On Thursday, Feb. 1 at 7:30 p.m., pianist Eliza Garth will perform a solo recital featuring works by American composers Sheree Clement and Perry Goldstein. The recital, a celebration of the March release of Tour de Force – Garth’s new CD on Albany Records featuring Clement and Goldstein – will take place in the Auerbach Auditorium of St. Mary’s Hall at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where Garth is an instructor of music. Both Clement and Goldstein will be present for the recital. The event is free of charge and open to the public.
Later in February, Garth will perform the same recital program in New York City as part of the 2018 Composers Now Festival.
Garth, through her recordings and her performances worldwide, is renowned as an artist with a passionate voice and an adventurous spirit, championing some of the most demanding works in the repertoire. Her recordings of Donald Martino’s solo piano works on the Centaur label met with national critical acclaim. The first of these, her debut solo album and the first album dedicated entirely to Martino’s piano music, was included in a New York Times survey of its own critics’ favorite recordings of music composed since 1945.
Clement’s music, full of shimmering colors and surprising narratives, has been performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Atlantic String Quartet, the Canyonlands Ensemble of Salt Lake City, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, and at the Composers Conference in Vermont, to name a few. Her awards include the Goddard Leiberson Award (American Academy of Arts and Letters), a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Tanglewood Fellowship.
Goldstein’s high-intensity music has been called “kinetic, percussive [and] pummeling” by the New York Times. He has composed for such notable performers as Juilliard SQ cellist Joel Krosnick, Emerson SQ violinist Phillip Setzer, pianists Gilbert Kalish and Eliza Garth, the Aurelia, Prism, and Capitol Sax Quartets, bass clarinetist Michael Lowenstern, and saxophonists Arno Bornkamp, Branford Marsalis, and Kenneth Tse.
St. Mary’s College of Maryland is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education through 2024-2025. St. Mary’s College, designated the Maryland state honors college in 1992, is ranked one of the best public liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Approximately 1,600 students attend the college, nestled on the St. Mary’s River in Southern Maryland.