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Yesterday, I received a rather last minute e-vitation to join famed publicist, colleague and longtime friend, R. Couri Hay, alongside other friends to help him celebrate his astonishing and speedy recovery and hospital release from recent hip surgery. We all joined him at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall for a special tribute concert recital with some of the Olympus Musical Festival performers, with dinner afterwards at one of my favorite restaurants, Petrossian. Hmmm, how could I refuse?
Well, the spry and unstoppable Mr. Hay did indeed show up, maneuvering up and down the hall steps with cane in tow, much to the surprise and chagrin of some his friends, namely Cece Cord, fashion designers Maggie Norris & Anait Bian, ABT ballerina Irina Dvorovenko, Barbaralee Spielvogel, Marina Galesi and yours truly "The Image Guru"
5 young virtuosos performed in the starkly modern Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall;
Solenne Paidassi from France, played masterfully her violin, Russian born Ilya Maximov wowed me personally on the piano, the Slovenian percussion duo of Simon Klavzar & Jose Bogolin, who incidentally won the New York competition, and originally scheduled Polina Pasztircsak who unfortunately couldn't make her performance was replaced by another soprano equally as powerful, but who's name eludes this image guru.
Solenne Paidassi on the violin, chose 2 musical pieces, the first from composer Johanne Sebastian Bach, Ciaconna from Partita No 2 for solo violin in D minor, BMW 1004 (14')and for her second performance she opted for composer E. Ysaye Piano Sonata No. 6 for solo violin, which started off the evening on a high note.
Young Ilya Maximov, who looked like a dead rigner for a young John Lennon and was my personal favorite, played Piano Sonata No 2 in B-flat minor, OP 36 (20') by Rachmaninoff, which lifted my soul to the rafters of Zankel Hall. Wow, so much talent in one so young. If only I had continued my piano lessons when I was a child!.
But the evening's favorite performance on dualing percussion tables was performed by the Slovenians, Simon & Jose, who somehow modernized a rather traditionally minded evening's repertoire with their spellbinding, numble fingered and transcendental rendering of composer K. Abe's Reflections on Japanese Children's Songs (10') Talk about Japanese Jetson-ville, I could easily hear this music as the musical score for a futuristically eerie, yet somehow whimsical spy thriller!
Kind of cool was the entire evening for those culturally minded people who didn't wish to go see the latest blockbuster movie, or try yet another "new restaurant", but would rather to be magically and musically transported to St. Petersburg or Vienna! Brava, bravo, bravo-bravo, & brava to all the young virtuostic geniuses!
Ahhh, and then dinner afterwards to dine and mingle with the performers at the famed Russian restaurant, Petrossian! My dinner date was a friend, the fashion designer Maggie Norris (ex-Ralph Lauren designer, muse and co-conspirator), who blew me away with some images from a recent photoshoot of some of her couture pieces photographed on the stunnning Brooke Shields, which resembled the grandness and opulence of a Vanity Fair cover by Annie Leibowitz. It's amazing the wealth of talent that one can surround oneself with in New York if you set your mind to it and cancel your plans at the last minute!
Now that's a New York evening and thanks to a New York man about town, R. Couri Hay... thanks Couri and keep up the healing.... we need you to stay vibrant!
Montgomery Frazier "The Image Guru"
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