Our next recital at Ordway (Tuesday, March 11) features the Ukraine-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa. Her career has taken off in a big way in the last few years playing recitals and engagements with major orchestras throughout the world. I’m really looking forward to hearing her perform live in our International Artist Series.
What makes Ms Lisitsa particularly stand out from other world-class pianists The Schubert Club has invited (or will invite) to our series are a couple of things she has done unrelated to quality of her musicianship. Instead they concern building a close connection with audiences.
Apparently it started with a video that she made in 2007 and posted on YouTube. Since that first recording that was originally shot on lo-fi VHS, she has gone on to post videos of her music-making regularly and is generally cited as the classical music artist with the most viewings of her YouTube postings. Tens of millions! That’s a lot of people enjoying her music around the world. She gave a recital at the Royal Albert Hall in London to a sold out audience of over 5000 that was also broadcast via the internet.
Her approach to developing a relationship with her fans hasn’t stopped at making her performances available on line however. Ms Lisitsa likes to give audiences the opportunity to vote online in advance for their preferred program. She did that with her Royal Albert Hall performance and she is doing that with our International Artist Series recital on March 11. If you haven’t already seen the options, click here to see them and vote.
Her approach is truly creative (and I might say courageous), and one which I hope will be both fun and interesting for Schubert Club audience members.
True to that same spirit of innovation, we are arranging to hang a large screen on stage behind Ms Lisitsa and to project close-ups of the pianist and the keyboard. I hope it will provide added interest for the audience. We’ll be interested to find out what people think after the performance.
There are still a few tickets available, so if you’re intrigued, call the box office and get yourself a ticket. But first of all, vote on what you want to hear!