Two Special Piano Events in Quad Cities Coming Soon
If you are a piano player or simply a piano fan, you will be in heaven the next two days.
The Iowa Music Teachers Association (IMTA) State Conference is being hosted this year by the music department of St. Ambrose University, and it has special events open to the public Sunday, June 8 and Monday, June 9.
If you haven’t experienced the Quad Cities’ historic Pleyel Double Grand piano, now’s the chance. The conference will feature an Iowa All-Stars concert Sunday night, with the best faculty and collegiate pianists from all over the state of Iowa. That includes Marian Lee, chair of the St. Ambrose music department, who will be among many performing this Sunday on the unique double grand at 7:30 p.m., in Asbury United Methodist Church in Bettendorf.
“I also highly recommend going to the pre-concert lecture at 7:15 p.m. explaining the provenance of this unique beauty — there are only seven in the world in playable condition and we have one in the QC,” Lee said recently by email.
The brief talk will be given by Marilyn Mitchem of Bettendorf, a retired piano teacher and church member, who has researched the Pleyel history and oversaw its $25,000 resurrection by Premier Piano Service of Walker, Iowa.
The company’s owner is head tuner for the St. Louis Symphony, and for the Pleyel replaced the entire black veneer, tuning pins, strings, hammers and cast-iron plate.
The piano’s Paris manufacturer, Pleyel et Cie, was founded by pianist/composer Ignace Pleyel in 1807. His company made 50 double grand pianos from the 1890s to 1920s, with a full keyboard at each end and two separate sets of strings on a common sound board.
The 1904 Pleyel’s original owner, Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux, was “the grand dame of the Parisian salon movement,” Mitchem said in a 2018 interview. “She was one of the most famous women in Paris at the time. Her husband was a world-famous sculptor.”
The historic 1904 Pleyel double-grand piano will be featured in a free concert Sunday, June 8 at Asbury United Methodist, Bettendorf. Pictured at the piano are Marilyn Mitchem and Laura Crumbleholme.
Among her famous salon guests and friends were composers Claude Debussy, Gabriel Faure, Frederick Delius, Giacomo Puccini, Francis Poulenc and Maurice Ravel. Ravel premiered one of his works at her home Jan. 6, 1905.
Years later, Thea Leclair owned it – she was a member of Asbury United Methodist for more than 50 years, and she sang in a recital there when she was 90, Mitchem said. Thea died Nov. 1, 2006, at age 95, leaving the piano to Butterworth Center in Moline, with instructions it should be regularly played. But at the time, it had fallen into disrepair and was unplayable, Mitchem said.
Lacking proper space for it, Butterworth Center gave the piano to River Music Experience in 2007, and piano tuner John Duda of Bettendorf was interested in restoring it.
He bought it in 2015 for $50 and began taking it apart. He learned who its original owner was, greatly increasing its value as a historic instrument. Before that, a museum official in New York City had estimated the piano’s value at $30,000.
After a long bout with cancer in multiple organs, Duda died Oct. 19, 2017, at age 65. Mitchem said of his work on the instrument: “This kept him alive. He said, ‘I’m gonna beat this cancer and fix this piano.’” His estate sold the Pleyel to the Federated Music Teachers Association for $51 so that restoration could continue and concerts were held to raise money for the project.
Marian Lee is chair of the St. Ambrose University music department.
In November 2017, the piano was moved to Premier Piano Service of Walker, Iowa, for complete restoration. On Oct. 26, 2018, the fully restored piano returned to the QC and is currently housed at Asbury United Methodist, 1809 Mississippi Blvd.
Best of all, the Sunday, June 8 concert is free as part of the IMTA state conference
Monday guest artist
Pianist Sean Chen will play at St. Ambrose Monday night as part of the conference.
“We are incredibly fortunate to have Sean, who is a Van Cliburn laureate and a Steinway artist in extremely high demand, as our featured artist for our conference,” Marian Lee said. The concert is Monday, June 9 at 7:45 p.m. in Allaert Auditorium at the Galvin Fine Arts Center.
Tickets are $20 general admission, and students are free, available HERE.
Chen won the 2013 American Piano Awards, and placed third at the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. He is the Jack Strandberg/Missouri Endowed Chair Associate Professor of Piano at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory.
Chen has performed with many prominent orchestras, including the Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Kansas City, San Diego, Knoxville, Hartford, Louisiana Philharmonic, Milwaukee, North Carolina, Pasadena, Phoenix, Santa Fe, and New West Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Chamber Orchestras of Philadelphia, Indianapolis, and South Bay.
California native Sean Chen placed third in the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
Solo recitals have brought him to major venues worldwide, including Jordan Hall in Boston, Subculture in New York City, the American Art Museum at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the National Concert Hall in Taipei, Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the Salle Cortot in Paris.
Chen has served on the juries of notable piano competitions, including PianoArts, American Pianists Awards, Cliburn Junior, Thailand International Piano Competition, West Virginia International Piano Competition, Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists, and Steinway competitions around the country.
His CD releases include the 2021 all-Ravel digital album on the Steinway & Sons label, featuring Sonatine and Le Tombeau de Couperin; La Valse, another solo recording on the Steinway label, featuring Mr. Chen’s own arrangement of La Valse and hailed for “penetrating artistic intellect” (Audiophile Audition); a live recording from the Cliburn Competition released by harmonia mundi, praised for his “ravishing tone and cogently contoured lines” (Gramophone); an album of Michael Williams’s solo piano works on the Parma label; and an album of Flute, Oboe, and Piano repertoire titled KaleidosCoping with colleagues Michael Gordon and Celeste Johnson.
Pianist Sean Chen will give a Monday night concert on June 9, at Galvin Fine Arts Center, Davenport.
A multifaceted musician, Chen also transcribes, composes, and improvises. He most recently completed a transcription of Ysaÿe’s Violin Sonata No. 3 for two pianos, commissioned by 88Squared duo. His most recent composition, Daydream No. 1 – Steps (2021), was commissioned as a gift for the retirement of American Pianists Association’s President/CEO.
His transcriptions of such orchestral works as Ravel’s La Valse, Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, and the Adagio from Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, have been received with glowing acclaim and enthusiasm, and his encore improvisations are lauded as “genuinely brilliant” (Dallas Morning News). An advocate of new music, he has also collaborated with several composers and performed their works, including Lisa Bielawa, Jennifer Higdon, Michael Williams, Nicco Athens, Michael Gilbertson, and Reinaldo Moya.
Born in Florida, Chen grew up in the Los Angeles area of Oak Park, California. His impressive achievements before college include the NFAA ARTSweek, Los Angeles Music Center’s Spotlight, and 2006 Presidential Scholars awards. These honors combined with diligent schoolwork facilitated offers of acceptance by MIT, Harvard, and The Juilliard School.
Choosing to study music, Chen earned his Bachelor and Master of Music from Juilliard, meanwhile garnering several awards, most notably the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. He received his Artist Diploma in 2014 at the Yale School of Music as a George W. Miles Fellow.
