava, bravo!”
How did a woman from St. Louis (Stephanie Trick) and a man from Milan, Italy, (Paolo Alderighi) end up sitting side by side in front of the same piano, performing critically acclaimed music all over the world? Trick said they met at a piano festival in Switzerland in 2008 but just remained acquaintances until three years later, when they decided to collaborate on a four-hands piano project dedicated to classic jazz.
Other performers over the years have performed four-hands piano, but it’s rarely seen in jazz.
They turned out two successful albums in that genre, Two for One (2012) and Sentimental Journey (2014).
Their partnership continued with Double Trio Live 2015 and Double Trio Always (2016), albums recorded in the piano trio setting, but with two pianists instead of one. In 2018, they released their first album on two pianos, Broadway and More.
The four-hands piano duo has performed in a variety of worldwide venues, including the London Jazz Festival, the Kobe Jazz Street Festival in Japan, the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival, the Ascona Jazz Festival in Switzerland, the Silkeborg Riverboat Jazz Festival in Denmark, the Bohém Ragtime & Jazz Festival in Hungary, and Jazzland in Vienna.
