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Crane Pianist Paul Wyse performs his final faculty recital in Potsdam March 30

Posted 3/29/16

POTSDAM -- Pianist Paul Wyse will present his final concert as an associate professor at SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music Wednesday, March 30, at 7:30 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center's …

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Crane Pianist Paul Wyse performs his final faculty recital in Potsdam March 30

Posted

POTSDAM -- Pianist Paul Wyse will present his final concert as an associate professor at SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music Wednesday, March 30, at 7:30 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center's Proscenium Theater.

Dr. Wyse will present the inaugural solo recital in the Performing Arts Center's Proscenium Theater, and he will perform the first full concert featuring the College's newest Steinway concert grand piano, which he helped to select for the space.

The performance will include works by the Russian Group of Five and includes Mussorgsky's piano masterpiece, "Pictures at an Exhibition." The recital will also include guest appearances by Deborah Massell, François Germain and M. Maxwell Howard.

"Crane is proud of its long association with Steinway Artist Paul Wyse, who has served on the Crane faculty, founded and led the Julia Crane International Piano Competition, and raised the profile of the School for pianists. We wish him well as he embarks on a new phase of his career, and find it fitting that he will perform his final solo recital as a faculty member on the newest addition to Crane's inventory of Steinway pianos, a beautiful concert grand that he helped select when SUNY Potsdam's new Performing Arts Center was completed," said Crane School of Music Dean Dr. Michael Sitton.

This concert is free, and the public is invited to attend.

Wyse's concert appearances have spanned the United States, Canada, Central America, Europe and New Zealand. Highlights include premiere performances for the Royal Family of Monaco, concertos with the New World Symphony, the Gettysburg Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of Northern New York, the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and the Peabody Chamber Orchestra.

He has made radio appearances on WGBH Boston, the Australian Broadcasting Company, the New Zealand Broadcasting Company and recently appeared on New York Public Television performing the "Sonatas for Violin/Cello and Piano" by Ludwig van Beethoven. He has collaborated in performance with such greats as Michael Tilson Thomas, Vladimir Feltsman, Carter Brey, José-Luiz Garcia and Paula Robison, and in 2007, appeared with the Crane Symphony Orchestra with Katherine Jacobson-Fleisher, under the baton of her husband Leon Fleisher.

On the piano faculty of The Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, Wyse has presented various lecture topics and masterclasses at the Longy School of Music, the Peabody Conservatory, the World Piano Pedagogy Conference, Westfield State College, the University of Arkansas and Holyoke College, and has been on the jury of the Simone Belsky Competition, the Empire State Competition, the New York State MTNA Competition, the Thousand Islands International Piano Competition and also serves as the artistic director for the Julia Crane International Piano Competition. His teachers include Leon Fleisher, Marc Durand and Veronica Jochum, and he holds degrees from the Peabody Institute, the New England Conservatory and the University of Montreal.

Also a trained visual artist, Wyse has painted portraits that hang in North America's finest collections, including the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, the Steinway Hall historical portrait collection and the House of Commons of Canada. His list of notable portrait subjects includes pop legend Billy Joel, the Kennedy Center award-winning conductor and pianist Leon Fleisher, the 34th Speaker of the House of Commons Peter Milliken and Harry Connick Jr.

In 2015, he became the first Steinway Artist to have designed and hand painted a Steinway art case (model D) piano, on which he will perform as a recitalist in the major cities of the world.

For more information about SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music, visit www.potsdam.edu/crane.