Mehmari is a rising star in the classical world, and he's also interested in turning people on to works they might not have heard before, such as Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth, who was sort of the Charles Ives of his day.
Tuesday, August 4- 8:00pm
Kerrytown Concert House
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Friday, August 7- 7:00 & 8:30pm
Detroit Institute of Arts
Detroit, Michigan
Sunday, August 9- 3:00pm
Toledo Museum of Art
Toledo, Ohio
From his youth, André Mehmari's musical sensibility has known no borders, freely flowing between Chopin, Scott Joplin, and Ernesto Nazareth. Now a renowned pianist and composer, he has forged a language of tremendous expressive power from the resources of Brazilian, jazz, and classical music.
He deploys his instinct for composition not only in the writing of new works and arrangments, but also in interpretation. This skill is at the forefront of his new solo recording, Ouro Sobre Azul, devoted to the pioneering music of Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth.
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, Nazareth captured the melodic ideas, harmonic schemes, and rhythmic cells that became representative of Brazil's musical identity. Bridging the worlds of popular and classical music, his work has had enormous influence. Heitor Villa-Lobos called it "the true embodiment of the Brazilian musical soul." In his interpretations, Mehmari "freely reworks the original classicized scores, turning them into sound transformations that reveal multiple new aspects," writes Jornal O Globo, creating "a dimension almost unimaginable."
