Gayle Martin
Biography Gayle Martin
Gayle Martin
has had a distinguished career as a concert artist, achieving international prominence as the sole American Laureate of the sixth International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, and only the third American woman ever to reach the finals. A native of Texas, she was one of the very last students of the famous pedagogue, Madame Rosina Lhevinne at the Juilliard School, where she was awarded the very prestigious Josef Lhevinne Prize. She also studied with the well-known Seymour Bernstein, who is the subject of a recent documentary featured in the New York, Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals this Fall. Her M.A degree was earned at New York University, where she was on the faculty for five years.
Her most recent highlight was a performance of the Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto with the California Philharmonic at the Ambassador Theater in Pasadena. Other performances include appearances with the Houston Symphony (since age 12), the Moscow Radio Philharmonic, the Maracaibo Symphony, the Denver Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Amarillo, Virginia and Battle Creek Symphony Orchestras, the Central New Jersey Symphony, and the Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York. She has toured throughout South America, including an engagement in Buenos Aires at the Teatro Colón with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Argentina. In 2004, her performance with the Moravian Philharmonic of Judith Shatin’s Piano Concerto, “The Passion of St. Cecilia,” was released by Capstone Records.
Additional concerts include performances at Lincoln Center in New York, at the White House and at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and numerous other appearances throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, England, Austria, Poland, Israel, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Mainland China.
Reviewers have written of “her intense passion and deep-seated emotional response to the music” (Washington Post), and that “this was a performance which, if recorded on 78s, could have fooled the average pianophile into thinking he or she was listening to one of the greats of the past.” (Woodstock Times).
In reviewing her Alice Tully Hall recital at Lincoln Center, the New York Times reported that she created “a truly magical atmosphere…and made this listener smile with pleasure.” Following a recent performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto, the critic Courtenay Cauble wrote: “Gayle Martin has it all. The depth of feeling is always there…because she makes the music her own and then communicates it, as any real artist must learn to do. Her performance was both brilliant and moving, and always beautiful.”
A theme running through some of ARCA’s late season programming features works that composers have written for the dance. Ms. Henry has chosen selections from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Ballet Suite and several works by Frederic Chopin for this occasion. Additional offering will include the “Wanderer Fantasy” and the Impromptu by Franz Schubert.
Longfellow was astute in his observation. At a post-concert reception at the Red Brick Gallery in Foxburg announcing the opening of a new exhibition featuring the Civil War paintings of Amy Lindenberger, take the hand of ARCA’s old friend Gayle Henry and see how good it does feel.
