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Kamfonas, Cymerman to perform Wednesday at Gobin
Greek American pianist John Kamfonas returns from his home in Paris to perform the fifth concert of the Greencastle Summer Music Festival 2024 season Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in the air-conditioned sanctuary of Gobin Church.
In addition to performing dream-like music by French composer Erik Satie and others, he will be joined by Greencastle’s beloved French pianist Claude Cymerman, a graduate of the Paris Conservatoire and professor of music emeritus at DePauw. Claude and John will play piano four-hand arrangements of Astor Piazzolla’s “L’Histoire du Tango” and George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris.”
All GSMF events are open to the public without admission charge. The festival is funded by pay-what-you-can donations, individual donors, an endowment at the Putnam County Community Foundation and local businesses including the Inn at DePauw, the Doc’s Inn, First National Bank, North Salem State Bank, Old National Bank and Tri-County Bank and Trust.
“John has been performing for us for at least 10 years now,” GSMF founder Eric Edberg said, “and during that time he and Claude have become good friends. I’m delighted that they will be making music together for us this week. It’s another example of our motto, ‘friends making music for friends.’”
Embracing his penchant for improvisation alongside his passion for the classical and contemporary repertoire, Greek American pianist John Kamfonas has given performances around the world, from New York to India, Paris to Beijing, which have been described as possessing “a grandeur that lifted the music into the sublime ... and a delicacy that took one’s breath away.” (National Herald, New York)
As one of few improvising classical pianists, Kamfonas performs music ranging from Bach and Beethoven to Debussy and Rachmaninoff interwoven with spontaneously conceived improvisations making each concert unique and unpredictable.
He gave his New York debut at Merkin Hall in 2012 and has performed in numerous summer festivals in recent years including the Atlantic Music Festival (Maine), Aspen Music Festival, Beijing International Music Festival and Academy and at the Greencastle Summer Music Festival. Other recent solo concerts include performances at Steinway Hall (New York), Baruch Performing Arts Center (New York), Salle Cortot (Paris), La Fondation des Etats-Unis (Paris), Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris and Columbia University Global Center in Paris as a guest artist of the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.
In 2012, Kamfonas conducted a residency in Bangalore, India, through the Bangalore School of Music where he performed a sold-out solo concert at the Alliance Francaise auditorium, several house concerts around town, and taught a series of masterclasses.
Several interactions with Indian classical musicians furthered his interest in cross-cultural musical collaboration, which led eventually to an invitation to collaborate alongside various members of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble for a series of concerts at DePauw during the summer of 2017, where he performed with Tabla master Sandeep Das.
In 2018 Kamfonas went on a two-continent tour in the U.S. and Europe with cellist Edberg, performing works by Alan Hovhaness, an American composer heavily influenced by Eastern musical styles. The commercial release of a recording of this music is forthcoming.
As a devoted proponent of contemporary music, Mr. Kamfonas has performed and given world premieres of works by world renowned composers of today including George Tsontakis, Eric Ewazen, and Victor Kioulaphides whose piano trio was given its world premier in 2012 . Interested in the cross section of improvisation and contemporary composition, Mr. Kamfonas performed “Engrenages”, by Alexandros Markeas as the improvising soloist with the Versailles conservatory saxophone quartet in 2017.
Kamfonas currently resides in Paris, where he has completed residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts and the Fondation des Etats-Unis, the site of a concert series he founded in 2015 called the “Rendez-Vous Musicaux” presenting resident American musicians in collaborations with guest musicians living in France since 2015. This was also the venue for a solo recital part of which was broadcast nationally on France’s TV channel TF1 in 2016.
Kamfonas serves on the faculty of the American Conservatory of Paris and has given masterclasses and improvisation workshops in universities and schools throughout the U.S. He holds degrees from Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music and the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. He is currently pursuing his PhD jointly at the Paris Conservatory and the Sorbonne University. His principal teachers include Jean-François Zygel, Phillip Kawin, Jean-David Coen, Marian Rybicki and Jean Fassina.
A native of France, pianist Claude Cymerman graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris with highest honors, studying with Pierre Sancan.
After winning national and international competitions, including the Grand Prize at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud contest, he studied at Indiana University with Gyorgy Sebök. In a special ceremony, the late French President Georges Pompidou, recognized him as “Outstanding Pianist.”
Cymerman performs extensively as a recitalist and chamber musician and has appeared as a soloist with the Radio France Orchestra, Orchestre des Pays de la Loire, Orchestre National d’Ile de France, Orchestre Symphonique de Limoges, the Luxembourg and San Francisco chamber orchestras, as well as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
He is regularly invited to perform and give master classes at major festivals in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Japan and Israel, and he is a frequent guest on French National Radio and the BBC.