Italian pianist/dancer/singer Debora Petrina has performed one of Morton Feldman's very early pieces for solo piano and dancer, and it's been a YouTube hit for months.
Ms Petrina will be performing the music of Nino Rota at Mills College (Oakland, CA) tonight:
The Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco presents
Primavera Italiana:
The Spring Festival of Italian New Music
DEBORA PETRINA, pianist
Pianist Debora Petrina will perform a program including pieces by young Italian composers along with two important US premieres by Nino Rota: "12 Songs" from Giovanni Testori?s play "Arialda," and a suite from Federico Fellini?s "Casanova." The program is completed by the "Adagietto" from Mahler?s "Symphony No. 5" in an inventive piano transcription by Camillo Togni.
http://www.iicsanfrancisco.esteri.it/IIC_SanFrancisco/Menu/Gli_Eventi/Calendario/
Thursday, April 19, 2007 8:00pm Free Admission
Mills College Concert Hall 5000 MacArthur Blvd Oakland, CA
About Debora Petrina:
Debora Petrina is a polymorphic artist. She passes easily through different scenes, from classical piano to jazz singing, from performance to sound experiments, from dance to theatre to reinvention of rock songs.
Her masters in Italy and abroad (Academies of Budapest and Ljubljana) bring her soon to develope personal projects in classical, contemporary and avantgarde music: she makes italian premieres of works by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Nino Rota, Eunice Katunda, Leos Jan?cek, Gy?rgy Kurt?g, George Enescu and plays in Milan, Rome, Venice, London, Strasbourg, Tokio, Havana, Ljubliana, Lausanne, Budapest, and for several radio broadcasts. She regularly plays with the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto. She has made recording premieres of Morton Feldman for an independent american label (Early and Unknown Piano Pieces, OgreOgress) and took part in the 'A Call for Silence' CD compiled by the Sonic Arts Network (UK). Also in UK (London, Conway Hall) for the launch of the book Morton Feldman Says, she has choreographed and performed, while playing the piano, the Three Dances by Morton Feldman.
As a singer/pianist she is working on projects where she recreates pieces from different repertoires (jazz, rock, pop) aside with her own original pieces. She passes with nonchalance from standards to Nick Drake, from the Who to Tori Amos. She has premiered in La Habana, Cuba, a programme of her own arrangements and recompositions of the music of the Radiohead (Don't Forget: Amnesiac), a concert organized by The National Institute of Music, who had invited her also for a first performance of Debora's own reworking of the piano Contrandanzas by Cuban XIX century composer Manuel Saumell . Canzoni come nuove is another project about traditional Italian songs, totally recomposed, which Debora performs in many italian festivals together with singer Patrizia Laquidara. She also writes arrangements for other singers. Debora is active also as a dancer, and collaborates with two electronic composers and sound artists, Nicola Buso and Emir Bijukic. She currently dances with the 'Jennifer Rosa' Company, directed by Chiara Bortoli, which has been invited in the OperaEstateFestival 2006. She writes and stages solo and group performances in different locations (theaters, clubs, gardens and villas); her latest works are No toco (a solo piece upon an amplified piano stool), Quatuor pour la fins des murs (a solo performance involving the digital sound processing of a drill) and Terrafrana (a piece about the work in building sites). She works as a dancer and singer with Sara Wiktorowicz, choreographer and former dancer of the Galili Dance Company, in several projects and residencies: in Italy for the OperaEstate Festival (2005), in Holland at the Grand Theatre of Groningen (2006) and at the Oerol Festival (2007)
