LEWISTON — Matthew Graybil, a “rising star” among young American pianists, will present a Piano Series recital at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 21, at the Franco Center. The program will feature works by Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Brahms, and Stravinsky, including three movements for solo piano from Stravinsky’s ballet “Petrouchka.”
Born in Pennsylvania in 1987, Graybil began his piano studies at age 6 and gave his first recital within a year. For his orchestral debut at age 14 he performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. He studied for six years with Harvey Wedeen in Philadelphia, and following undergraduate and graduate study with Jerome Lowenthal at the Juilliard School, launched his professional career. A prize-winner in national and international competitions, he has given solo recitals and performed with orchestras and in chamber groups in the United States, Canada, France and the Netherlands, and appeared on television and radio here in the United States.
Earlier this year, he collaborated with Franco Center favorite Igor Lovchinsky in a critically-praised recital at New York City’s SubCulture Arts Underground, featuring rarely performed two-piano works by Walter Piston and Aaron Copland. Last summer he was invited to participate in the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, and this fall, in addition to solo and chamber ensemble performances in New York and New England, he is preparing a recording of solo piano transcriptions of three Russian ballets by Igor Stravinsky.
Reserved seating tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for seniors, and all students are admitted for free. Anyone who attended the first recital of the series with Frank Glazer in September is eligible to buy tickets for all five concerts for the remainder of the series for just $50. To purchase tickets, visit 46 Cedar Street, www.francocenter.org, or call 207-689-2000. Box office hours are Monday thru Friday from noon to 4 p.m.
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