Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott is a consummate artist who balances a versatile career as a soloist and collaborator. She performs over 100 concerts a year in a combination of solo recitals, concerti and chamber music. Her repertoire choices are eclectic, spanning from Bach and Haydn to Prokofiev and Scriabin to Kernis, Hartke, Tower and Wuorinen.

With over 50 concerti in her repertoire, Ms. McDermott has performed with many leading orchestra including the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Seattle Symphony, National Symphony, Houston Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi,  Hong Kong Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, New Jersey Symphony and Baltimore Symphony among others. Ms, McDermott has toured with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Moscow Virtuosi.

In the recent seasons, Ms, McDermott performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, North Carolina Symphony, Charlotte Symphony, Huntsville Symphony, Alabama Symphony, San Diego Symphony, the Oregon Mozart Players, and  the New Century Chamber Orchestra.

Recital engagements have included the 92nd Street Y, Alice Tully Hall, Town Hall,  The Schubert Club, Kennedy Center, as well as universities across the country. Anne-Marie McDermott has curated and performed in a number of intense projects including: the Complete Prokofiev Piano Sonatas and Chamber Music, a Three Concert Series of Shostakovich Chamber Music, as well as a recital series of Haydn and Beethoven Piano Sonatas. Most recently, she commissioned works of Charles Wuorinen and Clarice Assad  which were premiered in May 2009 at Town Hall, in conjunction with Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
As a soloist, Ms. McDermott has recorded the complete Prokofiev Piano Sonatas, Bach English Suites and Partitas (which was named Gramophone Magazine’s Editor’s Choice), and most recently, Gershwin Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with the Dallas Symphony and Justin Brown.

In addition to her many achievements, Anne-Marie McDermott has been named the Artistic Director of the famed Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado, which hosts the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Dallas Symphony  in addition to presenting over 40 chamber music concerts throughout the summer.  She is also Artistic Director of  two new Festivals; The Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival and The Avila Chamber Music Celebration in Curacao.

As a chamber music performer, Anne-Marie McDermott was named an artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 1995 and performs and tours extensively with CMS each season. She continues a long standing collaboration with the highly acclaimed violinist, Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg.  As a duo, they have released a CD titled “Live” on the NSS label and plan to release the Complete Brahms Violin and Piano Sonatas in the future. Ms. McDermott is also a member of the renowned piano quartet, Opus One, with colleagues Ida Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom and Peter Wiley.

She continues to perform each season with her sisters, Maureen McDermott and Kerry McDermott in the McDermott Trio. Ms, McDermott  has also released an all Schumann  CD with violist, Paul Neubauer, as well as the Complete Chamber Music of Debussy with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Ms. McDermott studied at the Manhattan School of Music with Dalmo Carra, Constance Keene and John Browning. She was a winner of the Young Concert Artists auditions and was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Ms. McDermott regularly performs at Festivals across the United States including, Spoleto, Mainly Mozart, Sante Fe, La Jolla Summerfest, Mostly Mozart, Newport, Caramoor, Bravo, Chamber Music Northwest, Aspen, Music from Angelfire, and the Festival Casals in Puerto Rico, among others.

Program Notes by Aaron Grad

Composers began pairing singers with instrumental soloists more than 300 years ago, applying the Italian label of obbligato to those secondary but indispensable parts. The tradition has flourished ever since, crossing all generations, national borders and stylistic boundaries, as can be seen in this wide-ranging recital that frames the viola as a most obliging partner for a soprano voice.

The opening Songs from the British Isles reflect the tastes of England and Ireland during the first decades of the 20th century, when music was a prime vehicle for pastoral sweetness, local pride, and nostalgic longings for home. The first and last songs became famous during World War I, and the well-known ballad “Danny Boy” put new lyrics onto a traditional Irish tune known as the “Londonderry Air.” Edwin Greene’s “Sing Me to Sleep,” written in 1902, became a best-selling record for the soprano Alma Gluck when she released a version in 1916 featuring obbligato contributions from her husband, violinist Efrem Zimbalist.

The first of this set of Songs from Russia began as one of the Six Romances that Sergei Rachmaninoff published in 1893, setting a text by Pushkin. With a new English translation by the popular Irish tenor John McCormack and an obbligato part provided by the violinist/composer Fritz Kreisler, the melody became “O Cease thy Singing, Maiden Fair,” recorded for Victor Records in 1920 and published two years later for the large market of amateurs who loved to sing and play arrangements like these at home. Wedged among these early gems from Rachmaninoff is a song known in English as “Lily of the Valley,” composed in 1894 by Anton Arensky, a quintessential Russian Romantic who taught Rachmaninoff and Scriabin among many other future stars at the Moscow Conservatory. The original Russian text of the song comes from a poet better known for his musical talents: none other than Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky.

Charles Gounod made his biggest impact in the field of opera, providing a French counterweight to Wagner’s heavy Germanic influence through such gems as Faust from 1859. In 1872, while living in London, Gounod used an existing hymn text to create Evening Song for a local recital by an esteemed piano professor and guests. (It was a significant enough event that two newspaper reviews survive; The Musical Standard pronounced the new song “rather tame,” but The Musical World noted that it “received great applause.”) Gounod’s serenade based on a Victor Hugo poem, known in English as “Sing, Smile and Slumber,” has long been one of his most popular melodies, and musicians greatly appreciate the optional obbligato part published with the score to allow for contributions from cello or any other melodic instrument.

A final set of Songs from Italy straddles “popular music” and “art music”—a modern distinction that was meaningless at the time these songs were created. A fan of the Italian songwriter Paolo Tosti, for example, might have been delighted to pay two cents for the new edition of the song La Serenata that appeared in 1908, embellished with an obbligato violin part by Guido Papini, an Italian virtuoso based in London. This was (and still is) the kind of music meant to be enjoyed in good company, whether gathered around a jangly upright piano in the family home or seated in a posh public venue.

© 2021 Aaron Grad.