'You can always work in a piano bar': Finalist recalls teacher's taunt in an APA Jazz Kitchen tease

Good teachers sometimes have a stock way of bringing errant pupils up short. For Michael Davidman, he told a capacity audience at the Jazz Kitchen Wednesday night, when he ran athwart a particular teacher's expectations at a lesson, it ran like this: "You can always work in a piano bar."

The finalist (for the seccond time) in the American Piano Awards was kidding about the venue, of course. Like his four colleagues, he seemed happy to be there playing short pieces from their repertoires as the 2025 competition approaches its conclusion this weekend. 

Michael Davidman was also a 2021 finalist

That applied even to Sasha Kasman Laude, the next-to-last pianist whose set was marred by tornado warnings on dozens of i-Phones, though she gamely finished her program of excerpts from Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet." Also inconvenienced by the prudent interruption of the concert was the final player, Angie Zhang, whose i-Pad was missing for a while before she brought the exciting evening program to its conclusion.

Despite flickering lights, external storm sounds, and the wealth of iPhone emergency alerts, the musical thunder and scatteration were most evident within the dining room of the Northside club, approaching its 31st anniversary with the innovation of a distinctive competition stage in this venue for classical finalists.

Davidman is one of two to play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra this weekend under the baton of guest conductor JoAnn Falletta. In this next-to-last stage of the current competition, he offered two vigorous outbursts, between which "Yellow Roses for a Pianist" (to translate the work's Spanish title) offered lyrical balm. It showcased the rounded phrasing and melodic gifts Davidman has exhibited in past performances here. 

As for the outbursts, the first deluge was Nikolai Kapustin's "Toccatina," a perpetual-motion onslaught emphasizing the pianist's crisp, well-regulated articulation.  The other downpour was Michael Abels' "Iconoclasm," whose title signaled a jumpy intensity with a little more wildly distributed accents than the more motoric "Toccatina." Both works elicited a huge response.

Sasha Kasman Laude's session shadowed by alerts. 

The other purveyor of the Rachmaninoff Third with the ISO is Laude, who will play the work Saturday night. Music-lovers may remember, with rueful amusement, the way John Gielgud, playing David Helfgott's teacher in the 1996 film "Shine," spoke of "Rach 3" in a tone of reverential gravity, as though it were the concert pianist's Mount Everest, daunting every aspirant from Edmund Hillary on. 

Laude's program Wednesday focused on excerpts from Prokofiev's "Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet, op. 75." She approximated the seductive glissandos of the original orchestral scores sensitively, and her picture of the enmity between the Montagues and Capulets sizzled. The representation of Mercutio was deftly characterized to bring the selections to a climax.

Avery Gagliano chose from mainstream repertoire.

Avery Gagliano chose the most conventional solo pieces of the program, which carried the theme of dance at the behest of the APA.  She played two mazurkas from Chopin's op. 30, choosing them for their contrasting qualities of reflectiveness and sparkle. Such contrasts are enfolded within Ravel's "Alborada del Gracioso," the attractive jester portrait from "Miroirs." Her gift for tonal color was pronounced, and the tenderness and eccentricity of the portrait strode fully into the interpretive picture. She will play Chopin's First Piano Concerto with the ISO Saturday evening.

Finalist Eliot Wuu chose to go furthest afield in choices for this program, an arrangement of Avner

Dorman's "Techno" from the composer's Piano Sonata No. 3.  Reflecting the electronic programming of the musical sub-genre, the work brought forth the thick, motoric textures of the 1990s style that inspired the work. Wuu indicated that period is before his time, so he needed to do some historical study in order to fashion his interpretation. (Immediately I was aware that my biographical status may be a matter of paleontology.) He will play Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto Friday night.

After the storm interruption, the charmingly unflustered Zhang concluded the arresting evening of short

Angie Zhang kept her composure.

pieces inspired by the dance with Chilly Gonzales' riveting "Olga Gigue" and the 20th-century Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin's "Basso Ostinato." The piece is exactly what its title says: A repeated bass line undergirds everything, and the variety of pace and elaboration above it lends all kinds of contrast to the obstinate line in the left hand. In the concerto round, she will play Rachmaninoff's "Paganini Rhapsody" on Friday night, which I prefer (probably unusually) above all of that 20th-century Russian composer's other pieces for piano and orchestra, including the mountain-climbing spectacle of "Rach 3."