PORT TOWNSEND — It will be a night in piano heaven. Five pianists, with two singers and a cellist added for good measure, will bring jazz, classical and original music to the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship hall this Saturday in honor of the newly restored 1935 Steinway concert grand.
Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. for the 7 p.m. concert at the fellowship hall, 2333 San Juan Ave., and admission is a suggested $20 donation to support the performers and help maintain the piano.
Lisa Lanza, Gwendolyn Moore and Barbara Hinchliff, local pianists specializing in classical masterworks; jazz piano man George Radebaugh; Paul Creech, a Sequim-based music teacher, pianist and composer and his student Trent LaCour will all take their turns at the 9-foot-long instrument.
Lanza will offer a solo set featuring “The Maiden and the Nightingale” by Enrique Granados, “Secreto” from Federico Mompou and Debussy’s prelude titled “What the West Wind Saw.” And as she recently did in her own concerts in Port Townsend and Port Angeles, the pianist will join Marrowstone Island cellist Madelyn Kowalski for Gaspar Cassado’s “Requiebros.”
Radebaugh will join Port Townsend vocalist Robin Bessier for a set of her original songs, mostly from their soon-to-be-finished recording. “Destination Ahead,” “It’s Right Inside,” and “Ride the Wind,” are Bessier’s compositions, and “Siren” comes from Radebaugh’s pen.
If they have time, the pair will also offer one or two standards, possibly Cole Porter’s “Get Out of Town” and Duke Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss.”
“We’re both looking forward to making music with this wonderful piano,” Bessier said of the Steinway, shipped last June to Fandrich & Sons of Stanwood for a major restoration.
The instrument has returned to the fellowship hall with new German shanks, hammers from Steinway & Sons in New York, new key buttons and a hand-crafted pinblock. Each key has been balanced using lead weights and multiple tunings, according to fellowship members Bob Francis and Pat Rodgers.
“The instrument was returned in August, has settled back in,” they write, “and now is ready to share once again with the community.”
