Article published November 19, 2009
Pianist warms up for Peristyle with concert at school
By SALLY VALLONGO
SPECIAL TO THE BLADE
It’s Tuesday morning at McKinley Elementary, one of the vintage school buildings in the Toledo Public system. A banged up old grand piano (Vose & Sons), its lid at full stick, sits ready for use as visiting pianist Stewart Goodyear stands quietly just in front of the stage.
Into the ornate auditorium file uniformed children, kindergarten through second grade, eyeing the instrument and the man who will “turn it on” for them. Under the eyes of teachers, they sit on the floor in tidy rows.
Goodyear, 25, is younger than many of those teachers. But when he begins to play, he delivers the fruits of decades of musical training.
The Toronto native, now a New Yorker, is in town to perform Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with the Toledo Symphony and principal conductor Stefan Sanderling during its Classics III concerts tomorrow and Saturday in the Peristyle.
Through ProMedica, headquartered a few blocks away and a regular partner with McKinley, Goodyear is visiting to bring children in close and personal with the piano, which he tells them he discovered at age 3.
“I was playing a lot by ear, whatever I heard on the TV or radio,” he says, knocking out the opening theme song for the Mario Brothers video game to the delight of young boys and girls listening raptly.
Partnering with TSO education coordinator Jessica Aeschliman, Goodyear provides musical food for the ears and soul: slow and fast, high and low, happy, ominous, Baroque, bossa nova, and Romantic.
“That’s fast!” exclaims a boy in the front row.
Goodyear, a graduate of both Curtis and the Juilliard School, plays about 90 concerts a year, he tells them, “Always on stage.” When he’s not practicing seven hours a day, well, he likes to shoot a few hoops.
Known as an interpreter of Gershwin as well as an intense performer of European and American classical composers, Goodyear says he’s never played a program combining music by Gershwin (1898-1937) and Charles Ives (1874-1954), which the TSO will undertake tomorrow and Saturday.
“I’ve never heard of this combination before, but I think it’s a great one,” he says earnestly.
On the surface, the two Americans, contemporaries but probably not acquaintances, seem so disparate as to raise questions about juxtaposing their music.
There’s Ives’ style, angular, witty, elegant, spiced with traditional early American hymns and popular tunes turned out in a moonlighting career by the Yale-educated insurance executive.
And there’s Gershwin’s populist, sensual yet restrained classical compositions which were written early as a sidebar to his vastly more well-known work for popular and Broadway productions.
Still, there is a musical convergence in the way both composers heeded their muses by stepping outside the rigid boundaries of musical esthetics of their time. Ives wanted to infuse classical music with popular melodies, colors, and influences. Gershwin was a popular composer yearning to write “serious” music.
The Toledo Symphony led by principal conductor Stefan Sanderling and guest pianist Stewart Goodyear will present Classics III at 8 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday in the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle. Tickets are $20-$60 at toledosymphony.com or 419-246-8000.
Contact Sally Vallongo at: svallongo@theblade.com.
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